1
Silentium
The clock is ticking. Please, stop the pendulum. Itās quiet.
The silent, primitive connection between mother and baby probably provides the oldest and most enduring iconography of silence and sensory peace in our European culture (shaped by Greek, Hebrew, Roman, and Germanic influences). A babyās hunger is āstilledā and its crying āquietedā at its motherās or wet-nurseās breast. This act is praised by King David (as early as 1000 bc) in his 131st psalm:
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.
Our mothers are our first gods ā and here, the sound of praise and exultant words is extinguished in a nourishing silence.
The silence of the cosmos
Silentium: we might see it as metaphors which āsummon one another and are more coordinated than sensations, so much so that a poetic mind is purely and simply a syntax of metaphorsā (Bachelard 1964, p.107). Thus, at the beginning of all things was silence, around 13.82 billion years ago. Astrophysicists think of the universe as āsomethingā that was born out of pure energy. It wasnāt until nearly 400,000 years later that stable atoms were formed. Millions of years had to pass before the first stars began to shine in this cosmic silence. Modern cosmologists believe that it all started with a Big Bang. Where there is no sound, there is no silence. Everything is at peace. We currently have no more serviceable metaphor than that of this standardised Big Bang theory, from which astrophysicists have been able to calculate a model of time, with the aid of computers. In the year 1225, the English bishop Robert Grosseteste wrote down his basic theory of creation in his book De luce (on light). The metaphor of the Big Bang comes from the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle (1915ā2001). The Belgian theologian and physicist Georges LemaĆ®tre (1894ā1966) coined the term āprimeval atomā in 1931, for what was assumed to be the hot original state of the universe. The Big Bang theory gained increasing traction from the 1960s onwards, as new telescopes and computers failed to disprove it with fresh astronomical observations.
Why do we humans, living on this planet, in the middle of an unimaginably huge universe, need a point of origin? What difference does the origin of matter and space make to us? Astronomers observe the continual expansion of the universe. And it is interesting to work backwards and calculate, or rather to have the latest computers calculate for us, the moment when the cosmic silence came into being, when all matter and radiation was held in an inconceivably tiny space, all energy concentrated there. Since all the established theories of physics, such as quantum field theory and the general theory of relativity, presuppose the existence of space, time, and matter, they cannot describe the Big Bang.
No sound and fury; only silence. No clapping, for as yet there were no hands. The silent night dreamed on. There was no water yet, no forests, meadows, and paths. A state of rest, as emptiness passed the quiet time with stillness. Cries came before language, before speech, but after the silence. Noiseless lip-service.
Hamlet
In the final scenes of the tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (first performed in London in 1602), the actor and playwright William Shakespeare (1564ā1616) included this brief exchange, which was to become world famous:
Hamlet: O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite oāer-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
Dies
Horatio: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Why does the drum come hither?
āThe rest is silenceā has been much quoted for more than 400 years and, pregnant with meaning, goes hand in hand with Roma locuta, causa finita (Rome has spoken, the case is closed). āButā is the word that begins each contradiction and erases what has been said before. To experience something in life that we can remain silent about is exciting, but our ultimate finale doesnāt have to be a deathly silence. If we quiet down, we can all listen to the great nothingness. Silent notes and rhythms mostly sound harmonious. We have the right to silence and retreat. We always need the option of retreating into redemptive silence.
Aldous Huxley was a master of articulating what had been revealed to him behind the doors of perception. What cannot be described in words can best be expressed in music. In the expressive power of musicians and composers. Pauses are silent music, expressive moments that communicate what otherwise cannot be heard. Music, in my experience ā which contains a dearth of silence ā is of fundamental significance for us. By expressing what cannot be spoken, it touches our souls and awakens there, perfect in the moment of hearing, the feeling that our senses are connecting us to our true nature.
Stimulating words from this wily cultural analyst. His fellow writer Friedrich DĆ¼rrenmatt (1921ā1990) used silence to shield himself from the promise of revealing himself and his inner life.
Letting it rest
Silence is drawn out when we keep quiet, and the echo fades away when we ālet it rest.ā Silentium has been encoded within religion. It characterises silent retreats and prayers in convents and monasteries. Enforced silence is a form of expression for someone who considers themselves close to the Eternal. The whispered address without an addressee. There are experiences of silence in which the inner pain of some horrific event ā Srebrenica ā can only be made slightly more bearable with a long, soundless scream. Noiseless weeping as a community embraces and gazes at each other without saying a word. The image to go with this: Munchās Scream.
This is how the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch described the state of mind that he transposed into the famous painting The Scream (the text was written as a poem on the frame of the 1895 version).
This is about much more for us than the harmonious echo-chamber in our own minds. In silence, images can, may, should, and must be laid to rest from time to time, as necessary. Much like the stirred-up silt at the bottom of a pond, which creates fresh clarity as it sinks.
The Latin word silere means: to be silent; to stop speaking or making noise. A silentiarius or silentiary is a court official whose job is to maintain silence (Partridge 1979, p.622). Silence in court! The silentiary was also a Byzantine courtier, charged with keeping order and silence in Byzantiumās imperial court.
āQuiet please!ā says the umpire on Centre Court in Wimbledon, as they restart the match. The same rule of silence applies in snooker, in ice hockey at the start of play (no music), and in athletics before the start of a race. All quiet. On your marksā¦ setā¦ starting pistol. Being silent always plays its part in the context of a situation. And silere, schweigen, not speaking ā the human expression of silence ā is practised in different places and for different lengths of time depending on that context. The familiar minuteās silence in the arena for a sporting figure who has died. Or a national minuteās silence after great catastrophes, whether natural or man-made.
āOde quiet, quiesā is, as it were, a response, an answer: be quiet and peaceful. Let something rest, lay it to rest. We can tune into our own wor...