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It is so beautiful when the world sinks into darkness - the German column

2020-09-09T16:06:21.910Z


Our columnist uses examples from literature to show how powerful the German language can be. Episode 43: Adalbert Stifter finds words for a natural phenomenon that leaves everyone else speechless.


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Solar eclipse

Photo: Arno Burgi / dpa

Adalbert Stifter, 

The Solar Eclipse on July 8, 1842

"The air became cold, very cold, dew fell, the clothes and instruments were damp - the animals were terrified; what is the most terrible thunderstorm, it is a noisy junk against this deathly silent majesty."

The great Elias Canetti said that nothing is more fearful than being touched by the unknown, and because both touch and fear are difficult to endure, people try to make the unknown known to themselves, to classify them: by Finds words for it.

The unknown naturally eludes the description.

The limits of my language, writes Wittgenstein, mean the limits of my world;

what one cannot talk about, one must be silent about it.

It remains an inadequacy.

Natural phenomena, extreme experiences, unheard-of in general: if you find yourself speechless, you would have liked to put into words what you feel, what you suspect, what you fear;

what elevates him.

A nice challenge for poets.

How do you describe what seems "indescribable" to others?

Where do you find words for things that make everyone else wordless?

A solar eclipse, for example: so rare and so linguistic that people still wonder whether a solar eclipse could not have been what the Bible describes when Christ died on the cross: "The sun darkened, the earth shook, the dead stood from the tombs and the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. "

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Source: spiegel

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