The practicality (possibility?) of 'one true sentence'

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." -Ernest Hemingway

The instructions of the well-known American writer seem fairly straightforward, and maybe even a little easy. But I wonder how many times (if at all) this has even been accomplished. Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist, talks about words as signifiers. That is, the group of letters that spell the word, 'tree' are signifiers for the actual bushy, leafy thing that exists in nature. Likewise the verbal sounds we make -CHREE -are signifiers. So the leafy thing outside that sways in the breeze is the signified, and the word, 'tree' is the signifier. The picture I bring to mind, however, may be completely different than your tree. Mine is a great oak tree, whereas yours might be a weeping willow. The signifier does not always equal the signified, but all meaning are signified by the word tree.

This concept becomes infinitely more complex when we stop talking about tangible concepts (persons, places, things) and begin talking about ideas. This makes the idea of one true sentence unimaginably more complex. How do you explain to someone who has never been loved before what love is? More importantly, how do you explain what perfect love is (or perfection, in general) to someone who has never felt perfect love. It is a bit like trying to explain to a blind person the beauty of autumn, or conveying the majesty of Beethoven's 5th symphony to someone deaf from birth.

So, how do we break free from this linguistic prison. For most, we add on adjectives, adverbs , infinitives, ad infinitum to get down a specific, objective, picture of what we are talking about. Some poets, such as Whitman, would say this is a good thing. I tend to think, however, that as a sentence increases in its verbosity, it decreases in its tangibility. I believe that truth comes in simplicity. The challenge then becomes: write the truest, most succinct sentence you know. For it is in its seeming simplicity that I have always found the most complex truth (see quantum mechanics -the ridiculously complicated study of something so simply minute that it cannot be seen). I think that too often in Western philosophy, we take the example of Aristotle who knew how to defend his positions and philosophize for hours on end. His way divided the universe into A and NOT A (or 0 and 1). While mathematically it stood to logic, it oversimplified the world and removed the gray (grey) areas of life.

I believe that the 'truest sentence' that Hemingway was looking for would sound a lot different that he (or maybe anyone) would have expected. The Truth, I have found, always is...