Home 9 Passage 9 Evoking Nearness

The evocative gives key-words their full value (through metaphor and poetic devices such as repetition and alliteration)—so that layers of meaning get strongly embedded in the text. When concrete things are named in a text in which words are evocative, then a peculiar effect may occur: its textual meaning begins to address us. We say: “this poem, this text, speaks to me!” The “speaking” of language gives us the feeling that we are brought “in touch” with something and thus “see” something in a manner that is revealing of its experiential sense. The universalizing or generalizing feature of the text is not empirical or factual but rather it has a stirring quality that involves a sentient or emotional faculty—it establishes a “feeling understanding.” What happens is that the feeling understanding communicated through the presencing of language has an augmenting, enlarging effect. It produces a sense of nearness and intimacy with the phenomenon.