 
                         20061013.01

     I have been reflecting on your instruction, to the
effect that a novel  should strive to "show" rather than to
"tell." I find that this provocative advice does not well
withstand scrutiny.  My first rection was to invoke the
analogy with Kant's "Anschauung ohne Begriffe ist blind.
Begriffe ohne Anschauung sind leer." (Intuition without
concepts is blind; concepts without intuition are empty.)
The description which presents (shows) an image, must also
"tell", i.e. provide, implicitly or otherwise, a meaning.  I
am reminded also that a story is a tale which is told; in
German, history (Geschichte), that which has happened
(geschehen) is likewise "told" (erzaehlt) or accounted for.
The languages will not permit the distinction between events,
happenings, stories and histories, (Geschehnisse und
Geschichten) and the accounting, counting, or telling of
them. At the extreme there is, of course, the Pythagorean
world of the physicists where reality consists of
constellations of numbers.

     But such far-fetched explanations become unnecessary as
soon as I accept the fact that I am not writing for
publication or for public approval.  That my writing is
simply an airing of what happens to be going through my mind
from day to day. I consider it authentic psychotherapy.  All
the more remarkable that it should be of interest to anyone
other than myself.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
