Language of Form, Form of Language, and the Poetic Christ

Abstract

AbstractThis essay begins with a phenomenological outline of the interchangeability of the terms ‘form’ and ‘matter’, and the transitivity of their relationship in metaphysics and aesthetics, when placed in the context of linguistic deconstruction. It then argues for an operative, rather than resultative, approach to ‘form’, pointing out that in a created cosmos created minds only ever approach substantial (metaphysical) forms by making use of language, i.e. by inventing linguistic forms. From there, the argument turns to the special language of the Scriptures, when read both in their historical relativity and as vehicles of the transcendent divine Word, and explores the analogy between the paradoxes of the matter‐form pair and several features of the Scriptures, such as the Möbius strip‐like enunciative structure, in which human and divine voices are reciprocally interwoven. Christ, the principle of the unity of the divine and human voices of the Scriptures, appears as the source of all the analogical instances of the transitivity and reversibility of form‐matter duality. Even more profoundly than his restoration of the signum, Christ re‐establishes ‘form’ in its interaction with ‘matter’.