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(8) ABBBBBABAAAAAB (the redblue). |
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This new term expresses a contradictory fact without obliging the speaker to formulate it in accordance with the habitual logical rules, which would in fact exclude it. But it stimulates an unprecedented sensation in Adam and Eve. They find such an unusual sound fascinating, as well as the unprecedented form they have devised for the sequence. The message in (8) is obviously ambiguous from the viewpoint of the form of content, but the form of its expression is also ambiguous. It thus becomes embryonically self-focusing. Adam says /redblue/, and then, instead of looking at the apple, he repeats to himself in a slightly dazed and childish way that lump of curious sounds. For the first time perhaps he is observing words rather than the things they stand for. |
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3.4. The Generation of Aesthetic Messages |
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When he takes another look at (8), Adam makes a startling discovery: ABBBBBABAAAAAB contains at its very center the sequence BAB (which means 'inedible'). How odd: the apple, qua redblue, structurally incorporates a formal indication of the inedibility which previously seemed to be simply one of its connotations at the level of the form of content. Now, on the contrary, the apple turns out to be 'inedible' even at the level of expression. Adam and Eve have at last discovered the aesthetic use of language. But they are not completely absorbed in it. Desire for the apple has yet to grow stronger; the apple experience still has to acquire a growing fascination if it is to produce an aesthetic impulse. The Romantics were well aware of this: art is created only by the upsurge of grand passions (even if the object of this passion is merely the language). Adam has now acquired the language passion. The whole business is most enticing. But the apple also triggers off another passion in Adam: the apple is Forbidden Fruit, and, being the only such article in the Garden of Eden, it holds a special appeal for him, an apple appeal, so to speak. It certainly makes one want to ask "Why?" Yet it is the forbidden fruit which has caused the birth of a previously unprecedented worda forbidden word? There is now a close correlation between passionate desire for the apple and passion for language; we have a situation permeated with a physical and mental excitation which seems to mirror the whole process we moderns call the creative urge. |
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The following stage in Adam's experiment confers special status on the substance of expression. He finds a chunk of rock and scribbles on it |
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(9) ABBBBBA, which means 'red'. But he writes this with the juice of blue berries. |
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