LLM : Literature, Language, and Me : the Edges of Emotion

All the previous post is mainly about what I learnt in the past 1 year plus. I have much to say but I want to try posting other things as well so that this blog can be a remanence of who I am, a reminder for those who care and love me when I'm gone, sort of a window to my mind. I come to realize that life itself is very abstract and full of wonders, only to be able to be grasp upon when we takes some time off, away from being too engaged with the ongoing life. There's so many things that is not as straight forward despite the nature of it appears to be so. Some have deeper meanings, some have alternate reality or understanding of it and I would like to start a string of series about looking at life differently.  

“Iqra’ bismi rabbika alladhi khalaq”
“Read (or Recite) in the name of your Lord who created.”
(Surah Al-‘Alaq (96:1) )

For someone who appreciates the linguistic beauty of literature, “Iqra” feels symbolic. It’s not just an instruction, it’s an invitation into consciousness through words.

The more I delve myself into learning about Islam the more I fall in love with literature. There are many instance that I find Quranic verses or hadith that uses wording structure that is profoundly impactful and touches my soul just by reading it. 

Historically, Arabs during the Prophet’s time were masters of rhetoric and poetry. The Qur’an challenged them not only theologically, but linguistically, its structure, rhythm, and eloquence were considered inimitable.

“Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him speak good or remain silent.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari & Muslim)

I’ve always been drawn to literature, but not just for the stories. What pulls me in is the machinery of language itself: the way a sentence bends, the way a word carries two meanings at once, the quiet rebellion of a well-placed comma. For me, literature isn’t only narrative. It’s architecture. It’s rhythm. It’s play.

And yet, the more I explore the linguistic side of writing, wordplay, puns, layered metaphors, poems that seem to fold into themselves, the more I arrive at a curious thought:

Literature may be vast in form, but it is limited in purpose.
It always returns to human emotion.

The Seduction of Wordplay

"Sayang sayang?, sayang sayangggggggg sayang."

"Hi, nama saya anis..
Nama penuh abang manis.."

There’s something almost mischievous about wordplay. A pun is a small act of defiance, one word refusing to behave, insisting on meaning two things at once. It’s clever. It’s intellectual. It feels like solving a tiny riddle.

But even puns aren’t purely intellectual games. They evoke delight, surprise, sometimes even groans. That emotional reaction is the point. Without feeling, wordplay is just a technical trick.

Language performs. Emotion validates.

A line can be structurally brilliant, but if it doesn’t stir something, amusement, discomfort, nostalgia, it falls flat. The cleverness alone isn’t enough.

The Precision of Poetry

Poetry fascinates me because it distills language to its most concentrated form. Every word is deliberate. Every pause matters. A poem can hold an entire memory in six lines.

What amazes me is how poems can say less and mean more. Through rhythm, silence, and suggestion, they invite the reader to fill the gaps. And what fills those gaps? Emotion.

Even abstract poetry, even experimental forms that fracture syntax and disrupt logic, are still orbiting around feeling. They may reject traditional structure, but they rarely reject the human pulse underneath.

Strip away the emotional core, and poetry becomes an exercise in formatting.

The Prophet said:

“Indeed, in some poetry there is wisdom.”
(Sahih al-Bukhari)

Language as a Container

We often talk about literature as boundless, limitless imagination, infinite interpretation. But I sometimes wonder if its true boundary is emotion. Every metaphor, every layered narrative, every carefully engineered sentence ultimately exists to express some human experience:

Love.
Loss.
Longing.
Confusion.
Wonder.

Even when literature explores philosophy, politics, or science, it does so through a human lens. It is filtered through perception and feeling. We don’t write simply to describe the world, we write to express how the world feels to us.

In that sense, literature is both infinite and confined. Infinite in technique. Confined in essence.

The Beauty of the Limitation

How do you express your love even more when saying I love you isn't enough?. How do we perceive this limitation?. Maybe that limitation isn’t a weakness. Maybe it’s what makes literature powerful.

Because language, no matter how complex, is still trying to do one fragile thing: translate internal experience into shared understanding.

A pun makes us laugh together.
A poem makes us ache together.
A story makes us remember together.

All the linguistic sophistication, the alliteration, the ambiguity, the structural experiments, are tools. Beautiful tools, yes. But tools for something deeply human.

That’s what keeps me interested. Not just what language can do mechanically, but what it can carry emotionally.

In the end, literature may be limited.
But it is limited to the one thing that makes us endlessly worth writing about.