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Chapter Three
On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language
According to Jakobson the aesthetic use of language is marked by the ambiguity and the self-focusing character of the messages articulated by it. By ambiguity the message is rendered creative in relation to the acknowledged possibilities of the code. The same is true of the metaphoricalnot necessarily the same thing as aestheticapplications of language. For an aesthetic message to come into being, it is not enough to establish ambiguity at the level of the content-form; here, inside the formal symmetry of metonymic relationships, metaphorical replacements are operated, enforcing a fresh conception of the semantic system and the universe of meanings coordinated by it. But, to create an aesthetic message, there must also be alterations in the form in which it is expressed, and these alterations must be significant enough to require the addressee of the message, though aware of a change in the content-form, to refer back to the message itself as a physical entity. This will allow him to detect alterations in the form of expression, for there is a kind of solidarity binding together the alteration in content with any change in its mode of expression. This is the sense in which an aesthetic message becomes self-focusing; it also conveys information about its own physical make-up, and this justifies the proposition that in all art there is inseparability of form and content. However, this principle does not necessarily mean that one cannot distinguish between the two levels and pick out the specific opera-
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''Sulla possibilità di generare messaggi estetici in una lingusa edenica," Strumenti Critici 5, no. 11 (1971). Bruce Merry, trans., "On the Possibility of Generating Esthetic Messages in an Edenic Language," Twentieth Century Studies 6, no. 7 (1972). This chapter is a revised version of the translation.

 
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