  This seems to introduce some important differences amongst the existentialists, since Merleau-Ponty, for instance, claimed that all art forms function like language. But Merleau-Ponty agrees with Sartre on the important differences between art forms. The Prose of the World established that there was a single source behind all acts of expression, which made them commensurable to language, only to acknowledge the specificity of language in a manner similar to Sartre’s. For example, the “voices” in painting — a metaphor for the ideal content of painting — are ‘voices of silence’ that speak only an ‘indirect language’ (the titles of Malraux’s famous studies on the history of painting). That is to say, they remain attached to their specific materiality, making the work a self-enclosed world. In Merleau-Ponty’s repeated metaphor, every painter starts the history of painting afresh (1960, 309–311) because the same visible world calls for an infinite number of expressive variations, each singular in its determinate coherence. The history of painting, therefore, is indeed made up of constant echoes and criss-crosses, with each generation revisiting the visual themes and techniques of the past generations, but the communication amongst the works are haphazard, indirect, and cannot be accumulated. There is no progress in the history of painting. In language, on the other hand, meanings acquired from the past are sedimented in current meanings and allow for the dialectic of spoken and speaking speech discussed earlier (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 97-113). This means that the material of literature carries with it the sedimented historical experiences of the lifeworlds it speaks about. There is no progress in literature either, not in a sense comparable to scientific progress, but the novel, simply by using the language of the lifeworld it arises from, is a direct witness of the broader historical narrative in which it is embedded. As a result, it can portray ethical and political situations very powerfully.