ABSTRACT
What is the materiality of literature? To answer this question, we need to consider the relation between literature and its body, its organs and its blood, maybe even its brain: Language. Language, we could say, is the matter of literature – but in which sense? Can we argue that a word is as material as, say, a stone is? What I will show is that language is material in the sense that it participates in every aspect of our life: It is part of reality of books I read, of conversations I have with my friends, of the radio playing Mahler’s The Song of the Earth. Language touches us, affects us, it is a machine having concrete effects.
