Empathy begins the process of connecting us with others, as we share their emotions. Our own life experience enables us to understand something of the life experience of others. That emotional understanding is the distinction we call empathy: “. . . the capacity to share the feelings of others . . .” “Empathy is a complex capability enabling individuals to…
Read More
Value for Thursday of Week 52 in the season of Harvest and Celebration
Ineffability
Everything we call ineffable escapes our present ability to put it into words. We can look deeper, and consider more carefully.
- Suffering, cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy. [Mohandas Gandhi, October 13, 1921]
- . . . when a human being reaches the age of reason, he struggles against this illegal and unseemly seizure of his person, not wanting to give in to enchantment, that is, to go where the songs are leading. [Vladimir Jankélévitch]
Einstein was speech delayed as a child. Commenting on this later, he concluded that it had made him a better scientist because it allowed him to experience the world on its own terms without having to fit it into the arbitrary categories imposed by language. By then, he was using language to describe the world.
In the commentary for the section on human worth, I propose that we know our innermost truths independent of the words used to express them. Linguists might point out that language so shapes the brain as to be inseparable from thought, including those processes of the brain that we call emotion. Perhaps there only seems to be a core of experience that defies description in words. Perhaps a sound naturalistic understanding of the ineffable reveals a language of the soul. If we continue to learn about it, and work on it, we may be able to describe it. If we do, some mysteries may no longer be mysteries; no doubt, other mysteries will emerge into consciousness.
Real
True Narratives
Virtually every great work of art illustrates the ineffable. In fact, most art is an attempt to express some aspect of human experience without words. Music, in a sense, is the purest art because unlike the visual arts or the dramatic arts it is conveyed only through sound, thus divorcing itself not only from language but also from the material world. So I am treating even the scholarly works on ineffability not as technical works but as part of our story.
- Bruce F. Kawin, The Mind of the Novel: Reflexive Fiction and the Ineffable (Dalkey Archive Press, 2006).
- Louis S. Berger, Language and the Ineffable: A Developmental Perspective and Its Applications (Lexington Books, 2011).
- Vladimir Jankélévitch, music and the ineffable (Princeton University Press, 2003).
There are also personal narratives touching on the idea of ineffability. Virtually any artist could be cited to illustrate the idea but poet and author Paul Mariani seems to be acutely aware that he is doing it. His biographies are notable for their exploration into the inner lives of his subjects: the attempt to understand and appreciate them independent of their works. For that reason I include also his fiction on this page but today, you can read just about any great writer of fiction or listen to just about any work of music and get a sense of the ineffable: anything that stirs a feeling that you need not reduce to words.
- Paul Mariani, God and the Imagination: On Poets, Poetry, and the Ineffable (University of Georgia Press, 2002), a memoir about how life at a Marianist preparatory school nurtured shaped an man's passion for letters and education.
- Paul Mariani, Gerald Manley Hopkins: A Life (Viking Adult, 2008).
- Paul Mariani, The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999).
- Paul Mariani, Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell (W.W. Norton & Company, 1994).
- Paul Mariani, Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman (William Morrow, 1990).
- Paul Mariani, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (McGraw-Hill, 1981).
Technical and Analytical Readings
Ineffability in music:
- Laurence Wuidar, On Mystery, Ineffability, Silence and Musical Symbolism (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).
- Michael Gallope, Deep Refrains: Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
- Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable (Princeton University Press, 2003).
Other scholarly books on ineffability:
- Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Ineffability: The Failure of Words in Philosophy and Religion (State University of New York Press, 1993).
- Peter S. Hawkins & Anne Howland Schotter, eds., Ineffability: Naming the Unnamable from Dante to Beckett (AMS Press, 1984).
- Silvia Jonas, Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion, and Philosophy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
- Laura E. Weed, ed., Mysticism, Ineffability and Silence in Philosophy of Religion (Springer, 2023).
- André Kukla, Ineffability and Philosophy (Routledge, 2005).
- Kevin Killeen, The Unknowable in Early Modern Thought: Natural Philosophy and the Poetics of the Ineffable (Stanford University Press, 2023).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Martin Seay, The Mirror Thief: A Novel (Melville House, 2016): “ . . . essentially a book about hermeneutics and disappointment. It’s a book about reading, specifically depth reading, to a point of inexplicable transcendence. What does one find in the depths? Nothing? Everything? A bit of both?”
- Garth Greenwell, Cleanness: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020): “Narrated by a poet in a foreign country, the novel and its inflections suggest that feeling itself is almost foreign and hard to pin down; that it has to be outlined with many subclauses, digressions and asides. Language becomes a way of holding experience close before it dissolves in your hand.”
Poetry
She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes; / Thus mellowed to that tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less, / Had half impaired the nameless grace / Which waves in every raven tress, / Or softly lightens o’er her face; / Where thoughts serenely sweet express, / How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, / So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, / The smiles that win, the tints that glow, / But tell of days in goodness spent, / A mind at peace with all below, / A heart whose love is innocent!
[George Gordon Byron, “She Walks In Beauty”]
Other poems:
- Edgar Lee Masters, “Hamlet Micure”
Books of poems:
- Paul Mariani, Deaths and Transfigurations: Poems (Paraclete Press, 2005).
- Paul Mariani, The Great Wheel: Poems (W.W. Norton & Company, 1996).
- Paul Mariani, Salvage Operations (W.W. Norton & Company, 1990).
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108 (1887 and 1890) (list of recorded performances), is sometimes called the “Apocalyptic” but the origins of that are unclear. The work is sweeping and majestic. One reviewer identifies revelation as the main theme but its themes are hard to characterize, except to say that they are grand. Benjamin Zander has made a grand effort to explain the work. Perhaps no music can capture the idea of ineffability – the very idea contains an internal contradiction – but this one seems to capture that intent, however poorly that can ever be achieved. Excellent recorded performances are conducted by Furtwängler in 1944, Furtwängler in 1949, Schuricht in 1963, Goodall in 1969, Horenstein in 1970, Tennstedt in 1974, Jochum in 1979, Giulini in 1984, Karajan in 1988, Wand in 1988, Celibidache in 1993, Boulez in 1996, Wand in 1996, Tintner in 1998, and Paavo Järvi in 2023.
Violinist and composer Paul Giger has composed the music for and released an album with a violist, cellist and chamber choir, entitled “Ignis” (2000) (73’). “The trouble comes when you try to classify these pieces, to orient them to a time and place, a style, a genre. While all are based on early music–a hymn by Hildegard, 10th century monophonic melodies, an anonymous 13th century work from the Notre Dame school–Swiss violinist/composer Paul Giger has taken the originals to a realm far beyond their ancient roots.”
Yehudi Menuhin wrote: “In Enescu, music became the voice of humanity per se, a voice uttering what cannot be said.” George Enescu’s works include:
- Piano Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp Major, Op. 24, No. 1 (1924) (approx. 26-28’)
- Piano Sonata No. 3 in D Major, Op. 24, No. 3 (1935) (approx. 20-23’)
- Piano Suite No. 3, “Pièces impromptus”, Op. 18 (1916) (approx. 37’)
- Miscellaneous piano works
Bernard Parmegiani was a French composer of electro-acoustical music, intriguing but hard to pin down. “. . . Parmegiani led the way in transforming the early, crude experiments in sound manipulation into the rich and creative genre now known as acousmatic music.”
- “Da Natura Sonorum” album (1975) (48’)
- “Chants Magnétiques” album (1974) (37’)
- “La Création du Monde” album (1986) (77’)
- “L'Œil écoute / Dedans-Dehors” album (1970/1977) (41’)
- Outremer (approx. 21’)
- Violostries (1964) (approx. 17’)
- La Brûlure De Mille Soleils (1965) (approx. 26’)
- L'Instant mobile (1967) (approx. 11’)
- Capture éphémère (1968) (approx. 11’)
- "Pop eclectic" pour le film de Peter Foldes "Je, tu elles" (1968) (approx. 11’)
- La roue ferris (1971) (approx. 11’)
- L'Enfer (based on La Divine Comédie) (1971) (approx. 133’)
- Pour en finir avec le pouvoir d'Orphée (1972) (approx. 23’)
- Le Présent compose (1991) (approx. 24’)
- Entre-temps (1992) (approx. 22’)
- Espèces d'espace (2004) (approx. 22’)
Similarly, Peter Gilbert composes evocative and enigmatic electronic and acoustic music. In conjunction with this playlist, albums of his music include:
- “Burned Into the Orange: Music of Peter Gilbert” (2021) (73’)
- “The Bold Arch of Undreamt Bridges” (2010) (72’)
Other works:
- Terry Riley, In C (1964) (approx. 42-55’) (list of recorded performances): “Only one page of score. No specified instrumentation, no parts. Fifty three motives, mostly minuscule. No counterpoint. No evident form. Spare instructions, with many aspects left deliberately vague. No tempo mark. And a title that’s laconic in the extreme: In C.” Top performances are by Bang On a Can All-Stars in 1998, Ars Nova Copenhagen in 2007, and Maya Beiser, et. al., in 2024.
- Leoš Janáček, Moravian Folk Songs, JW VIII/23 (2015) (approx. 83’) are songs about life.
- Charles-Marie Widor, Symphony No. 9 in C Minor, Op. 70, “Gothique” (1899) (approx. 26-35’) (list of recorded performances)
- Widor, Symphony No. 10 in D Major, Op. 73, “Romane” (1899) (approx. 33-36’) (list of recorded performances)
- John Adams, Phrygian Gates (1978) (approx. 25’) (list of recorded performances)
- John Luther Adams, Canticles of the Sky (2015) (approx. 17-18’)
- Timothy Geller, Where Silence Reigns (1987) (approx. 25’)
- Raga Charukeshi (“with beautiful hair”) is a melodious Carnatic ragam for late morning that “evokes inexplicable emotions in our hearts . . .”. It has been adapted as a Hindustani raag (Charu Keshi). Performances are by Nikhil Banerjee, Shivkumar Sharma, Sultan Khan, and Nikhil Banerjee.
- Scott Wollschleger, American Dream, for piano, bass and percussion (2018) (approx. 34-35’)
- Jeff Herriott, The Stone Tapestry (2013) (approx. 60’): “Herriott’s expansive formal process in The Stone Tapestry allows the work to breathe and inhabit the world of natural time. . . . Stones, like rivers, mountains, and valleys, move and change at a glacial pace, and Herriot’s deft use of repetition with subtle variation, avoidance of didactic rhythmic regularity, and penchant for static harmonic textures bring us into a sphere entirely apart from glowing screens, twenty four hour news cycles, and crowded metropolitan areas.”
- C. René Hirschfeld, Music for Piano Solo, Op. 139 (2023) (approx. 53’): “‘To me, this seems to be music for giants, or for heavenly bodies, rather than humans,’ (Joshua) Rupley proclaims in his liner notes. ‘The dimensions, the structures, and the sounds sometimes go beyond the human capacity to span associations and movements.’”
What makes Sona Jobarteh, a young kora player and singer, so appealing?
- playlist
- “Fasiya” album (2011) (53’)
- “Badinyaa Kumoo” album (2022) (71’)
- Live at Africa Festival Würzburg 2012
Klaus Wiese was an electronic-minimalist, and a “master of deep, touching drones and singing bowls (who) published an absolutely unique discography in this genre”. His work takes us into the ether. He produced a significant discography, including the following:
- “Baraka” (1981) (57’): Wiese “focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath.”
- “Maraccaba” (Side B) (1982) (58’): “His musical style is much more appropriately compared to the organic soundscapes of drone and dark ambient music.”
- “Sabiha Sabiya” (1982) (60’): “The music is gentle but in a deeply mysterious way, there's nothing of the fluffy or angelic you'd expect from the harp. It's hard not to imagine being out in the desert with only the sounds of nature creating this sort of resonance with so much of the movement coming from the timbral variation of the instruments.”
- “Geisha” (1985) (64’): “Landing to the ground, her tender motions merge with breeze, with airy murmuring of may-lilies. Possibly, she is an incarnation of first kiss, its impersonation in reality. Red seal on her lips is made by Sun – there's something, about what she can't talk – it's the seal of deep silence, which sleeps in caves, in meek jingle sounds.”
- “Secret Doctrine” (1985) (60’)
- “Tushita” (1986) (60’)
- “Qumra II” (1986) (61’)
- “Qumra I: Palace of Mirrors” (1987) (63’)
- “Samarkand” (1987) (15’): “Listeners are free to choose their own pathways and spirituality. Wiese is only providing the vehicle -- he's not a tour guide. Focused listening is the only option.”
- “Kalengra” (1987) (61’)
- “Thanatos” (1993) (59’)
- “Monsoon” (1996) (74’)
- “Dunya” (1999) (23’)
- “Soma” (2000) (33’)
- “Ruh” (2004) (124’);
- “Touareg” (2004) (62’)
- “White Clouds” (2004) (74’)
- “Cocoon” (2004) (47’)
- “Logos” (2004) (54’)
- “Ommayads” (2004) (57’)
- “Gandharfa” (2005) (49’)
- “Plejades”, with Jim Cole (61’)
Albums:
- John Luther Adams, “Arctic Dreams” (2021) (44’) “was the first music I composed in my 'aeolian' sound world, which grew out of my experiences listening to wind harps on the tundra.” [Adams]
- Dylan Howe, “Subterranean: New Designs on Bowie’s Berlin” (2014) (66’) “is a carefully crafted blend of precise and imaginative arrangements with the improvisational freedoms of jazz. Rich in colour and texture it remains true to the spirit of Bowie and Eno’s original recordings yet comes across as a very personal statement.”
- Jordan Dykstra, “Found Clouds” (2018) (78’)
- Russell Gunn & The Royal Krunk Jazz Orchestra, “Le Mystére de Sirius” (The Sirius Mystery) (2016) (66’): “. . . a complex, grandiose and perplexing album . . .”
- “Soccorsi – Works by Morton Eide Pedersen” (2021) (75’)
- Dai Fujikura & Jan Bang, “The Bow Maker” (2022) (36’): “The mood and atmosphere of each piece is distinct, sometimes wide in scope and spacious, sometimes enclosed and focussed, sometimes warm and hazy, sometimes cool and crystalline. . . . It is like shifting illumination and silhouettes behind shoji.”
- Joby Burgess, “Eric Whitacre Marimba Quartets” (2020) (21’): “I was delighted when Eric got in touch to ask if I might arrange some of his choral music for marimba. . . His music contains many of the things I love in choral music; lush tonal harmonies, strong audience engagement and a firm spiritual connection.” [Burgess]
- Voces8, “After Silence” (2020) (128’): the title is drawn from Aldous Huxley’s essay, “The Rest is Silence”. In the essay, Huxley says: “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
- East Axis, “No Subject” (2023) (70’): “. . . the twelve adventurous episodes . . . take on all shapes and logics with a brazen adherence to themes which are fertile with anticipation and continuity.”
- Abel Selaocoe, “Hymns of Bantu” (2025) (58’): “Hymns of Bantu is grounded in the modal scales and overtone harmonic systems of South African music before the introduction of Western four-part harmony, and the album’s 12 tracks feature a broad mix of instrumental line-ups, blending solo cello, African percussion, string orchestra and electric bass in various formations.”
- The Necks, “Disquiet” (2025) (189’): “The music itself seems to stretch time, and this presentation challenges ideas of sequencing.”
- Joshua Redman, “Words Fall Short” (2025) (46’): “This album came out of a working environment that inspired me to dig into compositions that hadn’t found a home yet.”
Music: songs and other short pieces
What does it all mean; what is the meaning and purpose of life? My life has meaning and purpose to me; probably your life is the same for you. Gustav Mahler cut to the core of this in the posthorn solo from the third movement (“What nature tells me”) of his third symphony. The posthorn appears as a distant voice from within the woods; a voice in the wilderness. This passage is a metaphor for each of us, as we make our way through life. It is among the most spiritually compelling passages in music. Here are links to performances by Olmos and an unknown artist, and conducted by Järvi, Järvi, Nott (at 52:49) and Bernstein (at 13:28).
Other tracks:
