Any writer of a book is fully authorized in attaching any meaning he likes to any word or phrase he intends to use.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Talking to me through the corridors of time–just as he always has done.
March 4, 2010
Semionaut's Notebook
hoc ludite quasi carmen
Semionaut's Trail
Time Travel
Any word, when I use it, means exactly what I say it means, and nothing but!
Yeah, well…the whole point of using words is to communicate ideas. If people have to figure out what each word means, it’s much harder for them to read it. There’s a point at which it becomes impossible to convey any information at all.
“We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” – Inigo Montoya
Wittgenstein says that the meaning of a word is how it is used; in the context of any artwork, the author is the arbiter of the game they are creating and this creates the freedom Dodgson alludes to here.
While it’s true that we use words to communicate with one another, nothing requires this communication to be clear. There are times – and especially in the case of art and puzzles – where clarity becomes second fiddle to other goals, and obfuscation can be part of the game. One only has to consider Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake to see this in practice.
Best wishes!