Play with Words

o.paque adj not transparent; not see-through

o.blique adj indirectly expressed; not straightforward

There exists already a rather ostentatious list of literary terms to which I have no desire to add.  Rather, I want to illustrate how fiction conveys meaning to a reader.  I want to draw attention to the relationship between the two words defined above, and to how they relate to our lives.

By opaque meaning, I refer to that in life which eludes our understanding yet still elicits our attention.  We can know certain things bear significance without fully comprehending their meaning.  Death is one example (a favorite of Poe’s).  What happens in death matters to us in life—it does not seem to matter to animals—even though we know its darkness is almost complete.  The presence of God, the forces guiding human affairs, the chances of weather: these things have meaning beyond the compass of our human intellect.

Knowledge is more limited than imagination.

By oblique meaning, I refer to the figurative, illustrative manner by which literature conveys its own meaning.  One of the most truly legitimate questions we can ask of literature is why its made-up stories should matter to us.  Part of understanding literature involves knowing why fiction is necessary to convey certain ideas.  True, stories move us emotionally, helping to soften our intellects to the seeds they sow—this is, of course, one reason to use fiction.  But why do we find stories so intriguing?  Why are we open to them in the first place? 

Because we live in a meaningful world.  Figurative circumstances found in literature, when carefully crafted by an author and carefully considered by a reader, reflect the more elusive meaning we are aware of in life.  Fiction distills the massive-mundane meaning in everyday life, if only by showing us accessible meaning.  Its initial indirection directs our attention toward the greater significance of being human.   

Oblique meaning in literature indicates and illustrates opaque meaning in life.

Read Shakespeare’s King Lear.  Look for the word indirection; it appears significantly in the play.  But most of all, turn your attention fully on the hero of the drama: Edgar. 

…Incidentally, keep in mind the fact that Shakespeare, as a person, is an opaque meaning, while the significance of the play he wrote is oblique.  We cannot know him, but only his play…

Always fond of a play-within-the-play (so his play is a play-within-real-life), Shakespeare portrays the redemption of Gloucester—that is, the return of meaning to his life—as accomplished through fiction.  Edgar convinces his blind, despairing father that his life has been miraculously spared after a fall from a cliff.  In truth, he has not fallen from a cliff, but Gloucester swears henceforth to endure all suffering.  The reader, sensitive to this oblique meaning, learns to not despair on account of suffering.  Yet if this notion can be applied to real life, it must assume the miracle. 

Later in the play, as the final tragedy unfurls, Edgar utters this cryptic line:

“Ripeness is all.”

That is, wait!, and allow every circumstance to come to its fruition.  Know that you do not know what the outcome will be.  Why does Shakespeare advocate this?  He cannot know what fruit our lives will bear?  No, but he is aware they will bear fruit.  He nods toward opaque meaning.  As an author of a terribly tragic play, he seems still confident in the miraculous.  He has made his readers aware of something he himself cannot comprehend.