“I carry the water of the seas.”
Federico García Lorca
When looking at the map of the World, it seems that the sea surrounds the land – and perhaps it is true. The continents are to a great extent or entirely separated by the sea – or at least by water, but the sea forms an entity, it is possible to sail free from the Black Sea to the White Sea and from the Yellow Sea to the Red Sea. So the land is restricted, the sea unrestricted.
A human being needs both physical and spiritual lands. He generally has the physical one, the spiritual one he has to create for himself. But you cannot build your spiritual land without the language that with its depths and its unfathomable qualities resembles more the limitless water than any solid, fathomable surface form in the frame of the horizon... If we use the metaphor of the language as an expanse of water, then we should compare poetry to the life of that water – the role of a poet would then be to feel like a fish in water. Or even like a jellyfish – a creature turning the water world into a wonder and a dream but who without water would have no form, would be dead.
But why all these metaphors? The answer is simple – the movement in the streams of the sea of the language could perhaps help to understand the world beyond metaphors. Because the sea of the language is merely the reflection of the real seas.
Jan Kaus
