*

„From here, from where we stand, this is the worst of all possible worlds and nobody has understood it down to this day; but from where he stood nothing was decided. Not yet. How long was there still to go?

And suddenly I realized: it’s all a question of language, and not merely of this particular language of ours, which was created with all the other languages at the Tower of Babel in order to bring confusion into the world. For under them all there’s another language smouldering away, a language that extends into gestures and glances, into the evolving of thoughts and the ebb and flow of emotions, and it’s here that all our griefs begin. It was all a question whether I could save the child from our language until he had founded a new one and could so begin a new era.”

The moment of birth: In the presence of the tiny naked creature, a father suddenly realizes in which strange world he has made this child his son. Helpless but not without hope, he is looking at the child wondering whether he will be able to develop a new language that changes everything. Yet the designation of things cannot be avoided, and slowly he recognizes in him his own likeness, the image of those who are doomed to be human beings.