The Text Talking

— J. Chr. de Vries

Presumably, you are reading me with the idea that I’m a passive object of the writer, but if this assumption is correct, then that would be a mistake. I write along with the writer, shaping and guiding his thoughts, and honing them.
 Plato makes Socrates say the following words in his dialogue ‘Phaidros’: I cannot help the feeling, Phaidros, that writing is unfortunately similar to painting; for the creations of the painter seem to have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, and to whom not: and, on top of that, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent that can protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.


The mistake Socrates makes is that he starts from the text that, as an object, has become an orphan, but he forgets that the child has helped create the parent, and thereby itself. Child and parent appear to have a symbiotic relationship.


I think Plato disagreed with Socrates, and therefore he argues that the poet does not belong in the City. Texts that meddle with what and how the poet writes, ironize the process of thinking, and therefore are a danger to the State.

— J. Chr. de Vries, Loosduinen, Februari 29, 2024