Mysterious Mystery
There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1918)
It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph - only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.
Susan Sontag (1973)
As morning mists clear the river appears. On gentle days, such as this was, the light begins to glow, the trees sharpen, and the distance
emerges.
The mystery ot the way we come to know what is new to us.
This is the experience of the mysterious becoming familiar that we all know. And many of us might prefer a
photo,
More of Susan Sontag ‘On Photography’.
such as the above, to the same view taken in full daylight. Endorsing that preference is Sontag’s use of mysterious, a word which has come to us (via Latin and French) from the Greek (mustērion) for a secret thing or ceremony. The dispelling mist will tell its secret. At the other end of the transition through
metaphor,
To many of us metaphors are mysterious; helping to dispel the mystery.
is the famous Wittgenstein quote. For him the mysterious covers all that cannot be told: exactly everything our language does not
encompass.
Wittgenstein, again, on the relation of thought and language.
The word’s long
journey
There have been claims that most of our language comes from metaphors.
is radical. Being a secret makes sharing a possibility; being outside language challenges much communion. Does loosening the concrete bonds which tie words down, promote understanding or lead us back into the mist?
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus was translated and published in English in 1922 by F. P. Ramsey and C. K. Ogden, the above is paragraph 6.522 of that translation, published by Routledge. There have been many other translations, such as this one I found on the internet: “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” The Sontag quote is from page 141 of the 1978 Allan Lane edition of her book On Photography.
The photograph of a ferry was taken by the River Đà in northern Vietnam on a January morning.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 17th August 2024
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