အဓိပ္ပါယ်

I was thinking about irony because I've been reading Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom, and he writes a lot about irony. He writes about the centrality of irony in writers that most of us probably wouldn't associate with irony - like Homer, Plato and Chaucer.  

when a work of fiction talks about things that are true (in the world of the story), that is a profound example of irony. it's a truth, and not only that, it's a truth that in varying degrees can correspond to the real world - but it is contained within a fiction...so, by definition, it's not true. 

interestingly ||| though maybe this is a statement of the obvious ||| irony is a trope (like metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, etc) \\\ tropes are basically ways of creating meaning, but not only that, they are the only way we have of creating meaning. literature is made up (he he) of tropes and figures. but what actually is a trope? - what does the word mean? The word 'trope' is derived from the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change". The way that I always explain tropes to students is to say that a trope is any statement that is not literally true. So we create meaning by distorting the truth. 

I think that's why people disagree so strongly about all kinds of issues ⇾ very compelling narratives and explanations can be created, but all narratives are a kind of distortion. Even subject matter that is as hard and objective as mathematics and science represents a kind of fiction. A good example is the humble line. You can draw lines and use them to prove geometrical principles, but any line you draw is not truly a line, because a line is one-dimensional, and any line you can draw will have a thickness, so it's two dimensional - it's a lie you tell in order to explicate the truth. 

objective truth exists, but no mere mortal human being can express it, and that's a good thing because it's that reality that enables us to be creative and, ironically, to express the truth.