ABSTRACT
Merleau-Ponty seems to propose as axiomatic that the price of the true possession of a language is the impossibility of translation. However much Merleau-Ponty opposes universalist notions of language, and in particular the proposal of a universal grammar, he does not rule out 'sympathetic' communications between languages. Merleau-Ponty uses translation as a way of describing the relationship between the 'etat sauvage' of primary perception and reflection upon it. Merleau-Ponty finds attractive Saussure's 'negative' semantics — in the discrete elements of language there are not so much meanings as differences of meaning — largely because, for Merleau-Ponty, the process of meaning, of sense-giving, can only be gradual. For Merleau-Ponty, language and painting have much in common, not least their 'profondeur tacite' and their being equals in 'le prodige de l'expression'. Merleau-Ponty's approach to language is still too focused on meaning, as it is produced by traditional semantic processes.
