Word After Word

“First, there is the barrier between image and language,” writes Irving Yalom in Love’s Executioner. “Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language. That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues—all are lost when image is crammed into language.”

“Great artists attempt to communicate image directly through suggestion, through metaphor, through linguistic feats intended to evoke some similar image in the reader. But ultimately they realize the inadequacy of their tools for the task.”

I love this passage, and I think a lot about that “march”—getting the image in my head, in all its fleecy fullness, onto the page. But I don’t think we “cram” the picture into words. I think we use words—they don’t even feel like words when I am writing—to press the image out, to roll it out. Words aren’t thoughts, when writers work at this image level. They’re strings, pulling away the curtains, revealing only what is there, what was there all along.