Expressing what we imagine. Unamuno, Life 6.21

Unamuno continues preparing readers for the second part of his book, in which he describes a counter-rational philosophy of life to match the rational philosophy of death. In this passage he recognizes something valuable about language: if it makes sense that we can follow, it will be rational (though it seem to say something absurd or irrational: our rejection of what is said will arise then from rational understanding of a real semantic gesture, a sign with meaning we can take). One of the tasks of language is to render things transmissible, abstractable from particular conditions so that others can find and use them. In this way, all successful language is rational: it conveys a coherent message across space and time. But what is that message? How many ways can it be read? Will all make the same sense? Many questions here, many opportunities to catch rational sight of irrational affects we adopt.

Quiere esto decir que cuanto vamos a ver, los esfuerzos de lo irracional por expresarse, carece de toda racionalidad, de todo valor objetivo? No; lo absoluta, lo irrevocablemente irracional es inexpresable, es intrasmisible. Pero lo contrarracional no. Acaso no haya modo de racionalizar lo irracional; pero lo hay de racionalizar lo contrarracional y es tratando de exponerlo. Como sólo es inteligible, de veras inteligible, lo racional, como lo absurdo está condenado, careciendo como carece de sentido, a ser intrasmisible, veréis que cuando algo que parece irracional o absurdo logra uno expresarlo y que se lo entiendan, se resuelve en algo racional siempre, aunque sea en la negación de lo que se afirma.

Los más locos ensueños de la fantasía tienen algún fondo de razón, y quién sabe si todo cuanto puede imaginar un hombre no ha sucedido, sucede o sucederá alguna vez en uno o en otro mundo. Las combinaciones posibles son acaso infinitas. Sólo falta saber si todo lo imaginable es posible.

Does this mean that everything we are going to see, amounting to the efforts of something irrational to express itself, will lack all rationality, all objective value? No. What is absolutely, irrevocably irrational is inexpressible, intransmissible. But the counter-rational is different. Perhaps there is no method for rationalizing the irrational, but there is one for rationalizing the counter-rational: we must try to explain or expose it. Anything truly intelligible must be rational: the absurd is condemned to be intransmissible because it lacks all sense. Thus you will see that whenever someone manages effectively to express what seems irrational or absurd, bringing others to understand it, it becomes always something rational, though this achievement may deny what it affirms.

The wildest flights of fantasy have some foundation in reason, and who knows but that all any man can imagine might occur some time in some world or other. Possible combinations are virtually infinite. All we need to know is whether everything imaginable is possible.