my life-long experience with this phrase “only a symbol” brings me to this very strong warning never to combine these two words! There is no language which is truer to some levels or dimensions of reality than the language of symbols. All non-symbolic language is untrue, with respect to some levels and dimensions of reality. It is true with respect to other levels of reality, but it is untrue to some levels of reality. Therefore the question is not whether the one language, the directly significatory language, is truer, but the question is to which level of reality do you apply it?

To transform symbolic into discursive language means to speak of something else than of that to which the symbol points. Therefore it is a deteriorization, if one speaks of “only symbols".To transform symbolic language into discursive language means to speak of something other than that to which the symbol points. Therefore, it is a deterioration to speak of “only symbols".

But now another characteristic of symbols. We already have some of them: it points beyond itself, but at the same time participates in the power of that which it symbolizes; it grows and dies; it is not invented and removed. The next is: it opens up something—or if you want the word, it has “revelatory” character. I don't use this word here in the typical religious sense—this also will happen later on, but not here. I therefore prefer, sometimes, the word “opening up”. Artistic symbols open up a level of reality which otherwise is closed. A painting whose subject matter is a landscape does not repeat a landscape, but it opens up a dimension of a landscape which otherwise is closed, is shut off from our mind, and never could be experienced by us. This is the main criticism of the so-called naturalistic art. It is impossible and futile if artists try to repeat nature; that is not their function. Their function is to create symbols which open up levels of reality which otherwise cannot open to us, and which cannot be discovered in any other way.

If you have a poem, for instance (to remain nearer to language, in the special sense of the word), and it expresses something, then it is impossible to express the same thing in a commentary to the poem. If you comment on the poem, then the poet would say, “That is alright, but read the poem, read it aloud, hear the sound, hear the rhythm, hear the words I have chosen. When you give your philosophical comment to it, you do something else. There may be something in common, but it is not the same.” The level, the dimension, of reality which is opened up by a