On Sharp and Smooth Texts

 I have a love for texts that are sharp.  Sometimes, that may be a text that is generally smooth, easy-to-read, flowing, but that has its occasional pricks and peaks; even better is a text that is solely sharp, that is jagged, that is condensed.  (Recall the dictionary entry Basil Bunting discovered: “dichten = condensare,” “to poetize = to condense.”)1  

Smoothness has its uses and its advantages.  First of all, of course, is that a smooth text is generally clearer and easier to read.  Its goal is to be a welcoming space for any reader; it intends to guide the reader through its argument, flowing step by flowing step.  By not caring about being short, it can take its time to come at an issue from many (“every” is, perhaps, impossible) sides, to give the many exceptions and distinctions.  

Yet the curse of smoothness is precisely this wide-openness, this ability to give so many exceptions and distinctions that the original idea loses its point entirely.  It is akin to the old quip that one should not be so open-minded that one’s brains fall out.2  There is also the threat of blandness: a too-smooth idea can simply slip right through the mind, with no barbs to catch with.

The sharp and condensed text, on the other hand, must necessarily be more partial, without the wide-ranging exceptions and distinctions.  What it lacks in comprehensiveness, though, it make sup for in barbedness, in piercedness, in the ability to break through the blandness of smooth speech and stab itself into the mind.  This is the wonder of the proverb or aphorism, and it is why philosophers like Nicolás Gómez-Dávila prefer it to more extended discourse.  (Friedrich Nietzsche contends to be aphoristic in many of his works, though his “aphorisms” are often multiple paragraphs long.  Though these texts can still be plenty sharp, I would distinguish them from the aphorism proper, which should be a single, sharp sentence.)

Though I love a good aphorism, the style of sharp text I prefer to write is slightly longer text, a jagged text, sharp as a whole, and with many spikes throughout.  This “sharpness” does not have to be cruel, cutting, brutal; I think a strongly-defined image can be sharp (and to stuff many sharp images next to each other could count as “baroque”).  

So my introduction to this blog, “Ungelded Texts,” is an example of this type of sharp, condensed text.  Alongside the sharpness, though, it includes wordplay and weirdness.  The latter I use to mean rare or unusual words, or words used in an uncommon way, or unusual juxtapositions of words or images, or new compounds, etc.  Weirdness is another form of sharpness, of making readers pay attention, because sharpness is what breaks the bland smoothness of the ordinary, and the weird is certainly unordinary.

Though weirdness brings with it the effects of sharpness, it also suffers from its esotericism, particularly when using unusual words and new compounds.  I still think the effects of weirdness are irreplaceable, and that any rewriting of the text in a smoother form loses much of its power, yet I recognize that smoothness opens up the thoughts to more readers, at the expense of weakening them.

Thus my introduction to this blog revolves around a twofold meaning of the word geld: the archaic English meaning of “money,” and the current meaning of ‘castration.”  The scribble mentions the various reasons why a text many never be gelded (that is, never be published for pay), generally wording it as being unworthy of pay (“not geldworthy”).  All texts published on this blog are free (ungelded), and they are published because, for whatever reason, I think them either unworthy of payemnt or unlikely to ever be bought by a publisher.  As a writer, of course I want to be paid for my work, but I also have a zeal for the free flow of information and art.  In the scribble, I bring up an issue with payment: besides creating a barrier, a paywall, payment also leads to changes, often to blunting or gelding, of the text.  The one who pays for a text’s publication thereby gains the right and ability to alter it.  Thus geld gelds.  The texts here, being ungelded, will remain ungelded.  Whether there will be anything here that seems worthy of being gelded in the second sense (blunted down) remains to be seen.  

This is, in summary, the main thought of “Ungelded Texts,” put into smoother speech.  It is easier to understand?  Certainly.  Is it now less powerful?  The reader may disagree, but I think so.

My scribbles here will be of both sorts—sharp and smooth—for I see the use of both.  I will always have a leaning toward the sharp, though, and the weird, and so there will be esoteric, sharp pieces here.  For so do I, the texts’ ungelder, will it.


1 Cf. Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (London: Faber & Faber, 1991), 36.↩
2 Per Quote Investigator, this quip was probably popularized by Walter Kotschnig in 1939-1940, though his papers give an illegible ascription of the phrase to another. The article finds some similar ideas in a speech by Sir Edward Clarke (“The mind was indeed so open that it had nothing in it at all”) and in a famous remark by G.K. Chesterton (“I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid”). See Quote Investigator, “Do Not Be So Open-Minded That Your Brains Fall Out,” 4/13/2014, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/13/open-mind/ (accessed March 4, 2024). The bottom of the article notes some updates after the publication date, with the last update being 5/21/2015.↩


Text ©2024 Β. P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.

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