To write. If we write about the form and function of our own writing we are writing about writing in entirety. Which word? Which sentence? Which paragraph? Any and all. Communication can and does take place without writing, and even within writing grammatical rules are not by any means requirements for effective communication. We started with words; simple vocal mechanisms used to attempt to convey single thoughts or ideas. From there they got more complex, definitions built on definitions. Now maybe we need sentences to allow words to work in combinations to reveal specific meanings. Sentences became cliché, metaphors grew and expanded. Is the point of an entire paragraph just to try and communicate a few key words whose simplicity somehow got lost to time? Or are word perhaps complex by nature, and the development of grammar is nothing less than brilliant technological innovation that allows us to expand our use of words? What, to try and be as specific as possible, is a paragraph?
A paragraph can be a single sentence.
But a paragraph can also be an unlimited number of sentences. A paragraph is meant to show a greater division in thought than a sentence can show. The question that arises, however, is how great that thought division needs to be?
Say I start another paragraph right here. Is that warranted? It seems to be mostly a stylistic decision in this sense. But a paragraph is more than just style, most of the time a significant amount of thought goes into a paragraph, even with this choppy architecture, I am trying to prove a point.
The origin of the word “paragraph” is Greek, and means “written beside”, but the etymology, as fun as it is, isn’t terribly useful. The origin of “paragraph” simply describes “paragraph”, which is no more than an abstract way to refer to paragraphs, those strange chunks of writing that can include as many sentences as the author sees fit. Besides, “written beside” what, other paragraphs? But maybe this is something that we can’t examine abstractly, or at least not effectively; but luckily it is not too difficult to find where paragraphs have been used in non abstract way
A parable (whose etymology is very close to that or “paragraph”, conveniently enough) is supposed to be a story that leads us to single lesson at the end; a moral of a few words or maybe just a single word. In a similar way, I feel, to how a paragraph can lead us to a certain idea or ideas contained within. Does the moral help make sense of the parable, or does the parable help make sense of the moral? Kafka admits to two and one examination, in The Complete Stories and Borges also seems to have two in his Collected Fictions. I also admit to two in my personal writing, but, this being where admitting comes in, I wrote a few other parables that I didn’t admit to being parables. Are they still parables? Do they still have morals? Of the two I admit to, I don’t really consider one of them a real parable, and I could not tell you a moral if you asked. With this in mind, I must wonder if Borges and Kafka meant all their parables to be parables, and also whether or not any other parables and morals are hidden throughout their texts. Granted, we could say anything is a parable if we simply attach a moral to it, so maybe I am asking the wrong questions here. If anything could have a moral, in the eyes of the reader, why designate something as a parable? I might be able to squeeze an answer or two from the last piece of Kafka’s anthology titled “On Parables”. In the first paragraph, Kafka seems to be suggesting that parables are useless because any wisdom offered in them is not translatable to everyday life, but then a dialogue begins over this matter.
“Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: You have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.”
I have taken the liberty of leaving the quote in its original formatting, five separate paragraphs, as good grammar dictates that we make each line of a different speaker in a dialogue into its own paragraph. Then again, Kafka is not using quotations, and if I am not mistaken they are the indicator for dialogue-paragraph separation. Still, I am certain the Kafka was trying to send some sort of message with this decision. The parable itself is as incomprehensible as any story, and even the moral is not useful in its raw form, but if it can be translated to have some personal value, than the parable, and therefore its moral, will be useful in everyday life. This seems to be a double edged sword though; because once the moral is converted to functional use the parable will be ruined in a way. It will lose its magic, its godliness.
So what does this mean for us as the authors of parables? Does our work have a maximum level of interpretation that, after attained, will cause our writing to eventually be left by the curbside? Or to look at it another way, if we think we have fully understood a piece of writing, what need do we have to ever come back to it? Its immortality is destroyed. Although I do not personally believe that anything I have ever written could be so inexhaustible; in the case of Kafka and Borges how could any of their works not be? Still, they have both written parables, those little stories that people will try to cut up and extract one single lesson from, once that is done, that’s it. Then again, maybe none of this concerns us. We (I will put myself alongside the masters in this case, though I don’t know their minds) don’t write a parable or anything else for that matter in the hopes that it will be forever thought of as non comprehendible piece of eternal literature. As I said in my previous assignment on the sentence, I personally write in the hopes that just maybe one person will be able to take one useful thing from what I have created. I am not entirely concerned with what that thing is, that will be mostly out of my control. So maybe the desire to write parables stems not from an intention of any specific message, but only to alter the process in which that message is discovered.
I feel like I need to go back to a section of the quote in order proceed with where these ideas seem to be taking me. “Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables…” How exactly does one follow a parable? Are to follow the moral? This is problematic because so often the moral is hidden, and even when we do find it, it does not immediately become clear what to do with it. I think that Kafka has left something out here, something key. This translation, this leap, is one that we must make for ourselves. How does one go about becoming anything? Let’s say, for the sake of example, a baseball player. You cannot just watch baseball to become a baseball player, sure, watching can be valuable to an extent, but you also need to practice. I believe that parables, paragraphs; that writing in general is the same. The piece in question is called “On Parables” after all so although it may be a parable, it is also a hint at how to write them and therefore how to become them. Borges also seems to know what I am talking about, “Defeated by reality, by Spain, don Quixote died in 1614 in the town of his birth. He was survived only a short time by Miguel de Cervantes.” In this piece, also a parable, Borges suggests that a writer lends part, or all of, himself into what he creates. This is what I believe to be the key to unlocking vastly greater sources of written knowledge, by writing them yourself.
“No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.” (Kafka, 4) I would like to suggest the possibility that because of the subjective nature of interpretation, many of these insights may only be useful to myself. Then I would like to move on to the final bit of wisdom that I feel I can at least try and impart.
Where do these ideas lead us? The parable and the paragraph are open forms. We are free to make what we will of them; both as authors and readers. That is one thing I have noticed as we have scaled out from words to sentences to paragraphs, the more you zoom out the less strict the rules are. The more openly we allow ourselves to write, the more useful our words become. Words, sentences, paragraphs, parables –all are tools of language that are at our disposal. I do not believe that it should be our goal to completely unravel the threads of language and take control of it, but rather to dig in and get as much out of it as we possibly can, and that is what these tools allow us to better accomplish.
