Encountered today a criticism of 'English Understatement'. The following response:
Understatement, never quite calling a thing by its name, at least contains the implicit recognition that the name in any case never quite lives up to the thing. In understatement, the name respectfully keeps its distance. In doing so it actually comes closer to the real texture of things, that residue which cannot be metabolised by language but only pointed towards. The opposite of understatment is not so much calling a thing by its name but rather the effacement of the thing by a presumptive and rude nomination. Things, rather than being given their due silence, are deafened by language, or made to speak in a foriegn tongue.
K. diary, 10 Nov. 1917: "I haven't yet written down the decisive thing. I am still going in two directions. The work awaiting me is enormous." Quite.