MARJORIE GRENE
273
expression intended, they are fragments only-the place of adumbra–
tions, echoes of what one meant to say .
This is odd, come to think of it . Wittgenstein wrote in frag–
ments,
Zettel
is his style, while Derrida fashions essays of polished ,
Mallarmean elegance . But Wittgenstein's fragments
direct
us to
language in its whole and wholesome operations in the world, while
Derrida's beautifully turned phrases lure us into an unending maze
of subtleties from which there seems no rescue into ordinary talk.
Let's leave that oddity and look at yet another contrast in the
treatment of language : the contrast between literal and metaphorical
use . Wittgenstein uses metaphors liberally in his own writing: engines
idle , language goes on holiday, the ice of logic is slippery; flies buzz
in fly-bottles , cities have suburbs, and so on . Indeed , both the ' 'pic–
ture" and "game" theories themselves are metaphors , as is the
" family " concept. But so far as I can recall he doesn't deal with the
question of metaphor as such. The language he is concerned to free
from philosophic cramp is chiefly everyday talk about toothaches,
pieces of cheese , and such . Derrida , on the other hand , not only cares
little for the speech of the man in the street, and prefers to delve
straight into philosophic or literary theories of language , but when he
does talk about "ordinary" words or "ordinary" usage , his aim is to
show, as I mentioned about his discussion of Austin, that even here
things are not as simple as they appear. And in particular: that even
in what looks like literal language, metaphor lingers . Univocal mean–
ing, like the moment of pure, living speech , is a conceptual ideal
rather than the reality we live with-or in .Not that this is just another
theory of ' 'open texture" or of vagueness in language.
It
is a question
of the interplay of meanings which may in themselves be more or less
literal , as well as more or less " metaphorical ," the former , for in–
stance , in Derrida' s own use of the several meanings of "differer,"
the latter, for example , in the "metaphorical" carry-over of one
meaning into another in such traditional philosophical concepts as
"theory" or in the phrase "natural light ." In the rhetorical tradition
it was held, following Aristotle, that metaphor should be restricted to
the sphere of the mimetic; outside the arts, where one wants to state
propositional truth, metaphorical use is taboo . But, Derrida insists,
there is never
the
last , and therefore
the
literal , word for anything,
not even as Heidegger seems to hope , for " Being. " Language is
