Silence and literature
La Leçon de Piano,
John Cage's 4''33, sister art theory , Thelonious Monk, Body Language in
Morrison's Beloved... In Le Silence de la Mer (1942-),Vercors
(1902-1991) narrates how, under the German occupation, a French family
decides to remain mute to everything a German officer, who has chosen to
dwell in their house, says. The members of the family are part of what
was called the "Armées des Ombres". Silence and mutism are the weapons
they chose to resist the occupant in their own dignified way. Dead
silence does not exist. It always has a significance of its own , and
can even be endowed with a roaring meaning.
Whatever the form of
art the presence of silence is never gratuitous for it often carries
intentions by their authors. Many writers make use of it as a pattern
which erects muteness, voicelessness or soundlessness into a meaning
device likely to transmit their intentions. In Morrison's Beloved,
slavery has silenced the ex-slaves characters. By ripping the veil of
their forgetfulness, Tony Morrison has her mute and speechless
characters actually speak louder than if they had been using some words
of sorts. Roland Barthes thought over a lot over the relations between
silence and speech, between the writer's message and silence.Where
silence is best expressed in literature is when writers attempt to break
away from the supremacy of forms and conventions, what R. B. called the
'artisanat du style'and the "fatalité du signe littéraire". In some
works , the fact that the narrator never takes side expresses a form of
silence suppressing every ideological intentions (Camus's innocent and
neutral mode of writing "accomplit un style de l'absence qui est presque
une absence idéale de style" disait Barthes ) J. P. Sartres in Le
Sursis attempts to mirror the ubiquity of life by splitting in two the
narration. In Proust the characters are presented in the way they are
and made say things that are consubstantial with their own social and
historic life. Mallarmé (1842-1898), chantre du vide et du silence,
refused all reality and was a murderer of words, a minstrel of void and
silence. Surrealism made an attempt to exploit the unconscious and
expressionism at representing emotions But all this is silence in asmuch
the writer's tools are too imperfect to tell it all. That's why the
present history is betrayed by the fact that no writer can actually
represent what he or she can see and hear. Hence La Force de Dormir de
Pierre Rachet nrf 1988 et Roland Barthes 's Pour en Finir avec La
Littérature.
The following text by Updike shows that silence is meaningfull
A Month of Sundays
The
silence of this room m'effraie. It is not one silence but many, the
lampshade is silent, the bulb silently burns, the bed in silence waits
for my next oblivion, the bathroom mirror silently plays catch with a
corner of my bathrobe, the carpetting is a hungry populace of individual
acrylic silences, even the air conditioning, today is silent. Has the
power failed? Has the desert cooled? Has the beautiful last beseeching
of the Bible ('even so, come, Lord Jesus' –rev. 22-20) been at last
answered, and Man's two millemnia of In between times ended>? No, my
clock says an hour to noon remains. -Updike
In L'ère du soupçon
(1956), Nathalie Sarraute coined the term "sub-conversation"- "cette
limite fluctuante qui sépare la conversation de la sous-conversation" .
The fluctuating border which separates conversation from
sub-conversation is where the exchange between the speakers can take
place.
In The Waves , for example, the six figures speak in turn
but they never engage in dialogues. Their speech are merely juxtaposed.
They become longer and longer quoted monologues. The fact that they are
juxtaposed and quoted (although not placed in quotation marks and not
introduced with speech tags) makes them ressemble dramatic soliloques.
Virginia Woolf is drawing on two different genres (the novel and the
drama) At the same time they seem to be silently exchanging thoughts
Bernard reads Suzan's mind (143) A form of unspoken communication and
silent comprehension is thus suggested .A symbolic fusion is even
explicitely stated by Bernard : " But when we sit close,' said B, 'we
melt into each other with phrases' " (423) Painting and silence Painting
as mute poetry and poetry as speaking painting ( Petrarch)…
Representation of indeterminated forms, Klein's monoichromic works tell a
lot about the mystery of life
Music and silence
Thelonious
Monk's unfinished melodies are a message of freedom and mystery, the
significance of which , although it sometimes escapes our comprehension,
is not altogether deprived of meaning.. In 1951, Cage [ born 1912] 's
4"33 broke the imposed codes of composition and artistic copyright by
inventing the "happening" . The experience took place in a deaf-mute
room, and it was quite a revelation to Cage when he heard all the noise
that his body was producing. According to Cage , the issue of silence
comes out into indetermination- experimental art of that kind is no
scientific experiment, there is nothing to prove or find.Cage is not an
obstetrician of sounds , the happening has no particular aim other than
reaching the aim for which the experiment was conceived by the
experiment itself. No preconceived aim and freedom overlap to enable
something , anything to happen. Rather than speaking about time in terms
of playing around it, Cage prefers to speak of "time celebration". It
is in this sense that we must underrstand his 4"33 for one or several
musicians and other compositions (My silent works) The silence of Cage's
music is like a wide preoedipal cry. It can be read as a code meant to
disturb and break all imposed codes. Even the copyright code is
challenged –who owns silence? The composer is only a catalyst for the
real composers are the musicians , who on the stand have all the freedom
of interpretation (only a grid as in Jazz music is given to them) What
counts is what is really happening during the performance. In Imaginary
Landscapes 4 , twelve radios, 24 performers and one conductor were used.
In IL 5 forty two jazz records were used . In the Piano Concerto
indetermination reaches high peaks.the 13 instrumental parts are
independent and the performers are free to use them or not.There is no
coordinated time sequence between them. Cage's intention was to have
them perform in their own way and the way it looks in the real and
natural world (in a forest or in a street). Of course one is free to
create one's own experience during the performance. The whole work is in
progress, and thus never completed even if it considers that each
performance is definitive. Cage influenced other forms of art,
especially in the theatre. He wrote several books in which continuous
shifts are operated between the critical opinion and text at the
crossroad of multifarious modes and patterns of expression. Neoprimitive
but not anarchic mode of expression which had been socially constructed
by a musical set that was stiffling under the restrictions of taboos.
(voir Silence and his Journal) Silence is the severest criticism. -
Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician
(1823-1871)
