Plowing with a Feather

From chemist and holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s short story, A Tranquil Star, translated by Ann Goldstein, some advice on describing the universe…

This star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous: and here a reporter’s difficulties begin… It’s clear that something in our lexicon isn’t working… For a discussion of stars in our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It’s a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it’s human. It doesn’t go beyond what our senses tell us… There is of course the slim and elegant language of numbers, the alphabet of the powers of ten: but then this would not be a story in the sense in which this story wants to be a story; that is, a fable that awakens echoes, and in which each of us can perceive distant reflections of himself and of the human race.