Atopy describes the ineffability

Ineffability

Ineffability is concerned with ideas that cannot or should not be expressed in spoken words , often being in the form of a taboo or incomprehensible term. This property is commonly associated with philosophy, aspects of existence, and similar concepts that are inherently "too great", complex, or...

 of things or emotions that are seldom experienced, that are outstanding and that are original in the strict sense. The term depicts a certain quality (of experience) that can be observed within oneself or within others. It does not depict an ideal

Ideal (ethics)

An ideal is a principle or value that one actively pursues as a goal. Ideals are particularly important in ethics, as the order in which one places them tends to determine the degree to which one reveals them as real and sincere. It is the application, in ethics, of a universal...

, although it has been abused to do so, for example by the genius-cult during the era of romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

.

Phenomenon, origin

A human being in love, no matter at whom or what his adoration and affection is pointed at—be it a beloved person, a god in some mystical sense or an idol—is not able to reduce the "item" of his love down to certain characteristic

Characteristic

Characteristic may refer to:In physics and engineering, any characteristic curve that shows the relationship between certain input and output parameters, for example:...

s, he claims his "obscure object of desire" to be unique and incomparable.

The attribution

Attribution (psychology)

Attribution is a concept in social psychology referring to how individuals explain causes of behavior and events. Attribution theory is an umbrella term for various theories that attempt to explain these processes. Fritz Heider first proposed a theory of attribution The Psychology of Interpersonal...

 of characteristics from the banal everyday world would, in the eye of the one being seriously in love, mean betrayal (sacrilege

Sacrilege

Sacrilege is the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense, any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege. It can come in the form of irreverence to sacred persons, places, and things...

) to the very own love itself. Up until now, no one has managed to describe and analyze this more strikingly than Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes

Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

 in his famous and acclaimed collection of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments , written by Roland Barthes, contains a list of "fragments", some of which come from literature and some from his own philosophical thought, of a lover's point of view...

, published in 1977. But if you look at it more closely, this is an everyday phenomenon each and every mere mortal is encountering: parents can describe, praise or curse the relation between them and their children—but they realize at the same time that the depth and the profoundness of their feelings for their offspring are atopical, or ineffable.

Natural religions, like mysticism

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

, therefore talk about "Tao

Tao

Dao or Tao is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'...

", about the "original" and the "pristine"; in the field of ontological philosophy and theology it is called "richness of being". The rather sensual, mundane and secular poetry speaks of cornucopia

Cornucopia

The cornucopia or horn of plenty is a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers, nuts, other edibles, or wealth in some form...

 (also see: cornucopian

Cornucopian

A cornucopian is a futurist who believes that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by similarly continued advances in technology...

), or, more prosaically of "inspiration

Artistic inspiration

Inspiration refers to an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavour. Literally, the word means "breathed upon," and it has its origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration came from the muses, as well as the gods Apollo and...

". In the field of science, especially in psychological sciences, this phenomenon is being researched under the leading definition of creativity

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...

 or as "Flow"

Flow (psychology)

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of...

.

Occurrence

Most adults are familiar with atopy, having experienced the view on the world through "rose-tinted glasses" in phases of limerence

Limerence

Limerence is a term coined c. 1977 by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov to describe an involuntary state of mind which seems to result from a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated...

. Art lovers know it as genius

Genius

Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight....

 and as something auratic, readers as "Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol" in Max Frisch

Max Frisch

Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...

's "Stiller", which refers to the notion of God from the "Ten Commandments", or "Geschichten von Herrn Keuner" by Bertold Brecht.

Literature

• Roland Barthes
  Roland Barthes
  Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
  
  : Fragments of a language of love, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M, 2003, ISBN 3-518-38086-9
• Michel Guérin: Nietzsche. Socrate héroique, Grasset, Paris 1975, ISBN 2-246-00174-9