4
" In the beginning there was love, not the word. The child has yet to be conceived, but the mother already loves him. And then, body inside body, love doesn't need words. After the birth, mother and child still love each other nonverbally. Only with words, when verbal barriers arise between people who love each other, does alienation begin.
Thus, language creates barriers. Once they lost their sacred nature, words turned into a means of misunderstanding. Words don't mean anything anymore. So you have to do something with these words to restore their original, Divine meaning.
Words are guards that keep out emotion and meaning, sentries at the boundary between people. Either you need to learn to grope your way toward understanding each other, or else be able to escape over the verbal barbed wire.
There is no road to understanding except through words.
Word corpses watch over us. The only way to get past them is to revive them. We have to breath new life into them, so that love can once again be called love. "
― Mikhail Shishkin , Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories