Dagger-words?

One of the books I’ve been slowly reading my way through this year is E.M. Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born. It’s an aphoristic work of short philosophical sketches and terse musings, whose depth and density are not diminished by their brevity.

With that being said there are passages that stick with me and stick into me for reasons I can’t fully understand or explain.

I love the phrasing and the idea of “dagger-language”, and there’s something especially resonant about the imagery of praying with dagger-language. But, to be completely honest I don’t really know what a prayer of dagger-language means, what it would like, or what it would sound like. Perhaps they are words that stab and cut through the rigidity of language, and the implicit assurances of “faith”. Perhaps they are words that pierce their way through into the heart of the ambiguity of being alive and the mystery that implores towards prayer…

I don’t know, and sometimes it’s the not-knowing that means the most…