ABC of Reading

NEVERTHELESS you still charge words with meaning mainly in three ways, called phanopoeia, melopoeia, logopoeia.

Dichten’ is the German verb corresponding to the noun ‘Dichtung’ meaning poetry, and the lexicographer has rendered it by the Italian verb meaning ‘to condense’.

Dichten = condensare.

I begin with poetry because it is the most concentrated form of verbal expression.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree

People occasionally develop almost a fanaticism in combating the ideas ‘fixed’ in a single language. These are generally speaking ‘the prejudices of the nation’ (any nation).

people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.

Partisans of particular ideas may value writers who agree with them more than writers who do not, they may, and often do, value bad writers of their own party or religion more than good writers of another party or church.

Literature is language charged with meaning.

go back to the beginning of history, you probably know that there is spoken language and written language, and that there are two kinds of written language, one based on sound and the other on sight.

He was trying to explain the Chinese ideograph as a means of transmission and registration of thought. He got to the root of the matter, to the root of the difference between what is valid in Chinese thinking and invalid or misleading in a great deal of European thinking and language.