Because ‘reality’ is quite a strong firm word we tend to think, or to hope, that the state to which it refers is equally firm, settled and unequivocal. It doesn’t seem to be . . . Language, under these conditions, is a highly ambiguous business.

Do the structures of language and the structures of reality (by which I mean what actually happens) move along parallel lines? Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is it that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality – to distort what is, to distort what happens – because we fear it? We are encouraged to be cowards. We can’t face the dead. But we must face the dead because they die in our name.