"Speak, so that I may see you!"

We always make literature: when we order a coffee, we recount our ailments to a doctor, we write an email, we insult (by the way: the low quality of insults nowadays is striking), we make the shopping list, we offer condolences, we declare our eternal or circumstantial love, we scold our child or argue with our partner.Those who wrote electoral messages on the walls in Pompeii ("Vote X") were making literature; those who hastily and eagerly wrote crude poems ("We have peed in bed; truly / we are a disaster. / Do you want the reasons, innkeeper? There was no / chamber pot!"); the romantics ("How I would like to hold your dear arms around my neck and kiss your lips") and the pragmatic merchants of their own bodies ("Hope, yes to everything, nine aces"). Those who confessed their existential concerns ("Once dead, we are nothing") and the composers of meta-graffiti ("It surprises me, oh wall, that you have not yet collapsed under the weight of the foolishness of so many writers").We find literature on the walls of Bilbao ("Violent gays seek revenge. Gay Intifada") or Cordoba ("Hating is for weaklings") or on the Roman wall of Lugo ("Romani ite domum", that is to say, "Romans go home").These graffiti or, if you prefer, these murals are a literary exercise (although not very civic), because they aim to shape an idea to give it the form of an aphorism.It seems that the first graphic representation of Jesus Christ was a graffiti from 200 AD found in the Pedagogium of the Palatine Hill in Rome. With the intention of ridiculing Christianity, it shows Jesus with a huge donkey's head and nailed to the cross. One inscription says: “Alexamenos worships God”. Not far away, in the same building, another inscription says: "Alexamenos is faithful". Perhaps this person is literarily claiming their faith in front of those who have mocked them?When we meet a friend and they ask us how we are doing, we immediately set about artistically modeling our memory to give it the shape of a narrative. In speaking – forgive the expression – we literary. Don't we perhaps spend the day explaining (supposedly) interesting things about ourselves? And isn't a biography the result of our insistence on imposing narratives on the chaos of our existence?Then, and here is where I wanted to get, the understanding we have of ourselves cannot be more accurate than the rigor of the words we use to understand ourselves. Beyond words, there is only darkness and, perhaps, sentimental jam. In the case – highly improbable – that there were a genuine self, a true self, without words it would be mute.

Apuleius explains that Socrates was once talking with a group of young men. All were participating enthusiastically in the dialogue. All but one, who, withdrawn into himself, on the periphery of the group, did not open his mouth. Socrates, who was observing him carefully, finally said to him: “Speak, so that I may see you!”We must speak, indeed, to be visible, both to ourselves and to others, and for this reason, as Plato says, philology (love of language) springs from the same source as philanthropy (love of people). We must speak to resist the temptation of misology (contempt or distrust of language), which is an inseparable companion of misanthropy (contempt or distrust of others). We must speak to go out into that light, which, according to St. John, is the face of the "logos, and because the misanthrope, as this evangelist also says, "dwells in darkness".I am fed up with teachers who shamelessly proclaim that knowledge is not the only important thing at school. Yes. Knowledge is the only important thing at school, because the school's mission is to lead the child from the diffuse experience of himself to the clarity and distinction of the concept. The meaning of a word for a child is the extension of its use. Our duty is to broaden this extension until we reach the domains of the concept.We know what we know how to name with clarity and distinction. Our vocabulary is the expression of our knowledge. Distrust those who are reticent with knowledge, because, when you're not paying attention, they start talking about family constellations and the true self. Distrust illiterate empathy. We need words to resist the dominion of the malaise industry, which is increasingly flourishing. It is words that allow us to be citizens (animals with logos) and not just therapeutic animals.

Since we are literary, let's be literary well.