For some reason I didn't get Cheerskep'e email re the above, but I saw it on the archives.
He writes in part: 'Writers struggle to choose the best words -- how could that be if their thoughts are in words?' I think the answer is they struggle precisely because the thought only emerges fully once they sense the best words have been found. Until then, it is a kind of embryo of a thought. 'Crime and Punishment' is in a sense just one thought - which needed all those words to fully reveal itself. Dostoyevsky was not writing down a pre-thought 'language-less' idea - like an amanuensis putting someone else's ideas on paper. He was exploring - discovering - his thought, as he wrote. Like all artists. I think we all do much the same in everyday life in a less developed way. Wordless thoughts would be like 'a painter' who had never painted anything. DA
