If you just happen to prepare a speech or write a byline article and feel you got stuck, take some 200-year-old advice and start speaking without even knowing what you’re going to say. [Disclaimer: don’t do it in front of your audience.]
“I believe that many great speakers, at the moment they open their mouths, do not know what they are going to say. But the conviction that the necessary wealth of ideas would be provided by the circumstances and by the resulting excitement of their minds makes them bold enough to pick the opening words at a venture.”
The man who wrote these words is Heinrich von Kleist, a German novelist and philosopher who died in Berlin in 1811 at age 34. A somewhat troubled and controversial figure in his day, Kleist now ranks among the best German playwrights of the 19th century. His work influenced Franz Kafka and was adapted for operas and feature films.
What makes Kleist relevant for communicators today is his focus on rhetoric and error in spoken language. Like Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, Kleist was convinced that human perception is unreliable and that the human intellect is basically unable to discern truth. He wrote about it extensively, denouncing the injustice caused by misspeaking, misunderstanding and mistaken identities. Directly related but much lesser-known than his plays and novellas are his views on the connection between clarity of thought and speech, which he expressed in a short philosophical essay titled On the Gradual Production of Thoughts during Speech (Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden).
This is not some prophetic take on the dangers of mindless babble and the stream of consciousness that we see when we turn on the TV. It’s also not about ‘thinking aloud’, although that does get us a little closer. Instead, Kleist makes the case for the benefit of speaking to someone else with “the sensible intention of instructing yourself”. The central idea: If you ever find yourself stuck in a labyrinth of unfinished thoughts and don’t know how to break out and get to the point, speak to the first person you come across. The brain fog will clear up and the right words will come with ease. Two things are at play here: the mindfulness of the human intellect that someone else is listening and “the necessity to find an end for the beginning”, as he puts it. Here is what Kleist wrote back in the early 1800’s:
“[…], when I talk to my sister about it, who sits behind me, working, I discover what I would not have been able to express in perhaps a few hours of brooding. Not as if she were telling me, in the true sense; […] nor, as if it led me through clever questions to the point that matters, even if this last one is often the case. But because I have an obscure preconception, distantly connected with what I am looking for, I just need to begin boldly and the mind, obliged to find an end for the beginning, transforms my confused concept as I speak into thoughts that are perfectly clear, so that – to my surprise – the end of the sentence coincides with the desired knowledge.”
It’s not the actual feedback or alternate point of view, if there is any. What matters is the sheer presence of someone who’s listening that will get us over that writer’s or thinker’s block. As we hang out more on social media and spend less face time with people, Kleist reminds us that thinking and speaking go hand in hand.
That point is not lost on my clients when we discuss a media or presentation skills refresher. The rationale is very much the same: it’s not so much what we say but what they hear. We can easily lose the edge in making an audience understand us and that calls for some regular practice. I happily step in as coach and Kleist’s little sister, including the distractions:
“Nothing is more beneficial to me than some movement of my sister, as if she wanted to interrupt me; because my already strained mind will only be stimulated even more by this attempt from the outside to snatch from me the speech which I am in possession of.”
In the context of his time, Kleist realized the significance of that ‘other person in the room’ who reacts and comments and in doing so helps us articulate more clearly what we have to say. On the Gradual Production of Thoughts during Speech is a timeless gem that combines deep insight with modern-day advice. As for speaking without knowing, the rewards of taking that leap of faith are instant, because “Speech is not an impediment, a sort of brake on the wheel of intellect. It’s more like a second wheel running parallel with it on the same axle.”
English quotes are taken from Michael Hamburger’s translation (1951). Comparing it to the German original, I’ve made a few minor changes where I felt Kleist’s original idea wasn’t captured accurately.