A Lesson in Linguistics from Heinrich von Ofterdingen

»Die Sprache«, sagte Heinrich, »ist wirklich eine kleine Welt in Zeichen und Tönen. Wie der Mensch sie beherrscht, so möchte er gern die große Welt beherrschen, und sich frei darin ausdrücken können. Und eben in dieser Freude, das, was außer der Welt ist, in ihr zu offenbaren, das tun zu können, was eigentlich der ursprüngliche Trieb unsers Daseins ist, liegt der Ursprung der Poesie.«

                                                                                  --Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen

A lesson in linguistics from Heinrich von Ofterdingen.  Poetic language not only allows us to describe reality, but also to create reality.  Poetic language surpasses logical language by not only making possible the description of concepts, people, and things—as well as revealing the relationships between them—but by also allowing those descriptions and relations to become infinitely malleable, infinitely configurable, like musical notes.  Poetic language allows the impossible to be possible and, even more importantly, grants the possibility of independence from so-called “reality” itself (so-called because our understanding of “reality” is limited in so many ways).  Yielding to the possibility does not mean choosing falsity over truth, but rather, represents the opening of a door to different levels of truth.  Poetic language also allows for the translation of those truths into apprehensible meaning, as it is capable of genuinely expressing what is inexpressible in ordinary language.