In the first half of the twentieth century, literature, like philosophy, experienced a breakdown in its trust of language. This signaled, among other things, a breakdown in the relationship between the word and the world—in the power of language to speak to the essences of things, to name and reveal. In “The Aesthetics of Silence” (1967), Susan Sontag points out that, in this respect, modern art had “inherited the problem of language from religious discourse.” Thenceforth, it was artists who took up what had once been the bailiwick of mystics—the pursuit of an uncorrupted utterance. As examples, one could cite Cage, Beckett, and Wittgenstein (who said that philosophy should be practiced as an art). It was a task that would push language to the brink, and tempt many to abandon it altogether.
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