Complexity and Simplicity

I have heard quite often either dismissive or enthusiastic comments imposing simplicity of language as a must-have for any sort of written work. As a consequence of this perspective, anything complex or elaborated tends to be seen as excessive and out of place. This view applies to long or convoluted sentences, paragraphs and less used words and embodies a discrete sort of fundamentalism that strives for a literary canon that requires for every published work to be uncomplicated and concrete (as opposed to abstract). This view is unconsciously consubstantiated in the tendency so many of us have to refer to a novel or a poem starting with the expression “it is about…” as if the about word could bring everyone else to a ground of familiarity and understanding that summed up the essence of that object.

Abstract items, to be removed from a literary work, be it poetry, fiction, essay or drama, are emotions displayed separately from the context that causes them; values claiming some level of universality if explored without the scope of objects and references of any length to anything non-physical such as interior monologues, states of mind and so on. Complexity, in its turn, is identified in texts with long sentences and series of paragraphs with little space for dialogs.
I hear at times people complaining at how some unexpected complexity of writing undermines the understanding and enjoyment of the plot and that, in turn, has made me realise that, in fiction, language is seen as the invisible vehicle for a plot. Sitting with friends and praising Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, as one of those fiction books that is written in such a way that you feel like reading it out loud, even when reading it in the quietness of your home, I got some stares of perplexity, as if the sole role of the language was to remain in a neutral, indifferent state.

Nowadays, the rejection of complexity starts at school, where complexity of language is discarded in favour of ease of learning, with learning being understood as achievement of a pass grade. In this context, complexity becomes the unseen companion of the Political Correctness fantasy of an all-inclusive language that does not challenge, but implicitly smothers and impairs our view of the world. It goes on, then, through life, in our culture of entertainment, of favouring a reading experience almost entirely based on impoverishing plot-centric fiction that leaves out the full blown exposure to the complexity of the others in their states of minds, emotions and alternate perceptions of time and reality; that leaves out as well the enjoyment of a language that can be bigger than life.

What we lose with the forced oversimplification of language is, however, more serious than some literary works and is rapidly extending to the way we express ourselves in our everyday life and how we communicate our thoughts, feelings and emotions; how we analyse our surroundings and the issues we have to solve and how we transmit to ourselves and others approaches to solve them. A fact that should be simple and obvious in a commonsensical way is that we need a complex language to express a complex situation; in some cases, keeping it simple is achieved by leaving information out of the equation or, even worse, gives to what is read an equivocal and blurred sense. Failing to cope with complexity, we have no choice but to rely on pretending to understand so well that we don’t realise that we effectively don’t and expect that someone out there can tell us what to do.

I am not suggesting that everything should be expressed in a complex way, but that complexity should be regarded as an available option seen, if used properly, as a natural use of the full resource spectrum that language provides us with, and the same should be true for simplicity. What is, in fact, implied here is far more serious: We should fear that the automatic rejection of complexity without any further thought is already impairing our ability to fully deal with a complex world and society: ours. By rejecting complexity in favour of an artificial and impaired simplicity we are nurturing and creating a society based on stupidity.