Welcome to this "short seminar" that will function as a practice talk for Alexandra and my presentation the Coseriu conference on creativity in Cluj-Napoca in the week after: https://coseriu.conference.ubbcluj.ro/

Brodsky (1986) wrote: “Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language’s own means”. This quote captures the paradoxical relationship between experience and language that becomes especially apparent in poetic expression. During the artistic creation, the poet “takes a step in the fog, without knowing where, if anywhere, it will lead” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 8): it is the expressed poem that which transforms and, at the same time, sediments what is experienced. But how can language both introduce something qualitatively new to human experience, without distorting it, and rather, even open more fully the door for its expression? 

According to Merleau-Ponty (1962), language and sign use in general do not translate or externalize prior thoughts, but “accomplish” them by bringing thoughts to a state of articulation in the act of expression. It is not that there is no meaning-making prior to expression, but this is predominantly realized through affective and perceptomotor forms of intentionality, in the phenomenological sense of openness to the world. Further, authentic expression, or “speaking” language (langage parlant), also presupposes an “already spoken” language (langage parlé), sedimented from prior acts of language (and other forms of sign) use.  Consistent with this analysis, the Motivation and Sedimentation Model (MSM), developed within cognitive semiotics (e.g., Zlatev et al., 2021; Zlatev, 2023) distinguishes three levels of meaning-making: the Embodied, Sedimented and Situated levels, interconnected by processes of motivation and sedimentation. In our presentation, we explain how this model can help explicate the phenomenon of poetic expression.

Brodsky, J. (1986). Less than one, selected essays. Penguin Modern Classics.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Zlatev, J., Jacobsson, G., & Paju, L. (2021). Desiderata for metaphor theory, the Motivation & Sedimentation Model and motion-emotion metaphoremes. In A. S. d. Silva (Ed.), Figurative language: Intersubjectivity and usage (pp. 41-74). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Zlatev, J. (2023). “The Intertwining of Bodily Experience and Language: The Continued Relevance of

Merleau-Ponty”, Histoire Épistémologie Langage, 45-1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/hel.3373.