Language of the Sublime (?)

After reading some theoretical texts about the concept of the sublime and the different meanings and interpretations surrounding it, I started to think about the effect that scale would have on the work I produce. I created a piece in which I tried to replicate the sudden awareness of our lack of knowledge.

The more I think about this piece in relation to language, the more I see it reflecting my own relationship with knowing and not knowing language. Since I am bilingual, I understand the feeling of being able to express yourself more adequately in one language over another for certain situations (when you feel a word or phrase has more weight/significance when said in a specific language). However, I also realize that in not knowing other languages, I miss out on the type of self-expression or thinking that those languages have to offer. The piece I created reminded me of that because it reflects the ambiguity with which we are forced to think about certain things, since we sometimes cannot express what we perceive with the language that we communicate in.

For instance, some languages have words that illustrate concepts that English does not have specific words for, such as the German word treppenwitz, which describes the failure to come up with a good comeback during an altercation only to think of one long after the argument takes place. It is this type of simplification that differentiates the thinking around a similar event for speakers of different languages.

As such, I think this version of the sublime is one that focuses on absence, not of a total absence of language, but rather of a lack of the awareness, appreciation, or knowledge brought on by the mastery of multiple languages.