Bluebeard? Refers to a paradox poets struggle with. Comes from a line from an obscure poem by a brilliant but not well known poet laureate of the United States, contemporary of Frost, who was obsessed with the inadequacy of language to describe experience.
He was fascinated (frustrated?) by how the words of a language themselves are physical things, beings with their own identities and meanings that superimpose themselves on reality, replace it with their own reality. For instance, the bond you have between you and a loved one. Put *that* into words, any way you wish, in the most precise or romantic terms you can, and it is then limited to the words themselves and however the listener/reader interprets them. Reality is lost.... overwritten.
To preserve your experience, *don't* put it into words, don't overwrite it. Simply experience it, relish it, cherish it... Know it as only *you* can know it... *before* it becomes smudged and deformed by words. But then... you can't share it. Catch 22.
"To know a thing is to know a secret," he wrote,
The French folktale of Bluebeard is of a man who repeatedly marries and kills off his wives, hiding their corpses in a locked room. Similarly, I talk too much. I use too many words. In doing so, I have killed off untold numbers of lovely young realities and hidden away the evidence of their existence in the vault of our limited lexicon.
"To know a thing is to know a secret, to *keep* the secret, to hold the key to Bluebeard's room....""
Anything put into words is inevitably mere fiction.
(Now ask me about my avatar. Much happier story!)