Plato's moving Logos

Abstract

Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. T.S. Eliot, Four quartets (Burnt Norton V) The poet gives voice to the action of words as they reach out to attain expression. He observes the dangers inherent in this effort: words can break, can become simply unintelligible. Such broken words can no longer function within the fixed constraints of grammar and thus ‘will not stay in place, | Will not stay still’. A.J. Greimas in Structural semantics defined an ‘actantial’ model of language: If we recall that functions in traditional syntax are but roles played by words – the subject being ‘the one who performs the action’, the object ‘the one who suffers it’ – then according to such a conception, the proposition as a whole becomes a spectacle to which homo loquens treats himself.