Ellul on Writing

"Language is reduced by being written down. It ceases being multicentered and flowing, evocative and mythological."

"We all know that [poetry] acquires impact and meaning only when recited. Then it becomes a living text because it is no longer a text; the speaker takes it up and can read it only to the precise degree that he makes it his own. He must become in turn the creator of language, with the help of the text he has been given."

Likewise, "religious writing is filled with life only when it serves as a support and starting point for a word that is spoken, announced, or proclaimed. In this way the word becomes current and living, having left the book’s pages and flown toward the listener."

"Only the word conveys the truth of a religious message. What the written word needs is not to be considered the source of a mere code, law, or formula, or of an indefinitely repeated prayer. It must be taken at its source and given rebirth, not by repetition, but by an inspiration that reopens it. That way the whisper can be perceived and received again. Then the word can start the listener off anew in his quest for truth."

Read on for another taste of Jacques Ellul's take on language and truth.

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The word when written becomes a means of abstract, solemn discussion. A University based on writing is not the same thing as an Academy’s halls. Writing changes hearing into sight, and transforms the understanding of a person, with his words’ halo of mystery and echoes, into the understanding of a text. This approach involves grammatical and logical analysis, decomposition of structures, and understanding of truth through the dull seriousness of exact methods. Deciphering words and phrases leads us to reconstruct a message that has lost its life and immediacy. It becomes the result of a process, of a coming and going from the text to my knowledge and from my knowledge to the text, with an increasingly precise method.

We must not forget that writing also affects language. Images and our practice of reading and writing cause us to conceive of discourse as linear, with only one meaning, and consecutive. Writing is of necessity linear and consecutive, even when we try to sever its univocal quality through a sort of written polyphony. Efforts of this nature, such as Henri Pichette’s Epiphanies (Henri Pichette, Les Epiphanies[mystere profane] (Paris: Gallimard, 1969)) or Raymond Queneau’s poems, are just stylistic exercises that cannot outweigh the unrelenting mass of texts that engulf us.

Language is thus reduced by being written down. It ceases being multicentered and flowing, evocative and mythological. In this sense, and therefore quite indirectly, McLuhan is right when he speaks of a return to a world of myth through television -- but not for the reasons he gives. Television, to the degree that it eliminates part of writing, causes writing to lose its rigor, or the implacable quality it gives to the development of thought. All this is lost when the written word is replaced by speech. Spoken language is then able to have multiple meanings again. These include the play on variations of a theme and the myriad directions in which the human spirit can move when listening. But this can happen only if the deluge of televised images has not done away with language altogether. In that case television will not produce any flowering; instead, the result will be the dismal disintegration of the very possibility of thought.

We all know that writing strips language of its certainty and even of its meaning, which then can be restored only after a certain thought process. We show that we sense this when we feel the need to go in the opposite direction and switch from the text to speech. This happens often, especially when we are dealing with the most creative, evocative, and truth-filled texts, such as poetry or religious writings. It is impossible simply to read them. Poetry needs to be spoken. We all know that it acquires impact and meaning only when recited. Then it becomes a living text because it is no longer a text; the speaker takes it up and can read it only to the precise degree that he makes it his own. He must become in turn the creator of language, with the help of the text he has been given.

The same process applies to religious writing. It is filled with life only when it serves as a support and starting point for a word that is spoken, announced, or proclaimed. In this way the word becomes current and living, having left the book’s pages and flown toward the listener. What a tremendous error people commit when they consider the verba volent to be critical and the scripta manent to be something positive. Precisely because written words subsist, and persist, they are nothing but an anonymous trace. Because they fly, spoken words are living and filled with meaning. The expressions above form a useful formula for a judge who needs proof of something that is past and surpassed -- a finished and closed matter. But they are a fatal formula for something living.

The written word is just a mummy whose wrappings must be removed someday -- not to discover a few bones, but to breathe life into it again. Only the word conveys the truth of a religious message. What the written word needs is not to be considered the source of a mere code, law, or formula, or of an indefinitely repeated prayer. It must be taken at its source and given rebirth, not by repetition, but by an inspiration that reopens it. Written language has closed the mind. Like a fist grasping a diamond, it has closed its grammatical and structural trap over a vanishing whisper that it tries to translate through enclosing and containment. But instead, writing snuffs it out, and we must open the straitjacket of writing so that it becomes a freshly spoken word. That way the whisper can be perceived and received again. Then the word can start the listener off anew in his quest for truth.