Brief Prolegomenon

Say no more.

–Monty Python (Eric Idle)

At the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein says, “What we cannot talk about, we must pass over in silence.” (Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.)

To the very small extent that I can comment on Wittgenstein’s ideas in the Tractatus, I believe his basic point is that statements about the truth of the world have to be as clear and concrete as possible. What we put in words—when we are talking in philosophical terms about the nature of reality—should be tantamount to a sharply drawn picture.

Much of what we experience inevitably eludes direct expression, which leads us to use, whether we’re conscious of it or not, figurative language and nonverbal speech (i.e., graphic art and music). As a patron of the Austrian writer Georg Trakl, Wittgenstein offered this assessment: "I do not understand [his poems]; but their tone pleases me. It is the tone of true genius." Silence takes many forms.

I’ll call a halt to deep thoughts right here.

What Can B Sd will be devoted to quirks of speech and usage that strike me as mystifying, trite, misleading, or happily apt (or maybe not so happily). Btw, the title would be What Can Be Said, except that someone else has already captured that domain name. But perhaps it was serendipitous to have to shed a few vowels . . .


By way of summing up, here is a detail from a Robert Rauschenberg painting: