KHATCHADOURIAN, Haig - How To Do Things With Silence

Haig Khatchadourian
How to Do Things with Silence

Philosophische Analyse/
Philosophical Analysis
Herausgegeben von/Edited by
Herbert Hochberg, Rafael Hüntelmann,
Christian Kanzian, Richard Schantz, Erwin Tegtmeier
Band/Volume 63
Haig Khatchadourian
How to Do Things
with Silence
ISBN 978-1-5015-1047-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0144-9
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0146-3
ISSN 2198-2066
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|
To the undying memory of my wife Arpiné,
Cousin Violet, my brother Katch
Semper amata eritis et memoria retenta

Epigraph
Silence has a power of communication
denied to sense. The ear has only one language,
one language the eye, the hands. Silence
is seen, heard, felt, tasted and smelled
it has a flowering body vivid as a rose
which the perceptive hands can explore, and read.
Every pore
of that body proclaims its message
to the listening fingers; and the sensitive eyes
can feel it blossom like a rose.
The way of silence is the way of the pregnant soul,
the way of self-abnegation in world loud and self-
proclaiming,
the way beyond the way of speech; that leads to the
knowledge and the wisdom
that it is vain to speak. Thus silence
leads only to silence; and in that greater silence
the lesser is extinguished and fulfilled
like the star’s light fulfilled in sunlight.
The way of silence is sad, solitary, secret,
long as the soul which it traverses,
hard and rocky as the soul, mountainous
and dusty and sinuous. but he
who walks that way will never meet
a blind alley, but always see
new scenes unfolding like petals of a rose;
nor will he need to turn his face, or return.
For there, perhaps, beyond the farthest stretches of the soul,
something or someone may be awaiting him.
Haig Khatchadourian, Shadows of Time

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank John Benjamins Publishing Co. for permission to quote from
Essays in Speech Act Theory, Daniel Vanderveken and Susumu Kobe, Editors;
Cambridge University Press for permission to quote from Theodore R. Schatzki,
Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to human activity and the Social,
1996; for permission to quote from P. F. Strawson, “Intention And Convention in
Speech Acts,” The Philosophical Review, vol. LXXIII, October 1964, pp. 439-460,
and Duke University, presently the Journal publisher; for permission from The
University of Arts in Belgrade, Aesthetics Society of Serbia, to quote from my
article, “Architecture in Context,” in Toward The Philosophy of Art in Memory of
Milan Damnjanovic, pp. 450-465. I wish to give credit to Fyodor Dostoevsky, to
Constant Garnett for her translation of the The Brothers Karamazov, and to Ran-
dom House, LLC.
Contents
Introduction | 1
Part I: Ways of “Doing” 
1 Informal ‘Logic’ and Contextual Meanings of Silence | 7

1.1 Forms of Doing | 7
1.2 Speech-Acts And The ‘In’- And ‘By’-formulae | 12
1.3 Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Speech Acts | 15
2 The Logic of Silence cont’d.: “Pragmatics” of Silence | 18

2.1 Forms of Doing | 18
2.2 Silent Expression/Communication | 19
2.3 Non-Standard Situations in Silent
3 Body Language as a Form of Silent Doing | 32

3.1 Body Language | 32
3.2 Nature of body language | 34
3.3 Conditions of Successful Body Language | 35
3.4 Possible Meanings of Body Language | 37
3.5 Silences as “Dispersed” Practices | 38
4 Physical Action as a Form of Silent Doing | 41

4.1 Movement & Physical Action | 41
4.2 Action/Activity as a (Silent) Form of Doing; Expressive and
Communicative Uses of Action | 45
4.3 Communicative Uses of Action described by “By-Locutions” | 50
4.4 Consequentialist Uses of Action | 51
5 Silence and the Inner Life | 53

5.1 Silence and the Inner Life: Conscious Mental Activities, Experiences
& States as Silent Forms of Doing | 53
5.2 Mental States vs. Mental Activities | 54
5.3 Bodily Feelings & Sensations as Silent States or Experiences | 55
5.4 Unconscious Mental Activities | 56
5.5 Pathologies of Inner Silence: “Silent Minds” | 57
XII | Contents
5.6 Expressive and Communicative uses of the “In”-/“By”-Formulae in

Relation to the Inner Life: Some Examples | 60
5.7 Infelicity, Misfiring, Force & Point in Relation to Mental and
Physical States and Activities | 61
5.8 Infelicity | 61
5.9 Misfiring | 61
5.10 Point | 61
Part II: Aesthetics of Silence 
6 Silence in the Temporal Arts I: Music | 65

6.1 General Remarks concerning the “Temporal” and “Visual-Spatial”
Arts | 65
6.2 Rests/Pauses/Silence in the Form & in the Content of Temporal
Works of Art | 69
6.3 General Considerations regarding the Formal Aspects of Temporal
Works of Art  | 70
6.4 Formal Features of Temporal Art | 71
6.5 The Executant’s Interpretation of Works of Music | 75
6.6 Silent Musical Compositions | 78
6.7 Aesthetics of Silence in Dance  | 79
7 Silence in the Temporal Arts II: The Literary Arts | 80

7.1 Formal Aspects of Temporal Art; Roles of Rests/Pauses/Silences in
Literature | 81
7.2 Silence as a Theme or Part of a Theme in Literature | 88
8 Silence in the Visual-Spatial Arts | 93

8.1 Visual-Spatial vis-à-vis Temporal Arts | 93
8.2 Aesthetic & Other Expressive Uses of Silence in the Visual-Spatial
Arts | 95
8.3 Silence in Painting, Sculpture and Architecture | 96
8.4 Contextual Optimum Conditions of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture | 99
8.5 Painting & Sculpture | 107
8.6 Silent Cinema | 109
8.7 Films with Significant Silences | 111
Contents | XIII
9 Silence in Nature | 115
9.1 Silence in Nature in the wild and in national parks | 118
9.2 The Silence of the Deep | 118
9.3 The Art Gardens of Japan | 119
9.4 Silk Screens of Yokoyama Taikan | 121
9.5 Silent Nature in Poetry | 121
9.6 Silent Nature in Landscape Painting | 125
9.7 Still Nature Photography: Ansel Adams | 125
9.8 Documentary & Nature Films | 127
9.9 Silent Feature Films & Silence In Film | 127
9.10 Prose Descriptions of Silent Nature | 128
Part III: Ethics and Politics of Silence 
10 The Ethics of Silence | 133
11 Ethical Political Social Dimensions of Silence | 143

11.1 Part One: “The Silent” | 144
11.2 Part Two: “The Voiceless” | 155
Part IV: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life 
12 Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life | 165

12.1 The mystic’s spiritual ascent to the divine | 166
12.2 Mysticism in Buddhism | 174
12.3 Visions | 175
12.4 Prayer | 175
12.5 Christian Monastic Orders & Silence | 177
12.6 The Silence of Death | 178
12.7 Silence in Grief & Mourning | 180
13 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – I | 181

13.1 “The Silence of God” | 181
13.2 St. John of the Cross & the hiddenness of God | 182
13.3 Buddhism and the Silence of God | 183
13.4 Ingmar Bergman and the Silence/Hiddenness of God | 184
XIV | Contents
14 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – II | 197

14.1 The Theme of Isolation And the “Hiddenness” Of God | 202
14.2 The Theme of Communion And the “Presence” Of God | 208
Index | 210

Introduction
Speaking, performing a physical action or a voluntary movement, body lan-
guage, and mental activity, such as thinking or imagining, like speaking or
writing—performing speech-acts—are all kinds of doing, species of the genus
Doing. Likewise, being and silent, in some contexts, as well as breaking silence,
are also different forms of doing. Moreover, with the obvious exception of
speech, all these species of doing are also different forms of silence: different
forms of silent doing1. If successful, the bringing together of the concepts of
silence and doing in this work should result in a unified theory of silent doing.
The book is divided into three main parts:
Part I: Ways of Doing:
Chapter 1: The Logic of Silence;
Chapter 2: The “Pragmatics” of Silence;
Chapter 3: Body Language as Expression and Communication;
Chapter 4: Physical Action as a Form of Silent Doing;
Chapter 5: Silence and the Inner Life.
Part II: Aesthetics of Silence:
Chapter 6: Silence in the Temporal Arts-I;
Chapter 7: Silence in the Temporal Arts-II;
Chapter 8: Silence in (and of) the Spatial Arts;
Chapter 9: Silence in Nature.
Part III: Ethics and Politics of Silence:
Chapter 10: The Ethics of Silence;
Chapter 11: The Ethical Political Social Dimensions of Silence;
Part IV: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life:
Chapter 12: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life;
Chapter 13: Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life- I;
Chapter 14: Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life-II.
The first twelve chapters consider the different forms of silence in the literal
meaning of ‘silence’; while the last two chapters consider certain metaphori-
cal/symbolic uses of the word in relation to the spiritual/religious life; e.g., (1) in
||
1 Physical actions and activities too are a form of silent doing. Although the performance of
physical actions and activities normally involves noise, particularly in the case of tools and
instruments, that is due not to the action or activity as such but to the friction created by it. The
concept of action/activity—which will be our concern— does not include or involve the notion
of sound or noise.
2 | Introduction
such phrases as “the silence of God,” “the hiddenness God,” or “God is hidden,”
“God is silent,” as they occur in literature and drama; as well as (2) as a charac-
ter’s silence as presented in a film; for example, in a series of Ingmar Bergman’s
films beginning with The Seventh Seal; which, as we shall see, masterfully pre-
sent the film-maker’s conception of the “role” of God who is, in effect, a “Hid-
den Character.” For instance, in The Seventh Seal, God is silent to the Knight in
the sense that He does not reveal himself to him as he, a believer, searches for
Him until the end; while God is silent for the Knight’s Squire in the sense that,
for the latter, He simply does not exist. Thus ‘silence’ in “God is silent” is used
metaphorically in two different ways, in relation to the Knight and the Squire
respectively.
On the religious side, character “C” in J. L. Schellenberg’s “What the Hid-
denness of God Reveals…,2 provides a good example of the metaphorical use of
the word ‘silence,’ hence the symbolic use of the concept of silence. In that es-
say “C” says: “‘Hiddenness’ is just the human side of the divine mystery”3;
which nicely describes a good deal about the “role” of God—who can be (literal-
ly) said to be a “hidden character” in Bergman’s alluded-to film series. Other
examples will be provided in Chapter 8, “Silence in the Spiritual/Religious
Life.”
I said that in such expressions as the ‘silence of God’—or the ‘Hiddenness of
God’— the word ‘silence’ is used metaphorically. Alternatively, we can state the
matter in terms of the idea or concept of silence in the preceding contexts, where
that idea or concept is used symbolically to refer to the “absence” of God in the
sense of His not “manifesting” or not “revealing” himself in the world.
Finally, as will be seen in Chapters 11 and 12, “Silence in the Spiritu-
al/Religious Life,” silence plays quite different roles in relation to spiritu-
al/religious experiences or states; e.g., in relation to religious visions, in reli-
gious meditation, and in the mystical ascent to God, than in the expressive/
communicative/uncommunicative roles it plays in everyday social life, in ethics
and politics, and in relation to the aesthetics of art or of nature. It also plays still
other kinds of roles in relation to our inner life.
Earlier I observed that in certain contexts, being silent is ordinarily thought
of as a form or species of doing something. The statement, “Sometimes, one
does better by being silent than by babbling,” where ‘does better’ appears to
||
2 Divine Hiddenness, New Essays, Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser, eds. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 33-61.
3 Ibid., p. 34.
Introduction | 3
mean “acting better,” illustrates a sort of situation in which “not doing any-
thing” is a form of acting, of “doing something.”
Like becoming silent and breaking silence, and like being silent in certain
contexts, the various forms of mental activity—thinking, reasoning, imagining,
remembering, reminiscing, perceiving (looking, listening, smelling, etc.), etc.—
are all ways of doing something, in the sense of acting.
To the question: “John, what are you doing?” John may correctly answer: “I
am thinking” (“listening to music,” “reminiscing,” “imagining …” and so on)
However, feeling, desiring and intending to do something are not, in ordinary
language, ways of doing something. Consider:
Peter “What are you doing, John?”
John: “Nothing: I’m just feeling depressed.”
That mental activity, such as thinking, remembering or reminiscing, is a
way of doing is illustrated, for example, by the following: If John, sitting or
lying on a sofa is silently meditating, praying or thinking, he would be correctly
described as doing something; although, of course, he would not be doing some-
thing in the different sense of performing a physical action.
Other sorts of things silence may do include:
a) Not answering a question, in contrast to performing the speech-act of an-
swering a question;
b) Not adding information to the information given by another, present per-
son, in contrast to performing the speech act of informing the inquirer;
c) Not volunteering information, in contrast to performing the speech act of
informing the hearer;
d) Not asking questions, in contrast to performing the speech act of asking a
question;
e) Not giving an order, in contrast to saying: “I order (command) you to do
such and such!”
f) Not responding verbally to a command, in contrast to responding verbally
to an order or command, for example, by saying: “All right!” or “I won’t do
it!” and so on. That is, in contrast to performing the speech act of acquiesc-
ing or not acquiescing in the order or command;
g) Not executing an illocutionary speech-act rather than, e.g., saying: “I bet
you..., or I promise you..., and so on,” in the appropriate context or circum-
stances, thus performing an act of silence instead.
The preceding are all examples of meaningful silence—of silence possessing

some kind of meaning of other—as distinguished from meaningless silence—the
kind of silences we become aware of when, temporarily, the many kinds of
noises and sounds and cacophonies that tend to fill a great part of everyday life
4 | Introduction
cease. Indeed, distinguishing the varieties of meaning that silence may have in
different kinds of situations or contexts is a main aim of this book as a whole.
For instance, the pauses and silences in a work of literature, of music, dance, or
film are prime examples of meaningful silence of a certain sort or kind. Similarly
with the silence that informs a Japanese garden, a distant mountain range,
gorge or valley, or a hushed forest or a verdant meadow. All the varieties of
silence I mentioned are aesthetically meaningful silences, as distinguished from
the meaningfulness of examples (a)—(g) above, which are clearly meaningful in
a different, non-aesthetic sense. Likewise silence in situations that involve ethi-
cal right or wrong actions or activities, situations or states of affairs; and, simi-
larly, actions or activities, situations or states of affairs that have ethical politi-
cal social dimensions.
|
Part I: Ways of “Doing”
1 Informal ‘Logic’ and Contextual Meanings of
Silence
1.1 Forms of Doing
Acting, performing actions, speaking and writing, and being silent are all forms
of doing: we do something or other when we perform an action, speak or write
(perform a speech act), or are silent. In this treatise, therefore, I shall attempt to
consider silence in relation both to speech acts and to action; noting parallels as
well as significant differences between the latter two in relation to the first.
Doing so will, I hope, illuminate all three, or illuminate them more than they
would be if they are treated separately, as unrelated “activities.” It is, in fact,
quite tempting for a philosopher (and this sort of move has been common in the
history of philosophy) to expand the ordinary concept of silence in such a way
that, rather than thinking of silence only as the absence of speech acts (or of
sounds, including noise, in general), which is what ‘silence’ means in ordinary
usage, we think of it, in its broadened sense, as including speechless action
together with its (silent, unspoken or implicit) presuppositions and implica-
tions. To the attractiveness of such a move due to the fact that silence is like
speech and action a form of doing, is added another attraction: namely, that the
interpretation of the meaning and purpose, etc. of actions involves similar prob-
lems as the interpretation of silence; since meaning, purpose, and implications
in both types of cases are contextual in nature. On that understanding, actions
would be conceived as “silent acts”—the very opposite of conceiving silence as
a special kind of “act.” For example, the burning of the U.S. Flag would be con-
ceived as a “silent” act of protest, or of testing the freedom of speech law, and
so on; just as silence in the appropriate context can be an “act” of protest
against something or other. Again, and connected with this, we may remember
William James’ remark that every action implies a judgment. In the example of
the burning of the U.S. flag as a form of protest, we can speak of that action as
implying e.g. the judgment that the U.S. political system is oppressive, or the
judgment that it is essential to test the validity of the laws that are supposed to
protect the citizens’ freedom of speech; and so on. In terms of the notion of
meaning, one could then say that the meaning (signification and significance)
of the (particular) act of burning of the U.S. flag is unexpressed, unspoken,
“silently expressed.”
Note in these instances “silence” forms the context of and so holds (or may
hold) a key to its interpretation of the action: the very reverse of silence in the
8 | Informal ‘Logic’ and Contextual Meanings of Silence
ordinary sense, where the context of the silence is either some action or actions,
or speech, or both, and holds (or may hold) a key to its interpretation or under-
standing.
A likely gain in conceiving silence (“silence”) in a generic way, rendering si-
lence in the ordinary sense as well as speech acts and actions forms or species
of it, is the distinct possibility of arriving at a unified theory which would in-
crease our understanding of all three types of “activities.” Nevertheless, the
ends of clarity or the avoidance of the sorts of errors that such moves in the
history of philosophy have brought in their wake are better served if we stick to
the everyday meaning of ‘silence’; especially as the basis for a unified theory is
present in ordinary language, in the form of the generic concept of “doing,” of
which, as I said, silence, actions and speech acts are different forms of species.
The “semantics” and the “pragmatics” of the “‘language’ of silence” are
complex, the uses of silence well-nigh inexhaustible. Whether silence has any
meaning to nonhuman animals, it plays manifold important roles in human
relationships—in expression and communication—as well as in other spheres of
human culture. Silence speaks to human beings with diverse voices. The ethical
and aesthetic uses of silence alone are many and exceedingly important: in the
latter case, notably in literature and theater, film, instrumental and vocal mu-
sic, opera and dance. The uses and the meanings of silence in various senses of
the word, such as “signification,” “symbolic meaning “ and “significance” in
each of these art-forms or genres, and in specific works of art, can be the subject
of very rewarding studies and would considerably illuminate the expressive
resources of the particular art-form or genre. That in addition to the purely sen-
suous, “musical” contribution of silence to the auditory texture of music—e.g.,
to its rhythms and tempi, melodies and harmonies—and to the “verbal music”
of a poem or a prose work; and so on. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
aesthetic uses of silence in these art-forms or genres have long been the subject
of scholarly and philosophical writing. The psychology of silence, on the other
hand, is constantly utilized or portrayed in e.g., the pages of fiction writers,
playwrights, and poets. What is surprising is that, as far as I know, we find vir-
tually no studies in Western philosophy about the “logic” and “pragmatics”
and, especially, the ethics and politics of silence. The present inquiry is intend-
ed to provide the beginnings of an endeavor to remedy the situation in philoso-
phy; while the chapters on the aesthetics of silence in the arts and in nature, as
well as in our inner life and in spiritual/religious life, are intended as modest
additions to the extant literature.
Respecting the conceptual, philosophical questions occasioned by the mul-
tifarious uses of silence in human culture, the rest of this chapter will be devot-
ed to the drawing of certain logical distinctions and to preliminary analysis of
Forms of Doing | 9
certain concepts necessary for a clear understanding of silence in any area of

human culture, be it art, language, moral conduct, religion, and so on.
Silence, whether in human life or in nature, always exists in some context
or situation; it is fundamentally and inescapably contextual. Noise, in many
forms, is always with us—in the modern world, as “sound pollution,” often
assaulting our ears out of the blue so to speak. The noise of a plane passing over
our part of town is an example. But silence in human experience—and this is
also true of most extant auditory art and often in the everyday employment of
language—is often “framed” by or “embedded” in sound, including noise of
various sorts; though sometimes it also constitutes a sound’s framework or
context, when prolonged and complete silence is “broken” or “punctuated” by
sound. This, as we know, clearly affects the meaning(s) of silence for a particu-
lar perceiver or, correspondingly4, the meaning(s) of the sounds or noises in the
particular context.
“Meanings” and Uses of Silence
Silence, like speech and action, “initiated” by a human being, whether by be-
ing silent, becoming silent, or breaking silence is frequently if not always signif-
icant or meaningful in some sense or senses of these terms.
A number of important meanings of ‘meaning’ silence can be readily distin-
guished in different contexts. They include (1) meaning in the sense of significa-
tion— in a sense of ‘meaning’ and ‘signification’ that in relation to silent acts is
the counterpart of meaning/signification in relation to illocutionary/perlocu-
tionary speech acts. In the case of speech-acts meaning consists of speaker- or
utterer-meaning; i.e., what the speaker means in/by performing a particular
illocutionary/perlocutionary speech act-in-context, not so-called linguistic
meaning, the meaning that individual words or sentences of a given language
have as such. Likewise in the case of acts of silence, (1) meaning-1 consists in
meaning a particular silent person has in mind, what she means (or wants or
intends to mean) in/by performing a silent act.5
||
4 Or they affect the corresponding meaning(s) of the sounds, if any.
5 As I stated earlier in relation to the meanings and uses of silence, the same is true, mutatis
mutandis, in relation to silence, concerning what I distinguished as meaning [(1)] of ‘meaning’;
that is, meaning in the sense of “signification.” That is, “meaning-1” consists in the meaning a
given silent person has in mind in (and by) being silent or keeping silent in a particular context.
In other words, on the analogy of “speaker-meaning,” I shall call it “silent-person-meaning.”
In addition to meaning in sense (1), and by virtue of it, a silence-in-context

may have meaning in the sense of (2) significance of one sort or another analo-
gous to the sense in which linguistic utterances may have a particular signifi-
cance. Silence may also have (3) symbolic meaning/significance. This sense of
‘meaning’ is important in relation to the aesthetic, political and religious uses of
silence. A painting, a sculpture or an edifice— may itself refer symbolically to or
include a symbolic reference, to silence.
Further, the word ‘silence’ or the concept silence may have (4) a metaphori-
cal use. Indeed, silence can also function as (5) a sign or (6) a symptom or some
special state or condition of the silent person. Since “symptoms” are psycho-
physical causal effects independent of the silent person’s, desires, intentions or
will they significantly differ from the meanings distinguished in (1)–(4) above,
which are meanings for the silent person herself and depend, as meanings, on
what the silent person explicitly (or implicitly) intends to mean in the particular
context (and if successfully conveyed, would be the meanings the audience
would interpret or understand the silence to have). If a silent is prolonged and
total, accompanied by certain physical or mental conditions, it may serve as a
sign of temporary unconsciousness, coma, or death; while a person’s total si-
lence about one’s past would likely be a sign (and perhaps also a symptom) of
deep-lying psychological-existential trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse
or the traumas suffered by survivors of the Holocaust or other genocides. Again,
in the case of what we call “silent or taciturn type” of person, her habitual si-
lence may be a sign or indication of either introversion or extreme shyness. Pro-
tracted silence may also be a symptom of some physical illness or disease; or a
symptom of some temporary or lasting pathological, psychological or mental
condition, such as profound sorrow, sadness, depression, melancholia or even
catatonia,6 etc. (See also Chapter 5, “Silent Minds”)
Since silence is a non-verbal act, a form of doing, it signifies, hence ex-
presses and communicates through (7) suggestion or intimation. In addition,
through silence one may (8) imply various ideas and thoughts, feelings, emo-
tions or sentiments, desires, etc., by silence reinforced by appropriate looks or
glances, facial expressions and suggestive movements—by body language in
general. Now consider: “In keeping silent, he was trying to protect himself in
court from self-incrimination,” where the defendant’s attempt to protect himself
was the meaning of his silence in that situation. Here ‘meaning’ has the sense of
||
6 “A schizophrenic disorder characterized by plastic immobility of the limbs, stupor, negati-
vism, and mutism.” The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition (Boston: Hough-
ton Mifflin Co. [n.d.]).
Forms of Doing | 11
“implication,” since silence does not and cannot literally state anything, hence
mean in the way in which words can signify, in the primary dictionary sense of
word-meaning (“meaning 1”). Only words, signs (e.g., in the sense of posters),
signals (e.g. Morse signals) and verbal symbols can state something or other,
hence mean in the primary sense. One interesting similarity between silence
and speech that may be noted here is that just like speech, “body language”
may sometimes “conflict” with or “contradict” rather than reinforce what one
says. For instance, sarcasm or irony would become possible through a silent
person’s consciously or unconsciously giving conflicting or contradictory signals
through silence on the one hand and body language on the other. Although that
does not constitute an additional sense or meaning of ‘meaning’ to those I have
listed, I should mention what may be called “audience-meaning,” the meaning
the audience understands or interprets a particular silence-in-context to express
and communicate/miscommunicate.
As in the case of speech and action, the meaning of a given voluntary si-
lence-in-context, in any of the preceding seven meanings of the word, may be
ambiguous whenever the audience is unable to know which of two or more pos-
sible meanings is intended by the silence; as opposed to situations in which the
silence is non-ambiguous and the audience understands its intended meaning.
In the latter cases audience-meaning would be the same as the intended mean-
ing. In the case of involuntary silence, where the silence functions as a sign or
symptom the audience-meaning may or may not be correct. In the latter case it
may be due to the ambiguity of the signs or symptoms shown by the silent per-
son, or for other reasons.
It is clear that a silence’s non-ambiguity, hence the audience’s understand-
ing of its meaning is necessary for the audience’s proper understanding and
response, hence for the realization of the silence’s intended expressive and
communicative goals. In contrast to ambiguity the concept of vagueness is in-
applicable to the various sorts of meanings silence may have, though some
elements in the silence’s context, such as the body language accompanying the
silence, may be vague: for example, a silence accompanied by a vague gesture,
look or glance.
Here are some examples:
[1] “John’s s almost total silence in class I think mans (signifies) either that
he’s too shy to speak or that he’s not following the discussion”:
[2] “After decades of complete, unbroken silence—he must have taken a
vow of silence—the hermit at last broke his silence; it was a particularly
meaningful (significant) act on his part. His doing so was a very mean-
ingful act.”
[3] In a series of Ingmar Bergman’s films starting with “The Seventh Seal”
God is hidden or silent in a symbolic sense of these concepts. The si-
lence or hiddenness of God is symbolic of modern man’s uncertainty or
doubt concerning the existence of a loving and caring God.
[4] The phrase ‘the silence of God’ or the sentence “God is silent,” where
these locutions are intended to mean either that God does not exist or
that He does exist but is silent, hidden, does not reveal himself to the
world, the word ‘silence’ is used metaphorically. For instance, in Blaise
Pascal’s famous statement in the Pense’es to the effect that the silence
of the spheres frightens him, where ‘the silence of the spheres’ can be
interpreted metaphorically, as expressing Pascal’s existential angst
about God’s seeming absence or silence. A close relation exists between
the metaphorical uses of .the word/concept silence and the symbolic
use of an actual or imagined silence. In referring to the object symbol-
ized, the word/concept silence may be either literally or metaphorically
used.
[5] A. “What was the meaning of John’s sudden silence?”
B. “It was a sign that he was offended by Peter’s remarks.”
[6] “The patient’s total silence is a symptom of his deep psychic problems.”
[7] “His sudden walking away with a gesture of impatience, without saying
“Goodbye” implied (suggested, intimated) that he’s not interested in
what was going on.”
[8] A. “I don’t understand what Mary meant by her silent response to my
statement that the world today is in really bad shape.”
B. “I think she meant that she didn’t care to discuss the matter. From
her demeanor I sensed that she had other, more immediate things on
her mind.”
1.2 Speech-Acts And The ‘In’- And ‘By’-formulae
As noted in the Introduction, the ordinary “In” and “By” distinctions is applica-
ble to all forms of doing. And since speech–acts constitute a form of doing, con-
temporary speech-act theory provides a highly developed, complex and sophis-
ticated body of linguistic knowledge, it is well-suited to provide certain
important distinctions for our own study of the various other forms of doing,
leaving aside speech-act theory itself.
To begin with, the ordinary ‘in-formula’ and ‘by-formula’ are at home in re-
lation to silence in all its forms; just as they were originally used to form of the
basis of J.L. Austin’s concepts of “illocutionary” and “perlocutionary” acts in his
Speech-Acts And The ‘In’- And ‘By’-formulae | 13
speech-act theory and the distinction between the two, and later by John Searle
and others in a much more refined and comprehensive form. Thus in the case of
silence, we say e.g. (1) “In being (remaining) silent, John was expressing his
impatience at what Peter was saying.” Or (2) “In being (remaining) silent John
was expressing rebelliousness (contrariness, obstinacy),” etc. And in the case of
the ‘by-formula,’ we, e.g., say: (1’) “By being (remaining) silent John intended to
make Peter stop what he was saying”; and (2’) “By being (remaining) silent John
intended to demonstrate his individuality,” etc. A similar use of the “In/By” for-
mulae, etc., will be applied, in the chapters that follow, to body language, phys-
ical action and mental activity, respectively.
In John Searle’s speech act theory “elementary illocutionary acts are of the
form F(P): they are composed of a force F and of a proposition P. On the one
hand, sentences like “Please, help me!” and “You will help me,” whose clauses
are synonymous, express in the same contexts of utterance illocutionary acts
with the same propositional content but different forces. On the other hand,
elementary sentences like “Is it snowing?” and “Are you coming?” with the
same force marker express illocutionary acts with the same force but different
propositional contents.”7
Writing about force in contemporary speech act theory Vanderveken states:
“Searle and Vanderveken have decomposed [in Foundations of Illocutionary
Logic] illocutionary forces into their various components (illocutionary point,
mode of achievement, degree of strength and propositional, preparatory and
sincerity conditions). …The five primitive illocutionary forces are the five sim-
plest forces with an illocutionary point: the force of assertion, the force of a
commitment to a future action, the force of a linguistic attempt to get someone to
act, the force of declaration and that of expression of an attitude.”8
In this book, in relation to silence in its various forms, I use the concept of
force similarly to one of its uses by John Searle and Vanderveken, viz. as degree
of a silence’s strength—the degree of its capacity, power or potential to express
and communicate the silence’s intended goal. In certain silent acts the analogues
of some or all of Searle’s four other primitive illocutionary forces may also anal-
ogously apply. Analogues of some or all of Searle’s four other primitive illocu-
tionary forces may also apply to body language, as we shall see in this and in
||
7 Essays in Speech Act Theory, Daniel Vanderveken and Susumu Kubo, editors (John
Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam/Philadelphia, Chapter 1: Introduction, p. 5. Italics
in original.
8 Ibid., p. 6.Italics in original.
following chapters. Whether an analogue of Searle’s concept of illocutionary

point (*1975b) 9 can meaningfully apply to silent acts, etc., remains to be seen.
The force of a silent act varies with the act’s intended meaning, particularly
by its signification, together with the nature of its context; including, in some
cases, the silent person’s relationship or lack of relationship to the audience,
the latter’s knowledge of the silent person’s life and circumstances, character
and personality, and the time and place or the occasion on which the silence
occurs. For instance, other things being equal, the force of a given silence would
tend to be vary if the relationship is one of superior to inferior, boss to subordi-
nate. Thus we can imagine a situation in which a company manager is dressing-
down a lowly employee for what the former claims is the employee’s incompe-
tence; such that every time the employee opens his mouth in his defense his
superior shuts him up with further accusations, until the poor chap lapses into
complete silence. It is clear that his silence would have no force at all! The boss
interprets the silence as a sign of the employee’s admission of incompetence,
completely disregarding it. For him the silence vindicates his criticism.
Now consider the opposite situation. The employee hesitantly asks his boss
for a raise—and in return he immediately gets, say, a disdainful silence coupled
with a withering glance, shutting him up. The boss’ silence speaks volumes: it
has all the force of a tank running over a helpless bystander! Domestic relation-
ships, among others, can also provide interesting examples of the role of force in
relation to silence.
In addition to force in relation to illocutionary speech-acts, Searle (*1975b),
as Vanderveken states, “… proposed… a classification of basic kinds of mean-
ingful utterances based on the clear and distinct nation of illocutionary point.
From Searle’s view, there are only five illocutionary points that speakers can
achieve on propositions in an utterance, namely: the assertive, commissive,
directive, declaratory and expressive illocutionary points.” 10 “Speakers achieve
the assertive point when they represent how things are in the world, the
commissive point when they commit themselves to doing something, the declar-
atory point when they do things in the world at the moment of the utterance
solely by virtue of saying that they do and the expressive point when they ex-
press their attitudes about objects and facts in the world.” 11
||
9 John Searle, “A Taxonomy of illocutionary acts”, In Language, Mind and Knowledge. Minne-
sota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975)
10 Ibid., pp. 4–5. Italics in original.
11 Ibid., p. 5.Italics in original.
Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Speech Acts | 15
Although silence is rarely if at all as precise as speech can be, since silence
essentially relies on suggestion or intimation to get its point across, its heavy
reliance on its context, including the body language used, tends to enable it to
make its particular point or points. (Note for example: “What was the point of his
silence?”) Whenever the context has a rich content, it also helps the silence to
approach—sometimes to surpass—the expressive and communicative force of
speech. As a consequence, the points of acts of silence may approximate the five
basic points of illocutionary speech acts Searle distinguishes.
There appears to be an analogue to Searle’s assertive point only in those
contexts in which silence is used symbolically to refer to some aspect of the
world, as in the case of Pascal’s referring to the “silence” of the universe, or
Ingmar Bergman’s use of silence in certain films to refer to God’s hiddenness,
his absence from the world. But there we find clear analogues to Searle’s
commisive point whenever a person uses silence to express her commitment to
doing something; as e.g., in “In joining the “silent” Cartusian monastic order in
France and taking the vow of silence, Isaac committed and dedicated himself to
God, to the furtherance of God’s Will on earth.” Similarly Searle’s declaratory
point has its counterpart in the case of silence when, e.g., a person withdraws
from a group’s heated political discussion and sits silently at the other end of
the room essentially to declare his lack of interest in their (radical or conserva-
tive) political views.”
Whether silence can have additional points besides Searle’s four illocution-
ary points remains to be seen.
1.3 Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Speech Acts
Speech-act illocutions of the general form: “In doing x P was doing y,” the
speech act designated by x—by the verbal expression I shall refer to as the “an-
tecedent” – is in some sense “logically equivalent” to the act designated by y—
by the verbal expression I shall refer to as the “consequent.” For example, in
the illocution, “in telling his wife ‘I love you’ he was expressing his love for his
wife,” the locution “his telling his wife ‘I love you!’” is logically equivalent in
some sense to ‘his expressing his love for his wife.” Similarly, in the
perlocutionary-act “By saying he loved his wife he meant—i.e., wanted, intend-
ed to show—his love for his wife,” the “antecedent”—‘saying he loved his wife’
is “logically equivalent” to ‘meant he loved his wife.’
As is familiar in the literature, and as I observed in Section II in relation to
the various possible meanings and uses of illocutionary and perlocutionary
speech acts on the one hand and acts of silence on the other, the term ‘means’ in
relation to illocutionary and perlocutionary speech-acts refers to speaker-

meaning, to what the speaker means. This is obviously also true of speech acts
that state what people do through silence.
It should be remembered at this point that, like speech acts and actions the
success or failure of a silent act-in-context in conveying what the silent person
means, what she wants to convey, depends not only on the context in which it
occurs but also on the audience’s response to it. People sometimes insist that
they know the meaning of a particular silence-in-context better than the silent
person herself—just as they sometimes do in relation to other people’s feelings.
For instance, in Understanding the Arts John Hospers gives the example of the
girl who thinks she is in love while the mother tells her she’s only infatuated.
Hospers says that the mother may be right. (Ibid. pp. 204–205) I agree.
Conditions of Illocutionary acts
In “Conditions of Illocutionary Acts” I distinguished two types of conditions of

illocutionary acts... LI-(“logical”) and PI-(“pragmatic”) conditions.” LI-
Conditions “are conditions whose satisfaction is logically necessary for a speak-
er S to succeed in performing a particular illocutionary act in uttering a given
sentence s… Analysis shows that there is only one general LI-condition of any
and all illocutionary acts, namely, the presence, in a very broad sense of the
word, of a hearer H. In many but not all cases H may be the speaker S himself.”
“…The hearer may be either real or imaginary; e.g. he may be a character in a
novel, a hallucination of the speaker, even a ghost or spirit! The same applies to
the speaker.”12
The question is whether the preceding applies to silence. That is, (1) are
there logical conditions for a silence’s success in expressing what the silent
person intends to express by her silence? And (2) what are the pragmatic condi-
tions for the success of a silent act’s expressing what the silent person intends
to express by her silence? That is, contextual conditions that would enable the
silence to succeed? The answer is “yes,” and will be considered in some detail
in Chapter 2, “Pragmatics of Silence.”
The logical conditions for the success of an act of silence in express-
ing/communicating the intended purpose of the silence, require that the silent
person be (a) alive and conscious, and desires or intends to express some state
||
12 Philosophy of Language and Logical Theory: Collected Papers (Lanham, MD): University
Press of America, Inc. 1995, pp. 204–228.
Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Speech Acts | 17
of her being at the time, and/or to communicate it to the audience. If, say, she is
in alone, with no one to talk with, her silence may consist of her silent thinking,
feeling, remembering, etc. On the other hand, people do sometimes talk to
themselves aloud, to break the heavy oppressive weight of aloneness.
2 The Logic of Silence cont’d.: “Pragmatics” of
Silence
2.1 Forms of Doing
This chapter continues the analysis of the “informal logic” of silence begun in
Chapters 1 by concentrating on the “pragmatics” of silence, on what an individ-
ual or group of individuals intend(s) to and sometimes succeed(s) in effecting a
certain response in an audience, and/or imparting certain information to it:
sometimes with the additional purpose of eliciting acknowledgment of its recep-
tion of the communication by what might be called relevant counter-communi-
cation on its part.
A clear definition of ‘communication’ is provided by Hector Neri-Castaneda
as follows:
To communicate is to cause other persons to have thoughts (and beliefs) or
feelings (and attitudes) of a kind one wishes them to have. In the former case we
have informational communication, and this is candid informational communi-
cation if one causes another person to apprehend, although not necessarily to
believe, what oneself believes or is thinking about. To cause one’s hearers to
come to believe what one believes is only the ultimate goal, and if attained, the
crowning success, of candid informational communication. For the most part,
however, one must be content with causing one’s hearers to believe that one
does not believe or to think what one says that one believes or thinks.13
The one problem with this account relates to the statements that (1) “to
cause one’s hearers to come to believe what one believes is only the ultimate
goal, and (2) if attained, the crowning success, of candid informational commu-
nication.” As the discussion that follows will make clear, (1) may not always be
the ultimate goal of informational communication, and so (2) may not always be
the “crowning success, of informational communication.” In some situations
the communicator may intend still more; namely, to move the hearers to re-
spond to the imparted communication by indicating or acknowledging in some
way their reception of and understanding of the information conveyed. That
would be the crowning success of the communication. Note that the audience’s
acknowledgment of (a) its reception of the information, and (b) its agreement or
disagreement with, acceptance or rejection of it would constitute a second in-
||
13 “On The Philosophical Foundations Of The Theory Of Communication: Reference,” Midwest
Studies In Philosophy, II (1977), p. 165.
Silent Expression/Communication | 19
stance of informational communication, a response to or a counter-communi-

cation, initiated by the audience. In that sort of situation the audience’s re-
sponse would consist of the audience’s performance of In-act of silence or an-
other kind; e.g., by its performance of a “By-act” of silence, accompanied by
appropriate action or body language. Communication is a matter of extent or
degree—what is communicated is a matter of what and how much the speaker
wants or intends to impart, and the effect, if any, she wants to produce in the
audience; and different speakers, or the same speaker at different times, may
communicate different sorts and amounts of information, through the
perlocutionary acts performed, depending on her or their purpose in the partic-
ular situation or situations. Thus in everyday life situations, people normally
impart or try to impart only the kind and amount of information they want to
communicate to the particular audience—normally—what they consider to be
pertinent to the occasion.14 But the audience may sometimes be imagined or
imaginary. We can readily think of situations in which a writer or poet say
“talks to” an imaginary person, such as her Muse, or a lover “talks” “to” his
absent beloved, imagining her to be present before him. (Similarly, a person can
“talk” silently to a character in, say, a work of fiction, an imagined person, or an
actual absent person.)
The foregoing about communication through speech applies, mutatis mu-
tandis, to the topic of this chapter, namely communication through silence,
including communication through silent action.
2.2 Silent Expression/Communication
There are five standard logically related stages of increasing complexity and
informational content in silent expression-communication. In these five/stages,
successful communication corresponds to five standard stages of illocutionary
speech-acts, in a person’s performance of acts of silence in relevant contexts or
kinds of contexts. The five stages of silent expression/communication vary in
the kinds and amounts of affective and propositional information conveyed. As
we shall see, in stage 4 and particularly in stage 5, successful communication
||
14 An exception is gossiping, when irrelevant information is spouted by the garrulous.
Fortunately silence does not lend itself to that vice: one reason why silence is golden!
Another example is when a person is so full of things she wants to say—such as what she
did and saw during a vacation—that she cannot stop herself from pouring out irrelevant infor-
mation along the way.
20 | The Logic of Silence cont’d.: “Pragmatics” of Silence
becomes reciprocal communication. If the agent and her audience extend the
process beyond stages one and two, the silent acts performed would constitute
a conversation.
Stage 1: This would consist in situations in which a person P silently ex-
presses or manifests, through some action—a frequently pent up—feeling, emo-
tion, thought or desire she has at the time, in the absence of any conscious inten-
tion to express her feeling, emotion, etc. Her silence would then simply be a
spontaneous accompaniment to what she may be feeling, thinking etc., at that
time. For instance, we can imagine a woman frustrated in her office work silent-
ly expressing her frustration by throwing and breaking a bottle on the floor as
soon as she enters her house: either (a) when no one else is in the house, or (b)
when, say, her husband (an audience A) is there at the time.
Stage 2: This would consist in situations in which P expresses some feeling,
emotion, desire or thought through silence with the intention or desire to com-
municate it to a person or audience A; to make the latter aware of what she is
experiencing at that time—but without aiming at producing any effect in or
influencing A. In terms of the concept of meaning, P here wishes to convey to A
the particular meaning of her silence. Unlike stage 1, therefore, P’s silence in
stage 2 would be intentional, would include a desire or intention to communi-
cate to a present audience.
Stage 3: This would consist in situations in which P wishes, desires or aims
not only to communicate to A the feeling, emotion, thought, etc., she is silently
experiencing but also wants or desires to affect A accordingly; that is, to arouse a
like feeling, emotion, desire, etc. in A. Here, as in Stage2, the silence would be
deliberate or intentional, purposive. Stated in terms of the concept of meaning,
P would want or desire to affect A in the manner I described by A’s becoming
aware of or recognizing the meaning of P’s silence.
Stage 4: This would consist in situations in which P wants that A, besides
(a) understanding the meaning of her silence, (b) to respond appropriately to it;
(c) to become aware, and so understand (d) that P wants A to understand the
meaning of her silence in that context, and (e) to appropriately acknowledge its
understanding of it, by speech or by appropriate silent body language.
Stage 5: This would consist in situations in which, in addition to conditions
(a)–(e) of stage 4 situations, (f) P acknowledges, by appropriate speech, silence
and/or body language, her understanding of A’s acknowledgment of the latter’s
proper reception of P’s silent messages.
Restatement of stages/levels 1–5 situations in terms of the In-phase of acts of

silence
Stage 1 has no “By-phase” analogous to the corresponding to any illocutionary

speech-acts. Stage 1 situations consist in the silent person P’s performing a “By-
act” that simply expresses a certain feeling, emotion, desire, thought, etc. Using
the earlier example about the frustrated woman this stage can be formalized
thus: “In silently throwing a bottle to the ground… and breaking it, P expressed
(or was expressing) her frustration with her office work.”
Stage 2 situations would be formalized thus: “In her silence under condi-
tions C, P intended (wanted, etc.) to communicate a certain feeling, emotion,
desire, thought, etc., to the audience A, and to enable A to know or understand
the meaning of the silence.” In this stage the frustrated woman in our example,
on entering the house, sees her husband—and right away silently throws a bot-
tle to the floor, to express her frustration so that he may become aware of her
frustration with her office work. Thus, “In her silently throwing the bottle to the
ground… P was trying to communicate her frustration to her husband.”
Stage 3 situations would be formalized thus: “In being silent, or in acting si-
lently, under conditions C, P intended (wanted, etc.) to (a) communicate to the
audience A the feeling, emotion, etc., she expressed by her silence; and (b) to
affect A with a like feeling, emotion, attitude, etc.; and (c) to make A understand
or know her silent act’s meaning; what her silent act expresses and is intended
to communicate.” For instance, “In silently throwing the bottle to the floor
when she entered the house, P intended to communicate her frustration to her
husband, to make her feel her frustration, and to make him understand her
frustration with her work at the office.”
Stage 4 situations can be formalized thus: “In silently expressing a feeling
emotion, attitude, etc., X under conditions C, P intended (a) to communicate to
A that feeling, etc., and so, (b) to make A understand the act’s meaning—what it
expresses and is intended to communicate; (c) to help enable or help induce A
to indicate—to make in some way clear to P–A’s knowledge or understanding of
the meaning of P’s silent act, and (d) to appropriately acknowledge... its under-
standing etc. , of it by appropriate silent body language. In our example, the
frustrated woman’s silent act is intended not just to communicate her frustra-
tion to her husband and to make him feel and understand her frustration but
also to indicate to her, e.g., by a nod or a hug, that he feels with and under-
stands her frustration.
Stage 5 situations may be formalized thus: “In her silence under conditions
C, P intends (a)–(d) described in level/stage 4 situations, but also (e) wants A to
know that she is aware of A’s response to her silence, the way she hopes or ex-
pects A to respond to: e.g., to feel or think, etc., what P expresses, etc., by her
silence. For instance, in our example, this stage includes her husband’s re-
sponding to her silence by e.g., saying “I feel and understand your frustration,”
leading either to his telling her that he understands her frustration, or silently
giving her a smile and a hug. Alternatively, she may hug him as a result of see-
ing that he understands her frustration and feels with her.
Note that with the addition, in stage 5, of condition (e) we pass from com-
munication (by P to A) to reciprocal (P–A) communication, although the recipro-
cal communication would not be a conversation in a straightforward sense. In
our example, the satisfaction of condition (e) would constitute a bit of conversa-
tion, if we imagine the husband to say, e.g., “I’m with you, dear, if you want to
quit your job”—or at least: “I understand your frustration, my dear.”
Note that in/stages 2–5 the silent person’s By-goals may or may not be real-
ized.15 The success of the “By-acts” of silence in stages 2–5 crucially depends on
the satisfaction of certain special conditions. These necessary conditions are (I)
contextual, in the sense of involving the presence of the necessary “stage-
setting” for the silent act; and (II) appropriate body language accompanying the
silent act. Both (I) and (II) become increasingly stringent and complex as we
pass from level/stage 2 situations to the succeeding kinds of situations; with
these conditions increasing in stringency and complexity whenever the audi-
ence consists of more than one person.
In the case of stage 5 (I) and (II) may sometimes be quite obvious to P in
light of her interpretation of A’s response. Sometimes however A has to make
that clear to P by means of a smile, a nod, a significant glance, and the like.16
||
15 Concerning the general conditions of success of elementary illocutionary speech acts Dan-
iel Vanderveken writes: “As [John] Searle and I pointed out, one can define the conditions of
success… from the components of their illocutionary force and of their propositional content.
An illocutionary acct of the form F (P) is successfully performed I the context of an utterance
when, firstly in that context, the speaker succeeds in achieving the illocutionary point of force F
on proposition P with the mode of achievement of F, and P satisfies the propositional content
conditions of F, secondly, the speaker succeeds in presupposing the propositions determined by
the preparatory conditions of F and finally he also succeeds in expressing with the degree of
strength of F the mental states of the modes determined by the sincerity conditions of F about
the fact represented by the propositional content P.” (“Universal Grammar And Speech Act
Theory”, Essays in Speech Act Theory, eds. Daniel Vanderveken and Susumu Kubo (Amster-
dam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Co., 2002), p. 47. Italics in original. These condi-
tions of success apply, mutatis mutandis, to success in the performance of silent acts.
16 Vanderveken writes: “Illocutionary acts such as assertions, questions, refusals and offers
which are performed at a single moment of utterance by way of uttering sentences in appropri-
ate contexts are first-level illocutionary acts. Elementary illocutionary acts of the first level are of
Let me illustrate with two examples of successful stages 2–5 situations in-
corporating the requisite “stage-setting,” consisting in, (I) the requisite context,
coupled with (II) the subject’s and the audience’s body language that reinforces
a given silent act X’s success.
As our first example, let us imagine a funeral church service or a cemetery
where a deceased man’s wife and children, together with relatives and friends
(their guests) are gathered for the service. And suppose that the bereaved wom-
an expresses her grief by silently crying (providing an example of stage 2 situa-
tions). And suppose that the bereaved woman’s expression of grief which is
written on her face and in her eyes not only reveals her grief to those present but
also makes them sympathetically share her grief (illustrating stages 2 and 3
situations, respectively). An exchange of significant, tearful glances by the as-
sembled group also silently “tells” the bereaved woman and her children that
the guests not only understand their grief but also share it (illustrating stage 4
situations). Finally, a slight nod accompanied by a significant look by the wife
silently expresses her and her children’s appreciation for the guests’ sympathet-
ically sharing her grief.
As our second example, let us imagine a newly-bereaved man wearing a
black armband standing alone at a street corner, being approached by a friend.
As the latter comes closer from, say, across the street, and before he sees the
armband, he is struck by his friend’s drawn face and bent head, and immediate-
ly suspects that something terrible must have happened to him. As he comes
still closer he notices the armband and immediately realizes that a member of
his friend’s family or a close friend of his must have died very recently, and
immediately shakes his head in silent commiseration with his bereaved friend.
||
the form F(P); they consist of illocutionary force F2 and a propositional content P. Speakers who
mean to perform an elementary illocutionary act may have all sorts of intentions and
perlocutionary goals. But they always have the intention to achieve an illocutionary point on
the propositional content. According to illocutionary logic the five points of language use are:
the assertive point which consists in committing the speaker to doing something, the directive
point which consists in doing something by way of representing oneself as doing it and the
expressive point which consists in expressing attitudes.” (Ibid., p. 26) It is clear that what
Vanderveken describes in relation to speech acts corresponds to Level/Stage 4 or 5 of the five
standard levels/stages of silent “By-acts”.
Regarding the “perlocutionary goals” of illocutionary speech acts and of “By-acts” of si-
lence, we might add that that which a speaker P intends or aims to communicate to an audi-
ence is “speaker-meaning” (which I shall call “meaning-2”) to distinguish it from the utter-
ance’s dictionary meaning (meaning-1). P’s speaker-meaning in a given context may include,
besides cognitive content, her expression of particular feelings, emotions or sentiments, de-
sires, attitudes, thoughts or ideas.
The latter acknowledges the gesture of sympathy by gripping his friend’s hand
and squeezing it.
The preceding two examples and similar examples we can imagine or recall
from our own past experience dramatize the crucial role that (I) context or
“stage-setting” together with (II) appropriate body language, play in the suc-
cessful silent expression and communication, as the subject’s objectives be-
come increasingly complex when we pass from the simplest, stage 2 situations
in the present case to stage 3, thence to stage 4, and finally to stage 5 situations.
Similarly with other types of communicative/miscommunicative situations
17
we shall presently consider.18
On all the preceding stages body language makes the silence, as a vehicle
for expression and communication/miscommunication, more definite or more
precise—or in the case of miscommunication, more imprecise—thereby reduc-
ing—or increasing—the ever-present potential for indefiniteness or ambiguity of
the sheer act of silence. On every stage of silent “By-acts” a necessary condition
for communication is the audience’s good to excellent knowledge of the sub-
ject’s character or personality, her life, as well as immediate circumstances;
while intimate knowledge of them is requisite with respect to stages 4 and 5
situations, and other, “non-standard” types (not stages) of P-illocutionary acts
to be considered a little later.
In “Intention And Convention In Speech Acts” P.F. Strawson critically con-
siders H. P. Grice’s H. P. Grice’s provision and explanation of “the concept of
someone’s nonnaturally meaning something by an audience” in the latter’s arti-
cle, “Meaning”19, which, Strawson says20 applies to “linguistic utterances, to
speech acts… but is of more general application.” (For instance, it applies to the
concept of a symbol and the concept of a sign, which too have nonnatural mean-
ing in Grice’s sense.)
||
17 Note that silence does not always involve any intention on the silent person’s part to com-
municate any content to the audience. Sometimes, silence is a convenient way of escaping
from or avoiding speaking. For instance, we are sometimes stumped about what to say or do on
the spur of the moment—e.g., in a particularly embarrassing situation, such as someone’s
telling us something embarrassing or scandalous—and so are, or stay, silent. Similarly when
someone says something for which we cannot think of, or have no ready response, at that
moment.
18 What P. F. Strawson, in “Intention And Convention In Speech Acts (The Philosophical
Review, October 1964, p. 444) describes as “X’s [the speaker’s] situation, attitude to Y [the
audience], manner, and current intention” describes as what I called X’s “situation,” which
crucially includes X’s (and sometimes, Y’s) body language.
19 Philosophical Review, vol. LXVII, 1957, pp. 439–460.
20 P.F. Strawson, op cit., p. 446. Strawson’s italics.
Strawson continues:
The explanation of the introduced concept is given [by Grice] in terms of the concept of in-
tention. S nonnaturally means something by an utterance x if S intends (i1) to produce by
uttering x a certain response ® in an audience A and intends (i2) that A shall recognize S’s
intention (i1) and that this recognition on the part of A of S’s intention (i1) shall function
as A’s reason or part of the reason, for his response r.21
Strawson adds parenthetically that “The word ‘response,’ though more conven-
ient in some ways than Grice’s ‘effect,’ is not ideal. It is intended to cover cogni-
tive and affective states or attitudes as well as actions.”22 He adds that “It is,
evidently, an important feature of this definition [the definition of ‘someone’s
nonnaturally meaning something by an utterance’] that the securing of the re-
sponse r is intended to be mediated by the securing of another (and always
cognitive) effect in A; namely, recognition of S’s intention to secure response
r.”23
Although Grice does not apply the formula to silence, it is clear that the
analysis of his concept—if stated in terms of the “By-phase” of acts of silence—
would essentially provide a more precise restatement of our stage 4 situations
than I have described; while for Strawson, “full communication” also includes
A’s recognition of S’s intention to secure response r.” Strawson therefore cor-
rectly argues that Grice’s analysis of the latter’s concept is “not complex enough
for his [Grice’s] purpose”; namely, as an “analysis of a situation in which one
person is trying, in a sense of the word ‘communication’ fundamental to any
theory of meaning, to communicate with another.” The reason is that it is “pos-
sible to imagine a situation in which Grice’s three conditions would be satisfied
by a person S and yet, in this important sense of ‘communicate,’ it would not be
the case that S could be said to be trying to communicate by means of his pro-
duction of x with the person A to whom he was trying to produce the response
r.”24
Strawson imagines the following situation:
S intends by a certain action to induce in A the belief that p; so he satisfies condition (i1).
He arranges convincing-looking “evidence” that p, in a place where A is bound to see it.
He does this, knowing that A is watching him at work, but knowing also that A does not
know that S knows that A is watching him at work. He realizes that A will not take the ar-
||
21 Strawson, ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
ranged ‘evidence’ as genuine or natural evidence that p, but realizes, and indeed intends,
that A will take his arranging of it as grounds for thinking that he, S, intends to induce in
A the belief that p. That is, he intends A to recognize his (i1) intention. So S satisfies condi-
tion (i2). He knows that A has general grounds for thinking that S would not wish to make
him, A, think that p unless it were known to S to be the case that p; and hence that A’s
recognition of his (S’s) intention to induce in A the belief that p will in fact seem to A a suf-
ficient reason for believing that p. And he intends that A’s recognition of his intention (i1)
should function in just this way. So he satisfies condition (i1).”25
As we can see, Strawson’s account of “full communication” with respect to

speech acts corresponds to our level/stage 4 of silent “By-acts”. For unlike our
level/stage 5, he does not add the further condition that S should acknowledge
A’s recognition of P’s intention, etc. But as I said earlier, A’s recognition of S’s
intention, etc., goes beyond communication by S alone and becomes reciprocal
communication—hence the beginnings of a possible conversation between S
and A.
Note, finally, that in his preceding example Strawson, like Grice, does not
appeal either to S’s or to A’s body language, to which I shall return later.
2.3 Non-Standard Situations in Silent

Expression/Communication
In addition to the standard sorts of situations of the use of In-acts of silence I

referred to as stages 1–5, there are a number of non-standard, in the sense of
ordinarily less common, sorts of situations that consist of (A) situations in
which, for unspoken reasons of her own, the agent P employs silence to with-
hold, hence to hide certain content from A; and (B) situations in which P aims to
deceive or mislead A by silently hiding or withholding some content. Both sorts
of situations, (A) and (B), involve P’s deliberate miscommunication in relation
to the audience A. In some situations of sort (A) P uses silence to try to mislead
A by the ironical or the sarcastic use of silence; or by using silence as a way of
propagating a lie or lies. In all such cases special stage-settings, including adroit
body language, are frequently necessary.
As with situations where someone says something but means something
else—sometimes meaning something very different from what the speaker’s
words literally mean—silence can be used to mean something different, some-
||
25 Ibid., pp. 446–447. Strawson’s italics. Strawson’s description of S’s action, stated in terms
of S’s perlocutionary goals, can be restated as: “By performing the “By-act” a, S intended to
induce in A the belief that p; and so on.”
Non-Standard Situations in Silent Expression/Communication | 27
times, quite different, from what, in normal circumstances the audience would
interpret the silence’s meaning. These include the following non-standard sorts
of cases:
A possible straightforward example of a silent person’s withholding or hid-
ing certain content (A) may occur in a Unites States court of law, if a witness or a
defendant takes the Fifth Amendment, the oath of silence, against self-incrim-
ination, to conceal information that may or might incriminate him or her. Al-
though taking the Fifth Amendment usually leads the prosecutor and the jury to
suspect that the witness or defendant is hiding self-incriminating facts or infor-
mation, the suspicion cannot be used against the witness or defendant: the
putative incriminating facts or information remain hidden from them.
A second possible example of an attempt to hide the truth from the audi-
ence through silence occurs when during a news media interview of an incum-
bent or an aspiring politician, the interviewee dodges sensitive or embarrassing
questions by simply not answering them, then trying to cover up the fact that he
or she did not respond to the questions by saying something quite unrelated to
the question or questions asked, or by trying to make a joke.
Lying is a common way in which people use language to hide the truth from
others by creating the erroneous belief that they are telling the truth; though it
is quite difficult to bring it off successfully by means of silence. However, an
example that illustrates the possible use of silence for the purpose of misleading
the audience is the following, based on an episode in the Russian Pre-
Revolutionary writer Leonid Andreiev’s “Thought,”26 though duly changed for
our present purpose.
The scenario is this: when asked by his friends about the money they had
lent him, the young student says nothing and silently looks innocently “in the
eyes (straight in the eyes!) of those of his friends to whom… [he] was lying bold-
ly and freely.”... [His] eyes are dark, good-looking, straightforward”—[perhaps
helped by throwing up his hands in a conventional gesture of helplessness that
says: “I’m very sorry, friends—I lost the money”]—and “they [his eyes and look]
are believed.” In the actual story the character says that he had been short-
changed.
Perhaps the preceding example will become a little more convincing if we
were to imagine that our protagonist’s friends know him as a terribly shy and
reticent person. In that way his seemingly embarrassed silence would appear to
be perfectly natural.
||
26 The Portable Russian Reader, Selected, translated and introduced by Bernard Guilbert
Guerney, Second Edition ([n.p.]: The Viking Press, Inc., 1959), p. 348.
Like lying, irony and sarcasm too are difficult if not impossible to bring off
successfully through silence. For them to succeed, the silence must convincing-
ly, hence successfully (a) express irony or sarcasm, and (b) either (i) let the
audience know that the silence is meant to be ironical, or (ii) let it believe that it
is not ironical or sarcastic. Once again, if these sorts of situations are to be at all
possible, elaborate stage-setting for each would be necessary. I shall leave it to
the interested reader to determine whether what I am saying is possible in any
sort of situation and any kind of stage-setting.
As with ironical speech, ironical silence occurs whenever a person means
and intends her silence to mean the opposite of what in the circumstances A
would understand it to mean and supposes P to mean by it. (I say “what in the
circumstances A would understand it to mean” to include instances in which A
is able to see through P’s intent; or else, instances in which P aims to make A
perceive the irony.)
Sarcastic silence occurs whenever P intends her silence to be sarcastic but
not to be known by A to be so. Or alternately: to become known to A to be so.
It is clear that the contextual conditions for the success of the relevant “By-
acts” of irony and of sarcasm would be significantly different from the contex-
tual conditions necessary for the success of In-acts of silence of stages/types 2–5
described earlier.
Finally, a less problematic type of situation is one in which silence is the re-
sult of confusion, when the person becomes tongue-tied by being confronted
with a situation which she does not know how to handle at that moment; e.g., to
someone’s unexpected or unsettling remarks. Appropriate body language—such
as a look of confusion coupled with a movement of the hands expressing help-
lessness, would increase her sense of confusion for the audience and would
leave no doubt in the latter’s mind of her helpless state of mind. Examples of
this sort are, e.g., not uncommon in classroom settings, with tongue-tied stu-
dents unable to answer questions they are suddenly fired by the teacher.
Aside from the last sort of situation, the others, (A) and (B), are all sorts of
situations in which the silent individual’s body language conceals, successfully
or not, the silence’s real meaning. Consequently, if it is successful, it evokes and
communicates something quite different from the silence’s actual meaning.
Silence & “Conversation”
In “An Approach for modeling and simulating conversations,”27 Bernard Moulin

and Daniel Rousseau describe conversations as follows:
Conversations are primary examples of language use… Jucker (1992) indi-
cates: Conversations are interactive: there must be at least two participants
actively contributing to it and the contributions are unscripted, that is to say not
planned, at least not in their exact wording, before the start of the conversa-
tion’. Two or more locators may interact in a conversation by performing utter-
ances and gestures. Utterances can correspond to complete or incomplete illo-
cutionary acts as well as to more primitive communicative acts such as
backchannel responses (i.e., Uhh, OK). Gestures may be part of the conversation
and replace some illocutionary acts (i.e. nodding instead of saying ‘yes’). A
locator has access to a mental model that organizes her knowledge about her
environment, other locators and herself. Locutors use mental models in order to
decide which linguistic or non-linguistic actions they will perform. In addition,
they use their linguistic knowledge to formulate utterances and to interpret
utterances made by other locators. An observer of a conversation (be she a par-
ticipant or not) has access to the information conveyed by the utterances and
gestures of locators as well as to the information related to their environment,
but has no access to locutors’ mental models.”28
Elsewhere29 I noted that Grice’s so-called Principles of Conversation, relat-
ing to conversation, i.e., principles any speaker/writer who obeys what Grice
calls the Cooperative Principle is committed to observing. In terms of the dis-
tinction between C-rules [constitutive rules] and R-rules [regulative rules], these
are [in my view] R-rules that, according to Grice, regulate and evaluate conver-
sation.”30 “Grice distinguishes four categories of conventional principles: Quan-
tity maxims… Quality maxims… Relation maxims…Manner maxims.”31 “The
Cooperative Principle and the Principles of Conversation which exemplify it fit
in nicely with… the normal goals of language use: expression and communica-
tion… In fact the Cooperative Principle itself is entailed by the obligation and
||
27 Essays in Speech Act Theory, eds. Daniel Vanderveken and Susumu Kubo.
28 Op cit., p. 177.
29 Meaning and Criteria: With Applications to Various Philosophical Problems (New York:
Peter Lang, 2007), pp 151f.
30 Ibid., p. 151. Grice, Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts, Peter Cole and Jerry Mor-
gan, eds. (New York, 1975), p. 45.
31 Meaning and Criteria…, p. 152.
responsibility (or the commitment) imposed on language users by the putative

desirability of the societal goals of language and speech….”32
Extended reciprocal communication, especially conversation in the usual
sense or as more precisely defined above by Moulin et al., is difficult to bring off
successfully by means of silence, with the notable exception of the “conversa-
tion” of the deaf by means of sign-language; or the reciprocal communication of
sailors or others by Morse Code signals; or in the silent mutual communications
of the monks or nuns in Roman Catholic monastic orders, such as the Capuchin
order in France, which has a strict rule of silence. But mutual communication—
whether or not it can be called conversation in its usual meaning— if coupled
with appropriate gestures and other forms of body language, or by action, can
be readily imagined. However, it is worth noting that silent communications
between the monks in e.g., the Capuchin monastery are not themselves defined
by any constitutive rules of the monastic order as a religious practice or part of
the larger religious practice, namely, the Roman Catholic Church. The “rule of
silence” is a constitutive rule of the Order, which itself is part of the more em-
bracing practice of the Church with all its additional constitutive (and regula-
tive) rules.
Silence & Social Practices
Practices—and institutions—are conventional social constructions governed by

certain constitutive conventions and rules and regulated and evaluated by cer-
tain principles, moral or other.33 Silence, like physical actions, is a natural, non-
conventional phenomenon; consequently—except for the sign language of the
deaf, which can be considered another kind of extension of speech—and the
practice of silence in the Capuchin monastery discussed above, human silence
||
32 Ibid.
33 For a fairly detailed account of practices as I understand them, see Chapter 3, The Later
Wittgenstein on Linguistic Meaning, and Chapter 6, “Conventions and Rules,” in Meaning and
Criteria…, pp. 47–74 and 115–136 respectively. For a discussion of “pragmatic regimes” and
their differentiation from practices as well as the author’s concerns; the first, that “theories of
practice typically do not provide good accounts of our dynamic confrontation with the world;
the second, concerns the moral element in practice which shapes the evaluative process gov-
erning any pragmatic engagement. The reader is referred to Laurent Thevnot, “Pragmatic
regimes governing the engagement with the world,” The Practice Turn In Contemporary Theory,
eds. Theodore R. Schatzki et al. (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group),
2001.
is not a practice or part of any human practice. Whether, nonetheless, any of

Grice’s Rules of Conversation are applicable to it is our next question.
In contrast to silence as such, body language can be readily considered an
extension of speech (as well as of human action), indicated by the very use of
the metaphorical phrase “body language.” A given culture’s or society’s conven-
tional body language at any given time can be therefore considered part of that
society’s or culture’s convention- and/or rule-governed practices. It follows
that, mutatis mutandis, Grice’s the Quantity maxims, Quality maxims, Relation
maxims and Manner maxims apply to it. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of these
maxims in relation to body language.)
Finally, it will be recalled that in Chapter 1 I outlined various sorts of com-
mitments, including self-commitments that result from or are brought about by
an individual’s silence in a particular situation or context, as expressed by a
person’s performance of P-illocutionary acts. For an extended discussion of
moral and political commitment through silence, see Chapter 5.34
||
34 The interested reader is referred to my “Language and Commitment,” Philosophy of Lan-
guage and Logical Theory: Collected Papers, Chapter 9, pp. 173–201, for comparison with the
commitments of acts of silence discussed in Chapter 5 of this book.
3 Body Language as a Form of Silent Doing
3.1 Body Language
In this chapter I shall consider body language in relation to silence as well as to

speech as a form of expression and communication distinct from silence.
Body language is of two kinds: (1) spontaneous or “natural,” and (2) con-
ventional or “non-natural.” In the case (1) we need to discover to what extent
body-language consciously, semiconsciously or unconsciously (a) dramatize or
reinforce verbal expression and communication and action; and (b) deliberately
or by force of habit act in lieu of verbal expression and communication.35 By
definition spontaneous body language involves no deliberateness or intention.
Expression and communication by means of spontaneous body language
occur wholly through suggestion; while conventional body language expresses
and primarily communicates by means of its communal or societal meanings,
and, secondarily, through the suggestiveness of that meaning or these mean-
ings.
Both conventional and natural forms of body language are flexible or versa-
tile and have a number of variable possible meanings in different sorts of con-
texts. Every smile, laugh, snort, sign, wink, look or cry and each particular ges-
ture of the hand, an arm or the arms, tilt of the head, movement of the heard, the
neck, the body, the posture, the pose and the gait has many possible meanings.
Indeed, body language has many of the main features that make speech and
written language as powerful as they are, yet it surpasses words in its greater
versatility, the greater range of its possible meanings. It is not surprising, there-
fore, that we speak of “body language”—albeit metaphorically. But precisely
because of this versatility and flexibility, it is open to vagueness and ambiguity
in its interpretation by an audience to a greater extent than language in the
literal sense.
The important difference between voluntary/deliberate (“VD body acts” for
short) and involuntary/spontaneous/unconscious (“UVD” body language for
short) is crucial with respect to the applicability or inapplicability of the con-
cepts of commitment, responsibility and morality to the various forms of body
language. Thus the answer to the question, “Does one morally commit oneself
by his or her body language?” or “Does body language commit one morally to
||
35 “Gestures As Expression In The Middle East,” ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol.
XXIII, No. 3, September 1966, S.I. Hayakawa, ed. (Sa Francisco: San Francisco State College,
September 1966), pp.358–361.
Body Language | 33
certain actions, views or positions, relationships, and so on, as in the case of

speech and of silence?” is: “Not as such, but only in the context of (i) silence
and, especially, of (ii) speech or (iii) action.” (Body language can occur in the
absence of action; i.e., when one is “doing nothing,” of inaction.) The reason is
that bodily movements, expressions, postures, etc. are not actions in any usual
sense; consequently they do not commit oneself morally or otherwise (e.g.,
legally). Also, unlike voluntary silences or voluntary speech, as noted above,
forms of body language are frequently non-voluntary, even unconscious. (For
example, facial expressions and gestures are frequently non-voluntary, “natu-
ral” or cultural expressions of feelings, emotions, sentiments, attitudes, and so
on, hence non-intentional.) Consequently too, like speech, the notions of “felici-
ty” and “infelicity,” “misfiring,” etc., (Austin) which apply to speech acts and
would apply to actions in the usual sense, are inapplicable to non-voluntary
forms of body language. But they do apply to deliberate gestures and other bod-
ily expressions; and this is reflected in the corresponding “by”-sentences which
describe the effects they are intended to have on others.
In a given culture or community at a given time conventional body lan-
guage consists of constitutive conventions in a relatively loosely-defined prac-
tice or connected sets of practices in Wittgenstein’s and John Searle’s more pre-
cise use of ‘a practice,’ as well as in my own understanding of a practice in
“Institutions, Practices and Moral Rules”36 and Meaning and Criteria: With Ap-
plications to Various Philosophical Problems.37
The potential vocabulary of silence is obviously quite large, and becomes
larger still by virtue of the body language that accompanies it, thus expanding
the potential vocabulary of silence-cum-body language. In addition, the particu-
lar body language that accompanies a particular silence in a given context may
on occasion lessen the silence’s frequent ambiguity, enabling it to gain clarity
or precision. This is seen, for example, when, in a given context, a scowl, a
smile, a kiss, a peal of laughter or tears accompany the silence.38 But in the
absence of a specific or precise context even silence accompanied by a kiss, a
smile, a scowl, or tears, and so on, may mean different things both for the agent
and for different members of the audience. The agent may design her silence-
cum-body language precisely to mean a variety of things, and may especially
||
36 Mind, vol. LXXXVI, No. 344, October 1977, pp. 479–496.
37 New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2007, Chapter 7, pp. 137–157.
38 Perhaps the most expressive part of body language are the expressions of the eyes—the so-
called mirror of the soul—both in revealing and in concealing what goes on in the soul at the
moment or for a while. A look of adoration or love—or one of hate, wonderment, a “sharp” or a
dreamy look, are unmistakable.
34 | Body Language as a Form of Silent Doing
mean different things to different members of the audience or may be interpret-

ed differently by them.
Apart from silence itself, an agent may use a particular speech or action ac-
companying a particular instance of body language, to mean-1 different things
in different contexts, including meaning different things for different members
of an audience, depending on their relationship and knowledge of or lack of
relationship and/or ignorance of that agent. Consequently the need for interpre-
tation (as in the case of different acts of silence) is often greater than in the case
of speech, because of the latter’s generally accepted linguistic conventions or
rules. Unlike language, body language—just like silence—has no “semantic”
conventions or rules, or analogies to linguistic conventions or rules. But a simi-
lar variety of kinds of meaning as in the case of silence and of language, may
exist in the case of body language; that is, in addition to signification (mean-
ing1) it may function as a sign or a signal or have symbolic meaning, and/or that
which the user of body language intends or implies (means2) by what she does.
3.2 Nature of body language
(1) Body Language as a kind of Doing

Gestures accompanying speech consist of movements of the hands and
arms, not actions, being unconscious or only semiconscious in the ordinary, not
the Freudian, sense of these words. That is why it is quite difficult for the indi-
vidual consciously to control or reduce them, given that gesticulating is consid-
ered inappropriate in certain, e.g., Western, culture (outside of Italy!). A special
conscious effort is required for the purpose, not always successful; since it tends
to distract the individual from saying what she is saying or trying to say.
(2) As a form of doing, body language can be modeled after speech-act theo-
ry as developed by J. L. Austin and John Searle. Or rather, both speech and body
language, as forms of “doings,” have certain “family resemblances” to each
other. Thus the “In”- and “By”-formulas that are used to express Austin’s “illo-
cutionary” and “perlocutionary” speech acts respectively have their counterpart
in the case of body language. What an individual does by means of the different
forms of body language can be described, as for example in the case of acts of
silence, in (a) “In”- and (b) “By”-sentences. Thus, e.g., “In gesturing wildly (or
flailing his arms) the drowning man was try to show (or express) his distress”;
and “By gesturing wildly the drowning man was trying to call for help by draw-
ing the bystander’s attention to him.” In sentences of this form an individual
performs or tries to perform certain “body-acts” as I shall them, analogous to
illocutionary speech-acts. Likewise the use of body language to produce certain
Conditions of Successful Body Language | 35
effects on others can be described in “by”-sentences-in-use, the analogue of

perlocutionary speech-acts. It may also have an analog to Grice’s speaker-
meaning-1 and speaker-meaning-2.5. It is therefore necessary to analyze the
uses of body language in expressing and communicating one’s moods, feelings
and emotions, desires, intentions, thoughts or ideas, etc., and the effects one’s
body language—together with one’s silence itself in the particular contexts—
may be intended to produce in the audience.
Spontaneous forms of body language, such as gestures, smiles, smirks, and
laughter are bodily movements. They are not actions or even happenings, oc-
currences, or events; while intentional forms of body language (whether con-
ventional or no) are actions. For example, that is true of spontaneous gestures,
which are the best candidates for being events, occurrences or happenings. The
same is true of movements of the eyes, facial muscles, etc. But deliberate ges-
tures—but not facial expressions—whether in real life or on the stage as part of
an “act”—are—become—actions or parts of a connected series of actions.
In this chapter I shall endeavor to ascertain the ways in which body lan-
guage (1) stresses and/or enhances, and highlights, the kinds of things silence
can do or stress, or (2) “overtly” or “covertly” works against it for various special
reasons of the particular agent in the particular context.
Whenever it accompanies speech, body language may also (3) work in differ-
ent, even opposite ways to what is said. The speech may convey one “message”
while the body language may convey a different, even the opposite “message.”
Both “natural,” non-conventional and conventional body language wholly
express and communicate through suggestion. The same is true of pantomime,
which wholly consists of bodily movements and gestures, glances, etc.; i.e.,
body language.
3.3 Conditions of Successful Body Language
a) Conditions of “In”-body language; i.e., body language as expressive of vari-

ous states of mind
Unlike speech, there are no logical (LI) conditions for the occurrence of suc-
cessful performance of the various forms of “In”-body-language, whether con-
ventional or non-conventional, including spontaneous ones.
b) But as with speech, there are “pragmatic” (LII) conditions for the success
of conventional “In”-forms of body language: though none for spontaneous
forms of body language, since in their case the question of success or failure
makes no sense. In their case the pragmatic conditions include the agent’s body
language being (i) “correctly,” conventionally or (ii) spontaneously, individual-
ly expressive of the agent’s actual mental or emotional state at the time. In the
case of (i) if she is ignorant of the conventions of her particular society or com-
munity, or has an imperfect grasp of the meanings of the gestures, facial ex-
pressions, etc., in question, her body language would misfire: there would be no
agreement or correspondence between the mental, etc., state(s) he/she wishes
to express and its (their) actual body expression. The body language would
mean something different from—in the most unfortunate cases, the very oppo-
site of—what she intends it to mean.
As we saw in Chapter 2 in relation to silence in general, there are five corre-
sponding, logically distinguishable stages in the “pragmatics” of body lan-
guage; i.e., in its expressive and communicative aspects. I shall leave it to the
interested reader to consider examples of each of the five stages. Here I shall
return to just one example of Stage 5, which, therefore, essentially includes the
preceding four stages.
The example is the following: A person A is standing at a bus stop when a
close friend B approaches. As he walks towards A, he notices an unusual sad-
ness on his face and in his eyes, and then sees a black armband around his arm.
As B immediately realizes, A’s sad expression and the armband clearly express
grief. B tells himself that someone close to A must have died, and feels sympa-
thy for his friend. So, as soon as he comes close, he hugs A, showing him that he
understands his grief and empathizes and sympathizes with him. Immediately
A in turn hugs B, and in a low, sad voice tells him that their friend C has just
been killed in a car accident, or of an incurable disease, etc.
But as with speech-acts, both silence and body language may suffer from
infelicities or misfires. For instance, gestures and facial expressions, e.g.,
smiles, grimaces, and the like, that do not fit the particular culture or milieu in
which they are performed, are likely to be misunderstood i.e., “misfire” (since,
for cultural reasons, among other reasons), silences can be “misplaced”. Also,
silences can be easily misunderstood, though the reason or reasons may be due
more to the nature of “pure” silence itself.
Unlike misfiring, infelicity can ‘arise’ with respect to the expressive (“In”-),
aspect of body language. But as with other species of doing (e.g., speech, pure
silence, action, etc.,) infelicity also can arise in relation to the communicative
(‘By”-) aspect of acts of body language. An example is: “By gesturing, looking,
etc., in a certain way—e.g., askance—A wanted to show his disdain for B.” If B
does not get the point, the attitude toward B A wants to convey to him, A’s in-
tended communicative act, would misfire.
We now turn to the question of the possible meanings of Body Language.
Possible Meanings of Body Language | 37
3.4 Possible Meanings of Body Language
“The meaning of a glance in context C may mean:

1. “The significance of the glance in context C; and,
2. “The signification of a glance” = “what the glance signifies.” The signifi-
cance of a glance depends on what the glance signifies, paralleling the dual
meaning—signification and significance—involved in the case of silence, ac-
tion/voluntary movement, and speech.
Consider:
“I wonder what she meant by her glance at me?”—(a) meaning: “What did it
signify? Did it signify ‘I like you’?”—And (b) “I wonder what the exact signifi-
cance of her glance was.” “Did it have any special significance? Is she, for in-
stance, interested in going out with me?” “Or am I imagining” that her glance
meant—signified—anything, had any significance at all?”
3. Body language may also have a symbolic use in certain contexts. Thus a
person may use certain gestures, facial expressions, and postures—e.g., raised
eyebrows, wrinkled forehead, winking, frowning, pouting, kissing, smiling,
crying, sniffling, sticking out the tongue, hand movements and their positions
on the body, etc.—used symbolically.39
4. However, unlike speech, I believe body language cannot mean in the
sense of “imply” something or other. Unlike speech, it is not meaningful to
speak of someone not only suggesting or expressing40 some particular feeling,
emotion, desire, etc., by means of her body language but also, on occasion,
implying that she has that feeling, emotion, etc. Although we say, “I could
clearly see sadness (melancholy, joy, elation, etc.) written all over his face (he
was crying (unsmiling, smiling, laughing, etc.),” the expression of the person’s
face meant these things not in the sense of implying them but in the sense of
“directly expressing or conveying” them; in the same kind of way as her saying
“How sad our world is!” or “How jolly life is!” or “I am happy (miserable, etc.)!”
expresses the speaker’s sadness, melancholy, joy, etc. Note that the same way
of speaking is applicable to sentences in works of fiction, where body language,
just as speech, may express the imagined speaker’s sadness, melancholy, joy,
etc. (See later.)
||
39 Cf. also symbolic uses of silence in spiritual and religious life, Chapters 13 and 14.
40 ‘Express’ by means of language, symbols, etc.—which I shall call ‘sententially-express’—
differs from the expressive uses of silences and pauses in purely instrumental music and in the
visual arts. The expressive uses in the latter cases consist in the expression of mood, attitude,
feeling, emotion, or sentiment.
5. Body language can also play an important role in the creation of charac-
ter and personality, and in revealing character, in fiction and drama, opera,
dance and film, just as it can reveal an actual person’s character and personali-
ty. It can also play similar, important roles in the visual arts. A familiar example
is the upstretched arms, the uplifted head and gaze of adoration in portraits of
holy figures in, e.g., Medieval and Renaissance icons and religious art; and the
kinds of clothing and accessories worn by characters in paintings, in film, or
described in fiction and drama, are intended to give the desired favorable or
unfavorable impression of the characters, etc., by their creators. These in addi-
tion to other forms of body language, such as posture, bearing, gestures, looks
and other forms of body language are used to help project and enhance, or else
take away from, the character’s, etc., intended personality.
3.5 Silences as “Dispersed” Practices
In Social Practices; A Wittengenteinian Approach to human activity and the So-

cial. Theodore R Schatzki, distinguishes two categories of social practices, “dis-
persed practices” and “integrative practices.” He writes: “I label a first category
of spatiotemporal practice ‘dispersed’ to emphasize that practices of this sort, in
contrast to those of a second category I shall call ‘integrative,’ are widely dis-
persed among different sectors of social life. Examples of dispersed practices are
the practices of describing, examining and imagining. As Wittgenstein writes:
‘To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are
customs (uses, institutions)… (PI,199). The dispersed practice of X-ing is a set of
doings and saying linked primarily, usually exclusively, by the understanding
of X-ing. This understanding, in turn, normally has three components: (1) the
ability to carry out acts of X-ing (e.g., describing, ordering, questioning), (2) the
ability to identify and attribute X-ings, in both one’s own and other’s cases, and
(3) the ability to prompt or respond to X-ings. Another expression for ‘the ability
to’ in this context is ‘knowing how to.’ Since a practice’s doings and sayings
express the understanding composing the practice, a dispersed practice is a set
of doings and saying linked primarily to an understanding they express.”41
As we shall see conventional body language consists of dispersed practices
in Schatzki’s foregoing sense. The dispersed practices of conventional body
language include social and to religious practices relating to dying, death and
bereavement, and celebrating the life of departed persons; patriotic, military
||
41 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Silences as “Dispersed” Practices | 39
commemorations; etc. Similarly conventional silences as part of dispersed prac-

tices of body language occur in religious performances and rituals; but in these,
as in the case of silence in the presence of illness, death and bereavement, mili-
tary and social ceremonies, the silent practices are what I call “dependent”
practices, attached to and dependent upon the existence and functioning of
relevant/related social practices and/or institutions. Thus silent prayer, worship
or meditation, and the like, when public, communal, consist of practices at-
tached to and, indeed, essential parts of traditional religious practices and insti-
tutions.
As a dependent practice or set of practices, conventional body language is
either, (a) dependent on and part of the social practice(s) of speech; or (b) con-
sists of silent practices independently of and existing in absence of speech, its
meaning tends to become more difficult to interpret correctly than, generally
speaking, when it accompanies speech; since then the speech helps make the
meaning of the body language clear or clearer.
There are, however, obvious exceptions to the foregoing even when body
language is accompanied by speech; i.e., whenever the speaker wishes to hide
her real purpose or intention in saying what she says—e.g., when she is lying,
pretending, dissembling or play-acting—and aims to conceal that fact by using
appropriate body language. For instance if A tells B: “I love (like, respect, etc.)
you” but, in spite of her words her body language belies what she says. In simi-
lar cases where, intentionally or unintentionally, speech and body language are
incongruous, the body language would be unable to prompt in the hearer-
viewer to a proper understanding of what the speaker is really saying or intends
to be saying. The incongruity of speech and body language may confuse the
hearer-viewer and lead to her misunderstanding or total lack of understanding
of what the speaker is really saying.
Schatzki states that component (3) of “this understanding” is “present
whenever established ways of prompting or responding to a given sort of action
exists. Examples are the practices of questioning, ordering, returning greetings,
and asking for a description or a report, are established promptings or respons-
es. No one who understands questioning, ordering, and so on fails to grasp
this.”42 But as the preceding shows, this is not true: it is not always present even
in relation to conventional speech acts-cum-conventional body language. Fur-
ther, “…dispersed practices, including their constitutive understandings, are
woven into nexuses. They are not isolated and self-contained atoms. Their ‘dis-
persion’ consists simply in their widespread occurrence across different sectors
||
42 Ibid.
of social life...”43 That, I might add, is clearly true with respect to body lan-
guage, conventional and non-conventional, “natural.” Indeed, the practices are
“dispersed” across all sectors of social life.
Schatzki continues: “Dispersed practices are only governed very rarely by
the second and third forms of linkage among practice-composing behaviors:
rules and teleoaffective structures. Their constituent actions are held together
mostly by understandings and need not either lean on principles, instructions,
and pointers or be informed by particular orders of ends, purposes, beliefs, and
emotions. … The dispersion of a practice actually requires the absence of the
teleolaffective component of practice organization. If the doings and sayings
that make up such practices are describing, explaining and questioning were
tied to particular arrays of ends, purposes, emotions, and the like, the practices
could not appear in more or less all walks of life and in a wide variety of situa-
tions.” That, or part of that, is I think true of body language. Even in the case of
conventional body language; which, as Schatzki states, “their constituent ac-
tions are held together mostly by understandings [in their case, by cultural un-
derstandings] and need not [indeed, do not]… lean on principles, instructions,
and pointers [rather, they are learned by the young observing their elders] or be
informed by particular orders of ends, purposes, beliefs, and emotions”44, and
so on.
Finally, as forms of body language, gestures and physical movements are
either happenings or acts/actions, hence provide a logical link between (a) si-
lences and speech, as well as (b) between full-blooded actions and forms of
body language that are not happenings or acts/actions. For example, eye ex-
pressions, body-posture, the position of hands and limbs. I therefore think it is
not farfetched to model a theory of action—or, at a minimum, part of a theory of
action—on the ordinary “In-“and “By”-distinctions. Indeed, speech acts them-
selves can be viewed as a special, exceedingly important form of action. But it is
essential to distinguish the act of speaking and that which is said, since Austin’s
and Searle’s speech-act theories concern the latter.45
||
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid. Cf. also symbolic uses of silence in spiritual and religious life, Chapters 13 and 14.
45 Express’ by means of language, symbols, etc.—what I shall call ‘sententially-express’—is
quite different from the expressive uses of silences and pauses in the arts
4 Physical Action as a Form of Silent Doing
Actions speak louder than words
4.1 Movement & Physical Action

Physical human actions are conscious doings normally involving the use of
various bodily movements or movements of the body as a whole and are either
(a) performed on the spur of the moment, without any particular intention or
deliberation, often impulsively. Perhaps more commonly, however, (b) human
actions are performed intentionally, purposively and deliberately, sometimes
involving the weighing of contrary courses of action.46
Following the distinctions between movement and action in my “Move-
ment and Action in the Performing Arts,”47 (1) “(w)e speak of the movements
person makes as movements of his body; whereas the actions he performs are
never “of his body,” though they may related to the body, such as in shaving or
cutting oneself. On the other hand, both movements and actions are initiated
by persons (I am leaving aside the movements and actions of animals). In both
cases the agent is necessarily a person as a whole; though a person moves his
body or parts of it. But in order that a person may perform a physical action, he
must move his body or parts of it. Yet movements are often necessary for action,
not as a means to some distinct end (which is what the means/ends distinction
implies), but as that which, either partly or wholly, constitutes the particular
action. In other cases action involves relevant movements without being partly
or wholly constituted by them. For instance, President Nixon’s political and
military actions (also called decisions) relating to the Vietnam War, go far be-
yond and are not constituted by any of the movements of the pen or any verbal
declarations he made… Humanly the most important or significant actions,
which are the stuff of morality and of dramatic art, are of this sort.
But though there can be physical action without bodily movement, the con-
verse if false: since not all movement, not even all connected movements, nec-
essarily constitute an action or a set of actions.
(2) It follows from (1) above that when we think of bodily movement, we
think directly or nervous impulses, muscular contractions, and other physio-
||
46 Similarly with body language, such as significant looks or gazes, smiles or frowns, and so on.
47 Music, Film, & Art (New York: Gordon And Breach Science Publishers, 1985), pp. 81-103.
42 | Physical Action as a Form of Silent Doing
logical or other biological processes; while these are involved only indirectly in
thinking or actions, i.e., insofar as they involve the appropriate movements.
The epithet “bodily” or “physical” in “bodily movement” and “physical
movement,” respectively that I have so far used, can be generally dropped,
since talking and mental activities are not actions in ordinary English. (But we
speak of talking as an act or activity, and of writing as an action or as an act.)
Some philosophers speak of “mental acts”; but this, as well as “speech acts,”
which (as we have seen in the preceding chapters) is not confined to the act of
uttering meaningful sounds, is a technical use of ‘act.’
The term ‘act’ is not always interchangeable with ‘action,’ even if the con-
verse is true. … (I might add parenthetically that a person’s talking, feeling an-
gry, imagining a hydra, and the like are all instances of doing something; but
clearly (as we saw in the preceding chapters) this notion is not exhausted by the
notion of action.
(3) In ordinary usage as opposed to the current philosophical employment
of our terms in Anglo-Saxon philosophy, both movements and actions may or
may (a) be voluntary, and/or (b) intentional, hence (c) have reasons in addition
to or instead of causes. A person may make a certain movement intentionally,
for a certain reason; and he may perform some action unintentionally or invol-
untarily. Thus we say: “The burglar forced Henry to open the safe and hand over
the money it contained” (involuntary action (by Henry)); and ‘He knocked over
and broke a valuable Ming vase, when he (the burglar—or Henry) absentmind-
edly moved his arm’ (unintentional action). These are familiar and important
facts in relation to, e.g., moral action. However—and this appears to be a crucial
difference—there can be wholly unconscious movements, but there cannot be
wholly unconscious actions, in the relevant ordinary meaning of ‘unconscious.’
(The same is true of an unconscious person.) As Stuart Hampshire states the
latter point, ‘No action is attributable to an unconscious man as its agent.’48 It
follows, a fortiori, that a toy, puppet or automaton cannot be literally said to
perform actions: it can only make certain movements and thus go through the
motions of performing the appropriate actions. Only human beings, and …
(mammals in general, reptiles, birds, etc.) can perform actions by, among other
things, making appropriate movements. Consequently these contraptions can
be (figuratively) said to perform certain actions only if they are imagined to be
conscious beings. This is of some significance in relation to, e.g., puppet shows,
||
48 Thought and Action (London: Chatto and Windus Ltd., 1959), p. 94.
Movement & Physical Action | 43
or a play such as Jean-Claude Van Italie’s Motel in which three dolls with over-
size heads constitute the ‘characters.’
The phrase ‘go through the motions’ is very interesting in many ways. For
instance, we speak of a mime or ballet dancer as going through the motions of
opening a door, kissing, embracing, dying, etc. We also speak of human beings
who, fully consciously and deliberately, ‘go through the motions’ of expressing
love, concern, compassion, solicitude, etc., for someone else. This is quite a
different, usually metaphorical use of the term, and describes a different form or
sense (a metaphorical sense) of make-believe, play-acting or illusion than that
which is indulged in by the actor or actress, mime or operatic singer, and by the
dancer performing a narrative dance. … (In make-believe, play-acting, etc.,
there is an intention) but not the appropriate one; i.e., the intention which nor-
mally goes with the movements, which provides their reason for being. I mean
the intention in the case of sincere persons. The intention present is that of de-
ceiving the observer into thinking that the subject has the feelings or emotions,
attitudes, desires or beliefs whose presence these movement normally indicate.
Although all actions are conscious activities, not all actions are (as stated
earlier) intentional actions. Only actions in the full sense—in the sense in which
‘action’ is most commonly used in current writings on the philosophy of action,
where it is contrasted with movements. This fact helps justify, e.g., (Stuart)
Hampshire’s close linking of consciousness and action, in… (e.g.) ‘To be a con-
scious human being, and therefore a thinking being, is to have intentions or
plans, to be trying to bring about a certain effect.’49
“My… analysis of movement and action has assumed that we know what in-
tention is; and indeed for our purposes we must (at this point) leave this crucial
notion unanalyzed, relying on the reader’s preanalytical knowledge of the
word’s meaning a common uses. … Although an intention necessarily implies
certain beliefs, by helping to provide a general or specific, vague or definite
goal, or certain means (actions) for their attainment. But no beliefs are, I think,
sufficient to give rise to a particular intention. Desire, want, inclination, ten-
dency or disposition may also be necessary. An intention is not, entirely, an
intellectual matter. Of course a belief necessarily involves some inclination or
tendency, sometimes a disposition, to do certain kinds of things, including,
generally, certain kinds of actions. But a belief is not just, or primarily, a ten-
dency, inclination, and so on.”50
||
49 Hampshire, op cit., p. 119.
50 “Movement and Action in the Performing Arts,” pp. 87-90.
In Intending and Acting: Toward A Naturalized Action Theory,51 Myles Brand

“contends that ‘the fundamental (philosophical) problem for action theory’ is
the problem of the proximate antecedent of action: for him, its immediate cause.
That antecedent is identified with intending.”52 For him, an action is (a kind) of
event: a bodily action is a physical event, a mental action a mental event.”53
Again, “he holds that all actions are immediately preceded and caused by the
mental event of immediate intending,”54 while intending itself is immediately
preceded by desire. 55 But if “desire always immediately precedes intending, one
does not (as he maintains) have to include a conative element in intending it-
self. The answer is that desire is not necessarily present in all cases of intend-
ing: frequently we intend to do things we do not desire—indeed, things we dis-
like or hate to do—e.g. out of a sense of honor or duty.”56
“Brand offers no evidence that desiring cannot be, on ‘folk psychology’ (i.e.,
the ordinary uses of ‘desire’ and ‘desiring’) a sufficient proximate cause of an
action, in the absence of intending But he is right in holding that desire does not
always bring about an intending, and that there can be intending without de-
sire. For example, with regard to the former he says: ‘… the strongest of two or
more incompatible desires issues in an intending provided that the environment
and background psychological conditions are friendly’57 He is also right in argu-
ing that desiring is not a species of intending,58 but appears to confuse desire
and need.”59
Like all other forms or kinds of “doing,”60 physical action and mental activi-
ties and states, have, or can have, three related but logically distinguishable
sorts of uses: (A) the Expressive, (B) the Communicative, and (C) the Consequen-
tialist uses.
||
51 A Bradford Book (Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984)
52 “Review Article: Brand on Intending And Acting,” Metaphilosophy, Vol. 17, No. 4, October
1986, pp.337.
53 Ibid., p. 339. Brand, ibid., p. 51.
54 “Brand on Intending and Acting,” p. 347.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Op cit., p. 125.
58 Ibid., pp. 123ff.
59 Ibid., p. 125.
60 Compare these sorts of uses in the case of, e.g., speech-acts and of the different forms of
silence, including body language.
Action/Activity as a (Silent) Form of Doing | 45
4.2 Action/Activity as a (Silent)61 Form of Doing; Expressive

and Communicative Uses of Action
In Chapters 1 and 2 and 3 I considered the different some forms or species of
silence in the sense of absence of speech, and body language, as different spe-
cies of the genus Doing. Since acting, hence action is also a species or form of
Doing, it too can be analyzed and hence understood in an essentially similar
way to the preceding, including the uses of the “In/By” formulate in its case. In
other words, the expressive and communicative aspects of silence in its other
forms are also evidence in relation to action. For example: (1) “In doing such
and such—e.g., planning a bomb in a subway—the terrorist was expressing
(showing, demonstrating, etc.) his hatred to the people who may be riding the
subway that morning”; while (2) “By planning a bomb in a subway, the terrorist
was trying (or intended) to instill terror in the minds and hearts of people (of the
government, etc.) by killing as many innocent people as possible that day,”
illustrates the communicative aspect of action consists in the actor’s intention or
desire, purpose or intention to produce a certain effect or state in someone in
particular, or in general.
Infelicity & Misfiring in Relation to Action

As in the case of speech-acts, Austin’s and Searle’s concept of infelicity, to-
gether with Austin’s concept of misfiring, also apply to action.
Infelicity
Searle defines ‘infelicity’ in relation to speech acts as follows:
…There is nothing infallible about linguistic characterizations; speakers’ intentions are

notoriously fallible. It is not always easy to characterize one’s skills and the fact that in
these cases the skill is involved in giving the characterization does not serve to simplify
matters. There is also the general difficulty in correctly formulating knowledge that one
||
61 Although actions are commonly accompanied by sound, the latter is a result of friction with
the air, or in addition, with the objects, materials, substances, etc. that an action is an action
on. An action as such is a silent form of performance or doing.
has prior to and independent of any formulation; of converting knowing how into knowing
that…62
With respect to action infelicity—transposing Searle’s concept to them—it con-

sists one’s failure of to realize one’s intended or desire d goal(s). Just as Searle
says in relation to speech: “there is the general difficulty in correctly knowing
how to go about doing something—here performing an action that would suc-
ceed in realizing its desired or purported goal for the particular agent, in the
particular—sometimes unexpected or difficult circumstances, including the
particular time and place, the time in which the agent finds himself.” Again,
“there is often if not always the problem of the agent’s being able to ‘convert
knowing how into knowing that’—knowing that the action he performs or is
about to perform will succeed in its purpose or goal. As the familiar saying
goes, as in the case of all other forms or ways or “doing,” “There’s many a slip
between the cup and the lip.”
Misfiring
As with all the other forms of doing, misfiring in the case of action/inaction
consists in the agent P’s misinterpretation or miscalculation in his performing a
particular action X in a particular context C or his inaction in that context. The
misinterpretation of the likely result or consequences of one’s action or inaction
in a particular situation is a common human failing. Similarly, miscalculation
about the consequences wants to bring about by his action or inaction. Some-
times miscalculation, particularly by governments or government agents in the
case of large-scale emergencies or catastrophy may result in massive destruc-
tion and numerous tragic deaths. The 20th century and the first decade of the 21st
century provide ample examples of such tragic actions and inactions. These and
other miscalculations too can be clearly expressed by means of the “In/By-”
locutions.
Force
As we saw in Chapter 1, Searle speaks of “elementary illocutionary acts” as being
of the form F (P): they are composed to a force F and a proposition P.” On the one
hand, sentences like “Please, help me!”, and “You will help me,” whose clauses
||
62 Speech Acts, An Essay In The Philosophy Of Language (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p.
14.
are synonymous, express in the same contexts of utterance illocutionary acts

with the same propositional content but different forces. On the other hand,
elementary sentences like ‘Is it snowing?’ and ‘Are you coming?’ with the same
force marker express illocutionary acts with the same force but different pro-
positional contents.” 63
Since action is a form of doing, the concept of force as defined by Searle
above and later by him and Vanderveken in relation to speech acts applies mu-
tatis mutandis to action. Here, force as degree of an action’s strength—the degree
of its capacity, power or potential to express and communicate the action’s in-
tended goal.64
Analogues of some or all of Searle’s four other primitive illocutionary forces
may also apply to action, as we shall see later in this chapter. 65
As with other forms of doing the force of an action varies with the action’s
intended meaning, particularly with what it signifies in that context, including
in some cases the agent’s relationship to the audience or lack of it; the latter’s
knowledge of the agent’s life and circumstances, character and personality; and
the time and the occasion on which the action occurs. For instance, other things
being equal, the force of a given action tends to vary if the relationship is one of
superior to inferior (e.g., a sergeant to a private) or boss to subordinate (e.g., a
company’s CEO to a clerk or salesperson in her company). Thus, as in our ex-
amples in Chapter 1 in relation to silence, we can here imagine a situation in
which a company manager fires a lowly employee for the latter’s actual or per-
ceived incompetence. In terms of the “In/By” distinction: “In firing of the em-
ployee for his real or supposed incompetence, the owner or CEO was expressing
his frustration at the drop in the company’s sales; and “By firing the employee
the owner or CEO was trying to communicate to his other employees his anger
and frustration at the drop in the company’s sales.” Or “By firing the hapless
employee, the owner or CEO was communicating (or trying to communicate) his
||
63 Essays in Speech Act Theory, Daniel Vanderveken and Susumu Kubo, editors (Amster-
dam/Philadelphia: John Betjamins Publishing Company), Chapter 1: Introduction, p. 5. Italics
in original.
64 See ibid., p. 6.
65 For analogues to some or all of Searle’s four other primitive forces may also be found in
relation to action, as we shall see later in the chapter. Consider the following examples: (1) “In
performing an act of vandalism the young man was attempting to forcefully express his disdain
for and to shock his neighbourhood”; (2) “By offering help to the homeless during the holidays
the members of the Salvation Army were trying to make the latter feel good during that season,
and help them to keep body and soul together during that very difficult time for them.”
warning to the other employees to work harder to bring in more income to the
company.” And so on.
Now consider, with respect to action, a situation similar to a further exam-
ple in Chapter 1 in relation to sheer silence. An employee hesitantly asks her
boss for a raise; expressed in the “In” formula as: “In trying to ingratiate herself
to her boss by doing various things for him not part of her job description—such
as taking her dog for a walk; working longer hours than she is supposed to; the
employee was expressing her desire for a raise”; and “By doing various addi-
tional chores, she was trying to communicate to her boss that she was expecting
a bonus or a raise, say at the end of the year.” Whether that expectation is ful-
filled would clearly depend on all sorts of factors—especially, the boss’s (a)
understanding the reason(s) for the employee’s special behavior, and (b) her
responding to it in anything like the way the employee expects!
To sum up: the force of a particular action varies with its intended meaning,
particularly by its signification/value in the particular circumstances involved;
and so on. For example, in the case of those who are affected by the action.
Again, “In punching his attacker he was trying—or intended—to defend himself”;
“In aiding the poor financially the charitable organization was trying to help the
poor during the holidays, when the aid would have a special meaning (significa-
tion); to them.” And, “By shovelling the snow in his driveway every time it
snowed in winter, the homeowner was ensuring—fulfilling his desire or inten-
tion—that he and members of his family would get out easily and safely.”
Point
As Vanderveken states in relation to speech acts, Searle (*1975b), in addition to
force in relation to illocutionary speech acts, “…proposed … a classification of
basic kinds of meaningful utterances based on the clear and distinct notion of
illocutionary point. From Searle’s view, there are only five illocutionary points
that speakers can achieve on propositions in an utterance, namely: the asser-
tive, commissive, directive, declaratory and expressive illocutionary points.”66
“Speakers achieve the assertive point when they represent how things are in the
world, the commissive point when they commit themselves to doing something,
the declaratory point when they do things in the world at the moment of the
utterance solely by virtue of saying that they do and the expressive point when
they express their attitudes about objects and facts in the world.”67
||
66 Ibid., pp. 4-5. Italics in original.
67 Ibid., p. 5. Italics in original.
Transposing these concepts to action, we get the following: agents “achieve

the ‘assertive’ point when a particular action they set out to perform accurately
or realistically reflect the particular situation or state of affairs in which they set
out to perform the action. Although the assertive point of speech—like the point
of a particular silence—is often clearer and more precise than the assertive point
of an action whose meaning is often open to misunderstanding by those af-
fected by it, an action sometimes “speaks louder than words.” Similarly, mutatis
mutandis, agents achieve their actions’ “commissive point” when they commit
themselves to performing the particular actions—or commit themselves to per-
forming actions they believe or know will (a) correctly express their desires or
intentions, and (b) realize their particular goals: for example, communicating a
certain (e.g., dramatic, telling, etc.) point to an audience, and/or bringing about
a desired change (e.g., a particular social, political, economic, etc. improve-
ment) in a particular place or in the world in general. The declaratory point,
mutatis mutandis, would be realized when agents “do things in the world” by
just acting in the way they do; while the expressive point of an action is realized
when agents “express their attitudes about objects and facts in the world” by
performing a particular action or set of actions.
Symbolic actions, like symbolic silences and body language are more open
to misinterpretation and misunderstanding than non-symbolic actions, except
in the case of traditional and other communal, e.g., religious, symbolic actions
familiar to the audience. The following “In/By” statements illustrate the latter
type of case: “In crossing herself the worshipper was symbolically expressing
her Christian beliefs,” and “By going to church and attending mass during the
Soviet regime in Eastern Europe, she wanted to defy the atheist regime under
which she was living, and to demonstrate her religious beliefs.”
As in the case of the discussion of speech acts and of silence in Chapter 1,
Section III “In- statements about action”, e.g., “In performing an action X, P was
doing Y,” the action designated by ‘X’ (the “antecedent”) is in some cases “logi-
cally equivalent” to the action designated by Y (the “consequent”). For exam-
ple, “In bringing his wife a bouquet of flowers on her birthday, the husband was
expressing his love for her.” The locution, “his bringing a bouquet of flowers for
his wife on her birthday” is “equivalent,” in the proper contexts—perhaps
metaphorically—to “his expressing his love for his life….” Likewise, in “By
bringing a bouquet of flowers to his wife on her birthday, he meant—wanted,
intended—to show her that he loved her,” the “antecedent” “his bringing a
bouquet of flowers to his wife on her birthday” is equivalent” in some sense to
“his meaning—wanting, desiring, intending—to show his love for his wife.”
Here, in both “In” and “By statements about physical action, ‘meant’ refers to
agent-meaning (meaning-2), his/her meaning, what he/she meant, by his/her

particular action” in the particular circumstances.
Again, like sheer silence and speech acts, the success or failure of a particu-
lar physical action X-in- context C depends not only on C’s character or nature
but also on the intended or unintended audience’s response to it. People some-
times insist that they know the meaning of an action X-in-context C better than
the agent herself—just as they sometimes do with respect to other people’s feel-
ings.
4.3 Communicative Uses of Action described by “By-

Locutions”
The communicative uses of action set out by “By-locutions,” can be divided into
two general kinds:
A. Where the agent’s action is intended to produce a purely physical change in
herself and/or the physical environment, such as her sawing, cooking, driv-
ing a car, etc. An example would be: “By driving her car every morning at
8:00 a.m., she wanted to be sure to arrive to work on time.”
B. Where the agent’s action is intended (a) to convey some message and/or or
(b) to produce a particular or some general physical and/or psychological ef-
fect, on a given audience or on audiences everywhere; whether or not the
desired communication or effect is intended to be the direct result of the
particular physical action. Example: “By making a lot of noise in his apart-
ment—e.g., by playing very loud music—P wanted to annoy the people next
door (or in the apartment above, etc.)”
In what follows I shall distinguish various logical stages in relation to (B), leav-
ing (A) aside as not of concern to us here.
Stage 1: Here the agent P simply wants to communicate a particular message
to an audience A. Example: “By shouting at his companion, P wanted to show
him that he was annoyed with P’s chattering.”
Stage 2: Here the agent P wants not only to communicate a particular feel-
ing, emotion, attitude, etc., to an audience A but also to affect A psychologi-
cally, by eliciting either (a) a like feeling, emotion, attitude, etc., or (b) a different
feeling, emotion, etc., in A. Example: “By smiling and gazing soulfully at her
lover, she wanted to let him know how much she loved him, and wanted him to
reciprocate with a smile and a soulful gaze at her.”
Stage 3: This would consist of situations in which P wants that A, besides

(a) understanding the meaning of her action, to (b) respond appropriately to it;
(c) to become aware and to understand that P wants A to understand what P
means/meant by her action in that context.
Stage 4: Here, in addition to (a) – (c) in Stage 3, P hopes that A (d) will re-
spond to action C the way P wants, hopes or expects A to respond to C, as well
as (e) to acknowledge her understanding of what P means by C, in the circum-
stances, by means of appropriate speech, action, silence, body language, etc.
Example: “By smiling and gazing soulfully at her lover, she wanted to let him
know how much she loved him, and wanted—or hoped—that, in addition to his
understanding of the meaning of her smile and gaze, he too would respond with
a smile and a soulful gaze at her.”
Stage 5: In this final stage, P wants or hopes that, in addition to producing
the states of affairs (a) – (e) of stage 4, his action will (f) make A be(come) aware
that P is aware of her (A’s) response to P’s action. But as can be seen, this stage
goes beyond one-way communication by P to A and becomes a two-way com-
munication. That can be clearly seen from the following example: “By sending
her absent son a birthday present, the mother let him know that she loves him
and hopes that he will understand and acknowledge the fact that it is meant as
a token of her love, and will in turn show that he too loves her.” But in order
that A may make P aware that she knows that he loves her in return, she would
have to perform an additional communicative action (g); e.g., telling P, writing
to him or in some other way making him aware , that she knows that he loves
her.
In short, the satisfaction of requirements (f) – (g) of Stage 5 goes beyond one
way communication and becomes two-way communication. 68
4.4 Consequentialist Uses of Action

So far I have limited myself to a consideration of the expressive and communi-
cative uses of actions. As for the third, consequentialist aspect of physical ac-
tions, I shall limit myself to the following remarks: that the results or conse-
quences the agent desires, wants or intends to bring about by means of a
||
68 Compare Stage 5 of the communicative aspect of silence in Chapter 2.It should be noted
that the Grice-Strawson discussion of two-way communication through silence in Chapter 2
and 3 applies, mutatis mutandis, to two-cay communication through action, but will not be
repeated here.
particular action in a particular context, and the actual results or consequences a

particular action, which may or may not coincide with the agent’s intention,
etc., fall within the domains of actual morality, normative ethics and of the
various economic, psychological, social, political, or religious facets of individ-
ual and collective human existence. Consequently, they fall outside the purview
of this chapter and of this book as a whole. But as with the Expressive and
Communicative aspects of actions, the In/By locutions do apply to the conse-
quentialist aspect of actions. To illustrate: “In killing his enemy the gunman
was trying to avenge himself on his real or perceived grievances against him”;
and “By killing his enemy the gunman was avenging himself on his enemy.”
5 Silence and the Inner Life
5.1 Silence and the Inner Life: Conscious Mental Activities,
Experiences & States as Silent Forms of Doing
One of the most obvious yet remarkable facts about our mental life is its pro-
foundly silent character, very much like the depth of the seas and oceans. For
our mental, inner life is like the proverbial iceberg, whose “tip” alone appears
above the surface in speech, public physical action, and body language. All our
thoughts, feelings and emotions, our conscious dreams, both during our waking
hours and those during sleep; our imaginings, desires, plans and intentions;
our reminiscences and remembering; our silent aspirations and our religious
and non-religious prayers, all take place and pass away silently, part of what we
call our selfhood or personhood, together with our unconscious and subcon-
scious mental activities. But I am leaving aside the mystics and the yogi, the
hermits, the nuns and monks—such as the Capuchin monks in a French monas-
tery we shall meet in a later chapter, or the nuns in the Old City of Jerusalem,
who had taken a lifelong vow of silence. The uses of silence in relation to the
spiritual/religious life will be the subjects of the two last chapters of this book.
In addition to its being of considerable interest to us in relation to our con-
sideration of the forms of silence in this book, our inner, psychic life—(1) our
mental activities, such as thinking, feeling, imagining, fantasizing, remember-
ing, dreaming, day-dreaming, and so on; together with (2) the thoughts, feel-
ings, emotions, imaginings, night- dreams and day-dreams, reminiscences and
memories—are also of special interest to us insofar as the various psychic pro-
cesses, states and activities that give rise to the various mental-neurological
contents, are—as the springs of (1) and (2) above—including our physical ac-
tions and activities and the other forms of silent activities considered in Chap-
ters 1-3—are various forms of doing: psychic doing. Mental states and activities
may be conscious, not be conscious, or subconscious; and they may impulsive
or non-impulsive; thoughtful, intentional; or thoughtless, impulsive, uninten-
tional; voluntary or involuntary; deliberate or not deliberate. The differences
between them as forms of doing, as possible springs of action, will be consid-
ered in relation to each of them.
Since our psychic activities, like the various applications of the “In”-/By”-
formulae earlier considered also apply mutatis mutandis to it. For instance, with
respect to the activity of thinking or of reasoning, one might ordinarily say: (a)
“In formulating a new cosmological theory, cosmologist P was trying to resolve
some of the fundamental mysteries about the Big Bang and the evolution of the
54 | Silence and the Inner Life
universe”; and (b) “By trying to imagine or remember how her grandmother
looked when she was still alive, the granddaughter was trying to see in her
mind’s eye the expressions on her grandmother’s face on various occasions in
her life.” And, (c) “In P’s anxiety to prevent harm to B, she impulsively jumped
into the pool”; and “By impulsively jumping into the pool, P was trying to save
B from drowning.”
It is clear that our mental states and activities arise as responses to external
stimuli as well as spontaneously from our present or past physical and mental
states and activities. The image of my mother’s or father’s face, and/or their
words, or particular actions at a given time in their life may suddenly well out
into consciousness, without anything particular in the present relating to them
or reminding me of them; out of the blue, so to speak. Nothing physical I am
feeling at the time and nothing I see or do, etc., may have anything to do with
those images, etc. On the other hand, memories, like other mental experiences,
ultimately have some cause or causes in the external world, in our sensory per-
ceptions and/or our bodily sensations or feelings at a given time. These are the
forces that ultimately create our mental states and activities, and/or give rise to
them at a particular time in a particular context—and they in turn may give rise
to physical actions/activities and/or to various mental states and activities. And
so on and so forth.
5.2 Mental States vs. Mental Activities

Unlike mental activities, mental states are not a form or a kind of doing but
consist of mental, psychological experiences and so are not expressible in terms
of the “In/By-” locutions. Mental states—such as feelings and emotions of ela-
tion, depression, happiness or unhappiness, pleasure or pain, sorrow or mental
suffering, are, or desires, intentions, likes and dislikes, are “passive” psycho-
logical states or occurrences. Likewise our daytime and nighttime dreams,
memories—as opposed to recollecting or reminiscing—are psychic states;
though dreaming, remembering and reminiscing are clearly mental activities.
However, feelings, emotions, dreams, desires and intentions and other psycho-
logical states or experiences are the product of psychological activity resulting
from thinking, imagining, remembering and the like. This is reflected in such
statements as: (1) “In thinking about is recently deceased parents, Peter felt very
sad”; “In imagining himself in luxurious tropical surroundings in a sunny tropi-
cal island in winter, Mary was trying to cheer herself after her failure in the final
exams.” Normally one does not perform actions “for their own sakes”—
“treading water,” so to speak. One acts for the sake of bringing about desired or
Bodily Feelings & Sensations as Silent States or Experiences | 55
intended physical results in the world, and/or effects in other human beings or
in Nature; i.e., aimed-at changes, large or small, in the world. That is precisely
what the particular effect(s) and consequences for the sake of which an agent
performs a particular action or actions. This, third main aspect of action—
acting—as a form of doing is distinguished from the “communicative” aspect of
action, considered in Part II, which I designated as the AC-Purposive aspect of
acting/action. But in some instances this facet of acting consists in the agent’s
intention or purpose to produce a particular effect on particular human beings
or groups of human beings, or on humankind in general. Although mental
states differ from mental activities, they too are clearly springs of human overt
action, mental, physical or both. This is of course true of our feelings and emo-
tions, which are mental states and not activities but the product of mental activ-
ities. We are all familiar with instances of mental and/or physical activities in
our own lives and in the lives of others, resulting from our feelings and emo-
tions, and other mental states.
5.3 Bodily Feelings & Sensations as Silent States or Experiences

So far we have distinguished and briefly described our mental activities and
states in the sense of our silent psychological states. But we must not forget that
we also sometimes experience various physical, bodily feelings and sensations,
such as sensations of hunger or thirst; feel physical pleasure, including sexual
pleasure, or physical pain; as well as sensations of hunger or thirst. Again,
when we feel unwell, we may feel dizzy, experience nausea, and so on. And
these feelings or sensations too are part of our silent “inner life,” though in their
case, in a broader sense of that phrase than merely our psychic, psychological
life.
Like psychological states, bodily states affect our behavior; they give rise to
various, usually mundane but nonetheless important physical actions and ac-
tivities, such as those involved in keeping body and soul together, avoiding or
coping with pain, or indulging in various sorts of pleasurable activities, and so
on; they also importantly affect us psychologically, hence may also lead to emo-
tional, psychological as well as to our physical states. For instance, constant or
even intermittent physical pain inevitably ruins ones mood, causing depression,
anger, hence, not infrequently, uncontrolled lashing at members of one’s fami-
ly, caregivers or colleagues; and the opposite with a sense of physical well-
being. In short, like our psychological states, they too are springs of action, and
similarly the “In”/”By”-formulae apply to them as conscious states, whether
particular bodily feelings or states happen to be voluntary or involuntary, delib-

erate or impulsive.
5.4 Unconscious Mental Activities

At the “lower part” of the metaphorical iceberg of our silent, inner life lies, ac-
cording to contemporary psychology and psychiatry, the subconscious activity
of the mind. Since Freud we are familiar with the fact that the sex drive, the
Oedipus and Electra complex, etc., “exist” in our subconscious. Similarly with
the fight or flight instinct, and other subconscious forces that lie in our subcon-
scious; though the study of the subconscious through neurological study of the
brain and brain activities is an ongoing process and, by the admission of psy-
chologists and psychiatrists, much remains to learn about it and its basis in
different parts of the brain and their functions.
As far as I know, psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists are still in
the beginnings of their understanding of the subconscious and its relations to
the brain and its activities. One thing is clear at present: the study of the sub-
conscious necessarily means or involves understanding the relation between it
and the brain and its functions. For as Dr. Eric Kandel put it in one of the con-
ferences on the subject on the Charlie Rose program,69 “Every mental function is
a brain function.” One of the points made by some participants was the division
of the subconscious into two Systems: System I, which is “hot” and includes
automatic fun, and includes, from birth, reflexive automatic fight or flight re-
flex; while System II is “cool,” and involves reflexive conscious activity, inhibi-
tion of impulses, intuitions based on things in the mind, computational activity
involving decision and resources of self-control. We also know since Freud (fol-
lowing the ancient Greeks), e.g., about the Oedipus and Electra complexes. In
addition, we also know perhaps more than a little about the role the subcon-
scious appears to play in relation to human mental creativity in its various
forms. From the writings, reports and declarations of writers, poets, composers,
painters and other artists, from scientists, mathematicians and philosophers,
and from personal experience, we learn that the subconscious is a veritable
crucible of creativity, whose results are manifested in conscious mental states
and activities that since Plato have been called “inspiration.” Although the idea
of the subconscious is relatively new, the concept of inspiration, as a “push
from behind” so to speak, is, as I said, essentially the concept developed in
||
69 March 11, 2013.
Pathologies of Inner Silence: “Silent Minds” | 57
Plato’s theory of inspiration. But I should add that inspiration is sometimes

supplemented or replaced by conscious concentration of the mind on a particu-
lar idea, problem or solution the individual may be wrestling with. That is, by a
conscious goal-directed activity, and so consists in a “pull” from the dimly or
not so dimly “idea” envisioned by the individual.70 The unconscious mind’s
creative activity or a nascent inspiration is sometimes enhanced or takes body
and shape with the help of drink, narcotics or hallucinatory drugs—or more
innocently by, for example, listening to or playing a musical instrument as in
the case of Albert Einstein, for example.
As I believe is fairly familiar, intense conscious dwelling of the mind for
hours or days or weeks etc., on or literally wrestling with a particular concept,
problem, theory, and so on, “pulls it down,” so to speak, into the person’s
dream world, where it may germinate, so to speak, or be even resolved and
happily returned to the individual’s conscious mind as “solved.”71 Note that I
said “a crucible,” since creativity can consciously occur without necessarily
being gradually or in a flash thrust into (or onto) consciousness by the uncon-
scious activities of the mind. The results of both unconscious and conscious or
semi-conscious mental activity are often involuntarily and uncontrollably thrust
into consciousness, resulting in conscious states and activity.
Adler maintains that the subconscious mind can imaginatively plan the in-
dividual’s “lines of life”; if so it must be rational and intelligent in a high de-
gree, if not more intelligent and rational than the conscious mind; which would
be normally—i.e., except through psychoanalysis, or perhaps subtle introspec-
tion—unaware of it. Indeed, Adler’s view, if true, would constitute a partial
departure from or criticism of Freud’s conception of the subconscious as irra-
tional. I say partial because the means used for gaining the ends desired, and
the ends themselves, would still be irrational. But the wonderful adaptation of
means to ends would surely be rational.
5.5 Pathologies of Inner Silence: “Silent Minds”

As noted earlier all of a normal grown-up person’s mental activities, stream of
consciousness and self-awareness are inherently silent, silent by their very
||
70 For a discussion of the creative process in art see my “The Creative Process in Art,” British
Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 17, No. 3, Summer 1977. Reprinted in The Problem Of Creativity, Ed. J.
Aler and M. Damnjanovic,’IX Congress of Aesthetics, Dubrovnik, 1980, Belgrade, 1983.
71 A remarkable example is Tartini’s repeated dream of the devil playing a certain piece on the
violin, which, at the end, successfully resulted in his famous “The Devil’s Trill.”
nature. They are directly “disclosed” only to the person’s mind or conscious-
ness, which includes peripheral consciousness. (In addition, normal people
unconsciously “store” stimuli in the brain and, perhaps, also in the mind.) But
there is a deeper kind of silence that obtains in the case of vegetative individu-
als, and, to lesser degrees in the case of semi-conscious and comatose patients.
In an article in The New Yorker72 on the latter pathologies, but especially vegeta-
tive patients, Dr. Jerome Groopman spoke of these patients as “silent minds.”73
Vegetative patients are not consciously aware of things around them. He ob-
served that for decades it was assumed by physicians that patients diagnosed as
vegetative “lack any capacity for conscious thought.”74
Most of these patients were previously healthy, but had had a “traumatic
brain injury,” or had “oxygen deprivation after a heart attack or stroke,” and
have been considered “more or less zombies: patients whose bodies continue to
function—but whose minds are incapable of willed activity.”75
The situation of vegetative patients, Dr. Groopman added, is significantly
different from that of semi-conscious patients as well as from comatose pa-
tients, who are in a minimally conscious state. A less severe condition than
vegetative patients is that in which patients manifest deliberate behavior; for
example, responding to simple commands or being able to focus for a period on
some person or object. Doctors who made diagnoses based on bedside evalua-
tions, sometimes erroneously believe that it is “evidence of consciousness.”76
Dr. Lionel Naccache, a neurologist at a Paris hospital, together with several
colleagues, have been conducting “brain-imaging experiments” to identify
“objective indicators of consciousness,” enabling a better evaluation of patients
“unable to communicate their awareness of themselves or their environment.”77
Dr. Naccache said that human beings store information unconsciously; we con-
tinually “assimilate… stimuli unconsciously,” but pay attention only to a few.
During the several past decades scientists have discovered striking instances of
“unconscious processing.”78 A working definition of consciousness is being
developed by his team. The key property, when we are conscious, is that we are
||
72 “Silent Minds, What scanning techniques are revealing about vegetative patients”, October
15, 2007, pp. 38-43.
73 Ibid., p. 39.
74 Ibid.
75 Oxford English Dictionary: “an organic body capable of growth and development but devoid
of sensation and thought.” (Ibid.)
76 Ibid., p. 40.
77 Ibid.,
78 Ibid., pp. 40-41.
Pathologies of Inner Silence: “Silent Minds” | 59
able to tell the “content of the representation”; for example, when one says that
one is seeing a flower, or that one is aware of talking with someone on the
phone. There may be conscious patients or patients who are able to give re-
ports; but it can be shown that some stimuli “escaped their conscious reports,”
as in the case of blindsight 79 or “neglect 80 of vision.” The right side of the brain
controls the body’s left side; hence that is of greater complexity than blindsight
since it means that the patient was “unconsciously able to interpret and under-
stand the symbolic meaning of the pictures.”81
Dr. Naccache believes that, in addition, “consciousness…requires an abil-
ity [not only to have a representation but also] to sustain a representation over
time …” In the evaluation of apparently vegetative patients who lack the ability
to speak, hence report, research should look for “sustained representation.” If it
is possible to show that an apparently vegetative patient has the capacity to
“actively maintain a given representation during tens of seconds,” it would give
us “strong evidence of conscious processing.” 82
Recently, Dr. Naccache included a third neurological feature in his defini-
tion of consciousness: broadcasting. In a conscious person information received
by the brain is “processed in a few areas and then distributed—or broadcast—to
many others.” As if a “kind of ignition” takes place in the brain, so that infor-
mation becomes available to a large number of regions. It stands to reason that
the information is at first “represented locally,” then passed on to a “vast net-
work,” since the person is able to “maintain the representation within the net-
work for a long time. 83
In 2005 Dr. Naccache conducted an experiment that suggested the im-
portance of “broadcasting as a marker of consciousness.”84 “[U]nconsciously
many areas of the brain can process information, and … unconscious represen-
tation can be very abstract and very rich—much more than neuroscientists
thought some decades ago.” Now it is possible to begin to identify “some limits
of unconscious cognition. The activation picked up by the electrodes is not only
||
79 “Blindsight is the syndrome the ‘patients’ eyes functioned normally, but… did not perceive
much of what was in the field of vision.” (Ibid., p. 41)
80 “In the case of “neglect” patients who have the syndrome, because of ‘tumors or other
abnormalities of the parietal lobe on the right side of the brain, ignored the left side of the body
and objects in the left field of vision.” (Ibid., p. 41)
81 Ibid., p. 41.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
evanescent but restricted to the amygdale and a few other regions, without
broadcasting and amplification through the brain.”85
5.6 Expressive and Communicative uses of the “In”-/“By”-

Formulae in Relation to the Inner Life: Some Examples
(1) (a) “In thinking about his old mother back at home, the young man in col-
lege suddenly had a deep sense of sadness and nostalgia”;
(b) “In imagining the delights of the Caribbean island where he dreamed of
spending his vacation, he was deceiving himself”;
(c) “In planning her activities and meetings at the office the next day, the
businesswoman mentally went through the list of what she had to do in
preparation the night before;
(2) (a) “By thinking of his old mother back at home, the young man in college
was trying to console himself by his knowledge that she loved him”;
(b) “By imagining the delights of the Caribbean island where he was plan-
ning to spend his vacation, he was trying to overcome his current sense of
malaise”.
As in examples (B) (1) and (2), the agent tried or was trying to arouse a cer-
tain feeling, emotion, etc., in herself. In some instances the attempt to do so
is successful; in others the attempt may be the opposite.
(c) “By telling his friend about his sense of exhilaration at the thought of
going on a vacation, he was trying to make him jealous.” Whether someone
in such a position succeeds or fails depends on various circumstances,
some or all of which may be beyond the control of the speaker.
In addition to the preceding, in expressing or trying to express one’s thoughts,

feelings or emotions, imaginings, etc., to another, one may succeed or fail ade-
quately to express them. But in having the particular thoughts, feelings, etc.,
herself—as opposed to trying to express them to someone else—, the agent can-
not fail: it makes no sense to say that “In feeling sad, gay or happy; or, in imag-
ining something or other, and so on, the agent failed—failed to do what he
meant to do.”
||
85 Ibid.
Infelicity, Misfiring, Force & Point | 61
5.7 Infelicity, Misfiring, Force & Point in Relation to Mental

and Physical States and Activities
Since the concepts of infelicity and misfiring were discussed in some detail in
Chapter 4 as well as the earlier chapters, I shall limit myself here to some exam-
ples illustrative of each of them.
5.8 Infelicity
This consists (transposing Searle to the present context) in the “…general diffi-
culty in correctly knowing how to go about doing something..,” and the prob-
lem of the agent’s being able to “convert knowing how into knowing that”—
knowing that the action one performs or is about to perform will succeed in its
purpose or goal. Examples in our case would be: (1a) “In trying to collect his
thoughts to go on writing his novel, the writer drank too much whisky and
found himself befuddled rather than enlightened”; and (1b) “By drinking a lot of
whisky the writer found himself unable to continue working on his novel.”
5.9 Misfiring
Since misfiring in the present sort of case consist in the agent’s misinterpreta-
tion of the actual or likely results or consequences of one’s action—or inaction—
the following would I think constitute an example of this failing: (1a) “In failing
to think properly about his job because of his anger for being humiliated by his
boss, he decided to quit rather than continuing doing menial work; in the unre-
alistic expectation that he would soon land a better job, since the result of his
action was a long period of unemployment at a time when jobs in his city were
very scarce”; and: (1b) “By hastily taking the wrong painkiller to stop the pain
she was having in her joints, the patient made her condition worse.”
5.10 Point
An example of “point” here would be when a speaker expresses her attitude
towards a given situation, say, the fact that she is feeling pain, by crying out to a
member of the family, say her daughter, to bring her a painkiller to swallow.
Employing the “In”-locution, we can restate the preceding as follows: “In crying
out to her daughter to bring her a painkiller, the mother was expressing (or
expressed) her agony brought about by the pain she was experiencing.” And
“By crying to her daughter to bring her a painkiller, the mother was trying to
alert (or alerted) her daughter about the pain she was experiencing.”
|
Part II: Aesthetics of Silence
6 Silence in the Temporal Arts I: Music
Heard melodies are sweet, but those
Unheard are sweeter.
(John Keats, On a Grecian Urn)
6.1 General Remarks concerning the “Temporal”

and “Visual-Spatial” Arts
Aestheticians and others speak of literature and music as temporal arts, and of
film, opera and dance as among other things, “temporal arts,” as opposed to
painting, sculpture, and architecture as “spatial, visual arts. However, it is nec-
essary to see in what way or sense the so-called temporal arts are temporal—and
in what sense they are not.
It is clear that the creative process, if successful, results, say, in a poem or a
sonata in real time. However, the completed work (if completed) is ontologically
speaking what I call an “abstract particular”: a concept I applied elsewhere to
works of music but that also applies to works of literature, film, operetta and
opera, and dance. As abstract particulars they are a-temporal, do not exist in
time. More precisely, the concept of time is inapplicable to them. Only their
readings, recitations or performances, and the creative processes that gave rise
to them, exist or endure in time, are temporal. Moreover, the concepts of silence
and sound (e.g. pitched tones in the case of music) are applicable to them as
abstract particulars, since the concept of time or temporality is inapplicable to
them except insofar as they are potentialities or possibilities realized in actual
readings or performances.
A work of music is exemplified in its score(s) and in all its actual and possi-
ble readings/performances, simultaneously or successively, in the same or dif-
ferent physical locations. What can be reproduced is the work’s text or score, in
a sense of ‘reproduced’ from different from the sense in which a painting may be
reproduced, made a copy of. By reproducing the text or the score of the work in
readings and performances, the work becomes available to readers and listeners
in multiple readings or performances at the same time or at different times.
Like the readings or performances of temporal art, a painting or a sculpture
as a physical object, for example as a painted design on canvas or wood or as a
chunk of hewn marble respectively, is temporal. But it is a-temporal as an aes-
thetic object. Literary and musical works too, as aesthetic objects, as “abstract
particulars” or “constructs,” are also a-temporal. But they have the capacity or
66 | Silence in the Temporal Arts I: Music
potentiality for being sounded in readings-recitations (poetry, prose), and in

performances (music). However, as abstract particulars they are neither silent
nor sounding. These concepts are inapplicable to them. Only their readings or
performances arise out of the silence that “envelop’s” these creations, and end
in silence. 86
If a previously existing architectural structure such as a historic mansion
has ceased to exist or has become a ruin, and at some future point is desired to
reconstruct it as closely to the original as possible, thus, e.g., using the same
site, its original design and the original materials, the new structure will still be
an original work of architecture and a possible aesthetic object in its own right,
numerically distinct from the original structure, whether or not the reconstruc-
tion is done by the same architects and engineers. The same would perhaps be
more obviously true if the new mansion is built on a different site from the orig-
inal.
The preceding will also be true if the reconstruction is done with different
materials, colors, décor, etc., from the original. Then too the reconstructed
mansion would be an architectural work and a possible aesthetic object in its
own right, numerically distinct from the original mansion. And in both cases the
reconstructed mansion’s aesthetic value as architectural art would depend on
its own qualities. The fact that it is a reconstruction of an original mansion
would not diminish its aesthetic value, if any, or automatically turn it into an
aesthetically worthless “reproduction” or “copy.” (Contrast painting and sculp-
ture). It would, however, lack the original’s historic and cultural value. The
main thing is that it would not be automatically considered inauthentic or aes-
thetically inferior to the original edifice.
With these general preliminary remarks I turn to the expressive uses of si-
lence in the temporal arts, leaving a consideration of silence in relation to the
spatial, visual arts. I shall start with the uses of silence in literature and music.
Rests/Pauses/Silences & Meaning in Temporal Art
As in other kinds of contexts, the meanings rests/silence(s) may have in the

temporal arts are essentially contextual, depending on their place or position in
the text or the score, their relationship(s) to what precedes and what succeeds
them; i.e.; their linguistic-aesthetic relationships. In every case they both sepa-
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86 For John Cage’s perhaps unique exception to this is the avant-garde “work” John Cage
“created” on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,see Chapter 7.
General Remarks concerning the “Temporal” and “Visual-Spatial” Arts | 67
rate and relate or connect what precedes and what follows them in the text or
score.
The following are the ways or senses in which the rests/silences in a liter-
ary, dramatic or operatic episode, scene, theme or a particular part of a literary
or musical theme may have meaning-in-context in one or more of the following
meanings or senses of the word; i.e., as: (a) signification (meaning-1); (b) aes-
thetic significance, weight or importance (meaning-2); (c) a sign (of what will
follow, meaning; (d) a signal (of what will follow); (e) a symbol. Examples of
some of these meanings will be seen in relation to our later discussion of the
expressive and communicative roles of silence in selected works.
Whenever a pause, rest, or silence has meaning in any one or more of these
senses of meaning in a good literary or musical work, etc., it would lend the
work or particular passage, scene, theme or episode in the work, a certain de-
gree of aesthetic expressiveness, hence in addition a degree of aesthetically
communicativeness; a modicum of power to affect an audience intellectually
and/or emotionally by the particular meaning(s) conveyed.
Clearly, the preceding senses of ‘meaning’ most commonly and importantly
arise in and as clusters or complexes, not in and as individual rests/ pauses/
silences as such; for example, in sentences as a whole and in entire lines or
stanzas of a poem and in parts or the whole of musical passages, melodies or
themes, etc.; where the aesthetic significance and/or other possible meanings of
pauses/silences gain in significance by their intimate relationship to what pre-
cedes and what follows them.
If the particular contexts in which some or all of the pauses/silences occur
are indefinite or ambiguous, open to different interpretations of the text or
score, the particular meaning/meanings of the pauses/silences-in- context
would also be ambiguous. Ambiguity can theoretically arise in relation to the
formal aspects of literature and music, the commonest examples of which are
found in literature, drama and theatre, film dialogue and film music. Whether it
can also occur in works of absolute musical compositions is an interesting ques-
tion we shall consider with examples in the section on the possible aesthetic
roles of pauses/silences in the content of temporal works of art.
Generally speaking meaning-1 is at home in, hence give aesthetic signifi-
cance, meaning-2, to the pauses/silences in the content of a temporal work of
art, not in its purely formal components or aspects. That is, in the plots of short
stories, novels, play’s and operas, descriptive elements in narrative verse and
prose literature, including drama and theatre, and in opera. In music, it may be
found in programmatic works, though not in absolute music. However, mean-
ing-1 is absent from the vast majority of absolute musical compositions, e.g.,
sonatas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, etc., which a works of abso-

lute music. However, in some cases, audiences have attached programmatic
meanings-1 to certain works or to certain passages of absolute music as e.g. to
Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and to the famous four-note opening of Bee-
thoven’s Symphony No. 5, widely interpreted as “the knock on Fate’s door.”
Meaning-1 and meaning-2 is clearly at home in works of program music,
such as in the storm scene and its aftermath in the “pastoral” movement of
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony; in e.g., Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bare Moun-
tain” and “Pictures at an Exhibition,” military and funeral marches, symphonic
poems, and in songs (except songs without words), operas and choral works.
Rests/pauses and—especially silences, particularly long silences—may have
symbolic meaning-5 both in literary works, in prose and verse. Thus in works of
fiction and in drama, a character’s pauses and/or silences would commonly
have symbolic meaning. In some instances the intended symbolic meaning may
be deliberately or otherwise unclear. (The discussion of silence in Chapters 1
and 2 are relevant here.)
In absolute musical compositions, instances of symbolic silences—let alone
rests—if they exist at all, are very difficult to come by. But given the common
interpretation of the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony referred to
above, the meaning-1 commonly attributed to them is clearly symbolic; and
since the rests between the notes are essential for their being what they are, the
rests play a role in giving them their symbolic meaning.
Some works of music as a whole are symbolic in nature. One famous exam-
ple is the funeral march in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, which clearly symbol-
izes the death of the former hero—Napoleon Bonaparte. Another example is
Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March,” which is symbolic of the
grandeur—and the pomp and circumstance—of British Victorian imperial Eng-
land. Here too, the rests contribute to the symbolism of the work as a whole as
part of the March’s themes.
Pauses and especially silences are not uncommon in poetry, drama, fiction,
film as temporal arts, and may have a variety of different sorts of meanings,
such as symbolic meaning. For example, Jesus’ silence in Dostoevsky’s “The
Grand inquisitor,” is highly symbolic. Similarly Jesus’ unbroken silence—until
his last retort to Pontius Pilate at his trial, described in the Gospels, is also high-
ly symbolic, though that meaning is very different from its meaning in the for-
mer work. (See later, particularly Chapter 14)
Rests/Pauses/Silence in the Form & in the Content of Temporal Works of Art | 69
Aesthetic Force
The various sorts of meaning that rests/pauses/silences can have in temporal

art, distinguished above, give the particular works—depending on the positions
of the rests/pauses in a work and their extensiveness—various degrees of (g)
expressive/communicative force, hence expressive and communicative power.
6.2 Rests/Pauses/Silence in the Form & in the Content

of Temporal Works of Art
Silence functions on two aesthetically interconnected and cooperative logical
levels in the temporal arts: (1) it functions, first, on the level of the purely formal
aspects of a literary or a musical text; as part of the particular language, dialect
or patois in which a given literary text is spoken or written down, and of the
particular music text, in the form of its musical notation. In addition, silence
functions on (2) the level of a work’s content, where silence itself is part of a
work’s subject(s) or theme(s) of a work, or (b) it is the subject or theme of a work
as a whole. In some instances In (b) the role of silence in the particular work’s
subject-matter or content may be small or relatively small, or it may be consid-
erable. A famous literary example, discussed detail in Chapter 14. concerns the
dramatic thematic role of silence in Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” in
Book V, Pro and Contra, of The Brothers Karamazov, and its pivotal part it plays
in Ivan Karamazov’s—the novel’s central character’s—attitude towards religion.
I refer of course to Christ’s total silence in his encounter with the Grand Inquisi-
tor upon his return to earth.
Silence as the entire theme or content of a musical composition or even a
sizeable part of a theme, we only find in a relatively small number of composi-
tions in Western classical music. One of the examples is John Cage’s 4’33’ (1952),
which ostensibly consists of nothing but four minutes and thirty-three seconds
of silence. 87 That work together with other works in which silence is a signifi-
cant part of or the entire work, will be listed later in this chapter.
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87 I say ostensibly consists in four-minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, since, in any
“performance” of the work, the piano’s silence would be broken by the surrounding sounds
and noises made by the audience; such as coughing, moving in their chairs, breathing. Con-
sequently, the silence would be like the hole in a doughnut consisting of various human noises
or sounds. Other accidental sounds may occur in different “performances,” such as the drones
of a plane flying overhead. In that way the “work” would be an example of an eleatory “com-
position”—a way of writing Cage frequently practiced in his music, including his use of it in the
6.3 General Considerations regarding the Formal Aspects of

Temporal Works of Art 88
It is clear that pauses-silences between words, phrases, sentences, etc., are
absolutely necessary for the very existence of human language; without them
language would be gibberish. Words, phrases and sentences are semantically
and syntactically separated and distinguished from other words, phrases, hence
sentences, etc., by means of pauses symbolized by commas, semicolons, colons,
periods, etc., separating and distinguishing words, phrases and sentences, at the
same time relating them to one another in a meaningful whole, both in speech and
in writing. In spoken language the pauses—which vary in duration depending
on the speaker’s intention or interpretation of the meaning hence the content of
the sentences and their combinations—which in written language are indicated
by the conventional use of commas, semicolons, colons and periods. Thus si-
lence plays essential roles in the form and content or substance of all literary
forms and genres.
As with language, hence the literary arts and genres, the very existence of a
work of music depends both in its general form and in its content on the exist-
ence of pauses. Indeed, music as we know it could not exist, would be impossi-
ble without pauses/silences. In the absence of any pauses, or silences between
notes, phrases, themes, and so on, every “work” would be nothing but one
short or long cascade of uninterrupted tones with no meaning or significance.
At most we would have something like Yves Klein’s “Monotone-Silent Sympho-
ny in two movements,” which is a single 20-minute sustained chord followed by
a 20-minute silence,” 89 or, at best, a long or a very long violin pizzicato, or a trill
sounded, for example, on the piano or some other instrument. But see later.
The musical notes/tones, phrases and chords in all their multifarious possi-
ble combinations that together constitute a given work of music are formally
defined and distinguished by silences that separate them from and at the same
time link them to one another. And as with a particular novel or poem, the
length or duration of the pauses or silence between the phases and themes of a
sonata or quartet varies continually, depending on the composer’s desire or
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ballet music he composed in collaboration with Merce Cunningham’s choreography. (See also
my discussion of the “work” in Chapter 7.
88 For the relevant definitions of ‘form’ see footnote 6.
89 Yves Klein, Overcoming the Problematics of Art: The Writings of Yves Klein (Spring Publica-
tions, 2007). The preceding work illustrates the use of silence as a main “theme” in a musical
work. Other examples of the “thematic” uses of silence will be discussed later in the chapter.
Formal Features of Temporal Art | 71
intention as well as on the particular performer’s understanding, and so, her

interpretation of the work.
The preceding remarks also clearly apply, mutatis mutandis, to dra-
ma/theatre, and to dance, film and opera as multidimensional arts utilizing
inter alia both language and music. It is clear that pauses, i.e., silences, play a
crucial role in music, literature and all other temporal arts. Music—except for
“silent music”— would not exist, would be impossible without pauses, silences,
however fleeting or brief in some works they may be’; and spoken and written
language would be gibberish without pauses.
The concept of silence arises both in relation to (1) a temporal work itself as
an “abstract particular;”90 consequently (2) in a work’s readings/performances, as
well as in relation to its beginning and end; insofar as a literary work or a work
of music, etc. is necessarily preceded by, arises from, and at the end is followed
by silence.
Since we are here concerned with the aesthetic roles, hence the aesthetic
experiences we, as readers or performers of literary works; and similarly, with
the aesthetic roles, hence our aesthetic experiences as performers of or listeners
to music, I shall concentrate in this chapter on the aesthetic roles pauses-
silences can play in readings/performances of works of music and of works of
literature, not on—or not also on—the pauses in the scores of musical composi-
tions—with due consideration to the sometimes considerable variations in the
durations of the pauses-silence in the actual readings or performances of par-
ticular works by different performers or—in the case of literature, different—
readers.
6.4 Formal Features of Temporal Art

To clearly understand the roles of pauses/rests/silences in temporal art—
indeed, in relation to any kind of art—we need to understand first the concept of
form 91 in the requisite sense.
The physical shape or design of a poem on the page(s), the way the words
and lines, stanzas, etc., in it are arranged on the page or pages of a poem; for
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90 For my view that music—and I might add here, that the same is true of works in all other
temporal arts—consist of what I call “abstract particulars,” see my “The Identity of Music I,”
Music, Film and Art (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishing),pp. 3-25.
91 The American Heritage Dictionary defines ‘form’ in the relevant senses as “1.The shape of
something as distinguished from its substance. … 12. The design, structure, or pattern of a work
of art: symphonic form. 7e. a linguistic form.”
instance an ode, a medieval ballad, the traditional (e.g., Elizabethan and Ro-
mantic sonnet and ode, the shape and size of an epic or long poem, as well as
the shape of a contemporary poem, may be relevant to its form in the more
important sense of design, structure or pattern. But it is the latter sense of the
term (sense 12) that is the important sense and primarily concerns us here and
in this chapter as a whole.
A main musical form in sense 12 is the sonata form, the basic classical form
of the symphony and concerto from Haydn and Mozart on, with notable, even
revolutionary, changes in it, especially in Beethoven’s middle and late piano
sonatas for example. For instance, some of the sonatas have only two move-
ments, though others have three or four movements. Concentrating on his third,
last period, while Op. 110, the great Hammerklavier sonata has four movements,
Op. 111 has three movements; and sonata Op.112 has just two movements. Fur-
ther, some Beethoven sonatas differ from, for example, Mozart’s piano sonatas
in having a scherzo or a fugue as the last movement, unlike Mozart’s minuet for
example. In fact, the Hammerklavier has two fugues in its third movement:
while the fourth movement has one fugue, followed by an adagio, followed by a
second fugue with an inversion. Some of Beethoven’s earlier sonatas too have a
fugue as part of a movement, and other, late sonatas have a fugue in the last
movement. The influence of J.S. Bach on Beethoven’s sonatas (e.g., in Beetho-
ven’s use of the fugue form)92 is noted by Professor Robert Greenberg in “Bee-
thoven’s Piano Sonatas,” for instance in the following remarks in relation to
Beethoven’s Op. 22: “There is a singleness of purpose in the development of the
first movement of op. 22, a powerful combination of intellect and expression
unlike any other music of the Classical era but very much like the music of the
High Baroque, in particular that of Johann Sebastian Bach.” 93 The influence of
Bach on Beethoven’s later piano sonatas is also emphasized by Professor Robert
Greenberg in his lectures the Guide Book, e.g. in the Hammerklavier Sonata
mentioned earlier. Indeed, he writes the following regarding the much earlier
piano sonata in Bb Major, opus 22, about which he e.g., writes the following:
“There is a singleness of purpose in the development of the first movement of
op. 22, a powerful combination of intellect and expression unlike any other
music of the Classical era but very much like the music of the High Baroque, in
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92 Which is also seen in his great Grosse Fugue, that Beethoven originally wrote as the last
movement of String Quartet No. 130, then used as a separate work.
93 “Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas,” The Great Courses The Teaching Company, Course Guide-
book, p. 91.
Formal Features of Temporal Art | 73
particular that of Johann Sebastian Bach.” 94 And: “Nowhere is Beethoven’s

synthesis of Baroque monothematicism of and continuity with the dramatic
contrasts and discontinuities of classical era sonata form more apparent than
the first movement of the Piano Sonata… op. 22. Beethoven’s inspiration lay
deep in the past, but the way he used that inspiration in his music looked far to
the future.” 95
The various forms of orchestral music, besides the symphony and concerto,
include, e.g., the Overture, Elegy, Symphonic Poem, Toccata and Fugue; the
various dance forms; e.g., the Minuet, Rondo, Courante, Gigue, Sarabande and
Tarantella, which, Bach was fond of using in, for example, his orchestral Suites.
Frank Lloyd Wright famously stated that “form follows function,” meaning
that form should follow function in architecture. Sometimes an author, compos-
er or poet with a particular theme or subject in mind, creates the form he/she
believes to be the most suited to it; while in other instances he/she may use an
existing, traditional form for it; or thirdly, he/she may modify one or more of the
traditional forms in various respects or ways, as Beethoven in particular did in
the profound original changes he wrought in the classical sonata form inherited
from Haydn and Mozart, in his middle and especially later pianos form, as well
as the classical form beginning with his Symphony No. 396 and his piano concer-
tos, particularly in the fourth and fifth concertos.
In good measure a work’s style(s) 97 would be—but not entirely—the result
of the specific way(s) in which these formal elements are utilized. In particular,
the work’s particular style and, also importantly depend on the character of the
theme(s) created.
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94 Ibid., p. 91.
95 Ibid., p. 93.
96 Indeed, his Fifth Symphony was praised by Schumann as the perfect symphony for its
“organic form.” A literary or musical work has an organic form whenever it’s theme(s) is/are
inextricably interrelated, interconnected, even repeated in different ways, creating a tight,
unified whole. To use a line from T.S. Eliot in another connection, an essential feature of an
organic whole is that its “end is its beginning.” Brahms later developed organic form in his
compositions.
97 Style: “n. 1. The way in which something is said, done, expressed or performed: a style of
speech and writing.2, The combination of distinctive features of literary or artistic expression,
execution, or performance characterizing a particular person, group, school, or era. 4. A quali-
ty of imagination and individuality expressed in one’s actions and tastes.” (The American
Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985)
The form of a temporal work—specifically, its various elements rhythm,98

meter,99 tempi,100 volume,101 texture,102 tone103 (tonal color in music) and style104
together with the work’s contents—e.g. the themes or melodies in music—
determines where the rests/pauses/silences in it occur, hence their meaning(s)
and force; hence their expressive-communicative contribution to it.
The central factor that determines the positions, frequency, and the aesthet-
ic role of rests/pauses/silences in a given work of music is (1) the specific nature
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98 The dictionary defines ‘rhythm’ as “1. Movement or variation characterized by the regular
recurrence or alternation of different quantities or combinations: the rhythm of the tides. 2. The
patterned, recurring alternations of contrasting elements of sound or speech. 3. Mus. a. A
regular pattern formed by a series of notes of differing duration and stress. b. A specific kind of
such a pattern: a waltz rhythm. 4a. The metrical flow of sound with a regulated pattern of long
and short or accented and unaccented syllables in poetry. b. A specific kind of such a metrical
flow: iambic rhythm. 5.In painting, sculpture, and other visual arts, a regular or harmonious
pattern created by lines, forms, and colors.”
99 The dictionary defines “meter” in relation to verse as follows: “1.a. The measured rhythm
characteristic of verse. b. A specified rhythmic pattern of verse, usually determined by the
number and kinds of metrical units in a typical line: trochaic meter.” (The American Heritage
Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985)
100 The dictionary defines ‘tempo’ as follows: “1. Mus. The relative speed at which composi-
tion is to be played, as indicated by a descriptive or metronomic direction to the performer. 2. A
characteristic rate or rhythm of activity; pace: “the tempo and the feeling of modern life.”
(Robert L. Heilbroner) The American Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985.
101 Volume: “7.a. The amplitude or loudness of a sound.” (The American Heritage Dictionary,
Second Edition, 1985)
102 In the case of music, other aspects of its dynamics-- and the silences “linking” the Texture
in a work consists in the verbal or musical aesthetic relationship between the linguistic or
musical texture of a poem, a prose passage a passage or a work of music—i.e., the complex
aural patterns that result from the various elements of rhythm, tempo, and, in the successive
notes, chords, etc.; since the aesthetic quality of the succession of words, notes, etc. cannot be
divorced from their individual and collective relationships between the words/notes and the
silences between them.
103 Tone, tonal color: “n.1. a. A sound of distinct pitch, quality, or duration, musical note.b.
The quality or character of a sound: sweet, clear tones of a lute. 2. Mus.a. The interval of amajor
sound, whole step. B. The characteristic quality or timbre of a particular instrument or voice.”
(The American Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985)
104 “Style may be defined as those distinctive characteristics that enable the observer to link
an art work with other works. There are fundamentally two types of style: these are an individ-
ual’s personal style, and the style common to a group of artists. In other words, the distinctive
traits in a work of art enable the observer [in the case of visual art] to link an art work with
other works by the same artist or with other works by a different artist. An individual’s style
betrays the identity of the artist. A group’s style betrays a general artistic climate.” (The Ameri-
can Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985)
D. The Executant’s Interpretation of Works of Music | 75
of its theme(s), and so, (2) the tempi—whether the work is fast, slow, or has
variable tempi, etc.—and whether its melody/melodies, and (3) the volume,
hence the work as a whole, is intended to have a certain emotional character
and romantic, lyrical; passionate; sunny, gay; sad or melancholy, serious or
light; consequently, the kind of effect it is intended to produce in the listener: in
short, the work’s overall tonal color.
Another important factor in music, related to a work’s tone or tones is each
instrument’s unique timbre 105 or “voice,” enabling the composer to create the
work’s desired special tonal and affective qualities and produce its intended
effect in the listener.
In instrumental works, particularly in orchestral works, one or more in-
struments—such as the cello or viola in a quartet—would be silent at different
times in their performance, while other instruments play on. That gives special
prominence to the instruments that continue to play, at the same time “under-
lining,” and drawing attention to, hence also giving meaning to the silence of
the instrument(s) -in-waiting.106 In addition, the continually changing thematic
relationships between melody and harmony in all musical works in which har-
mony accompanies the melody—but most importantly in orchestral and choral
works—add further complexity and variety to the to the expressive and commu-
nicative roles of the rests in them.
6.5 The Executant’s Interpretation of Works of Music

The significant musical and aesthetic differences in the execution and interpreta-
tion of a given work, even by one and the same executant on different occasions,
as well as its interpretation by different performers, usually affects, among other
things, the volume, tempi and consequently the durations and expressive and
communicative roles of the rests/pauses/silences, in it. To give one example in
the interpretation of the same orchestral work by different conductors, Arturo
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105 “The quality of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and
volume. Esp. the distinctive tone of a musical instrument: a voice or a voiced speech sound.
(The American Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985)
106 It is clear that the rests/silences vary in expressive/communicative complexity and im-
portance, depending on the simplicity or complexity of the musical works involved; from, say,
short simple songs to solo compositions to chamber works then to e.g., orchestral and choral
works and finally operas.
Toscanini 107 was well known for the fastness of his tempo, while it was the oppo-
site with, for example, with Furtwängler and, especially, with Sir Thomas Bee-
cham, who, in his recordings of the same symphonies as Toscanini, would end
the work a few minutes later than Toscanini. Indeed, differences in interpretation
by a conductor of one and the same work in different performances with the
same orchestra are not uncommon if not the norm. The same is also true of, e.g.,
the different interpretations of chamber music and solo performances. A particu-
larly good illustration of the latter is provided by an article by D.T. Max in the
Nov. 7, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, entitled “Her Way,” “A Profile of the pianist
Helénè Grimaud.” Max observes that Grimaud is a
taker of chances.“A wrong note that is played

out of e’lan, you hear it differently than one
that is played out of fear,” she says. She admires
“the more extreme players… people who wouldn’t
be afraid to play their conception to the end.” Her
two overriding characteristics are independence
and drive, and her performances attempt,
whenever possible, to shake up conventional
pianistic wisdom.”108
Again: “She has the willingness to take a piece of music apart and free herself
from the general body of practice that has grown up around it. Grimaud also
tries to move her audience.” In addition to the executant’s interpretation of a
musical work and the questions relating to it, we should here mention the not-
uncommon transcriptions of a work from one instrument or ensemble of instru-
ments to another, which involves in effect a second, different sort of “interpreta-
tion” from the executant’s interpretation; given that a composer’s choice of
instrument(s) for a given work involves fundamental aesthetic decisions, and is
instrumental for the work’s potential success as music (let alone for popularity).
The obvious reason is that every musical instrument has its own range of
unique tonal qualities, its distinctive timbre, its unique “voice,” as well as its
particular range. However, the choice of instrument does not as such affect the
frequency and positions, hence the aesthetic roles, of the rests/silences in the
work(s) scored for it.
||
107 For example, during the recent 2014 York Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Year Gala per-
formance, in which, Ravel’s “Bolero” was one of the works performed, the announcer stated
that Ravel had been critical of its performance by Toscanini because it was played too fast..
108 Ibid., p. 58.
D. The Executant’s Interpretation of Works of Music | 77
I said that musical transcriptions are a second form of a musical work’s in-
terpretation; since transcribing or arranging a work for another instrument or
ensemble than the original, as for example the transcription of Mussorgsky’s
“Pictures at an Exhibition,” which the composer scored for the piano, into its
present orchestral form, and Stokowski’s transcriptions of J. S. Bach’s “Toccata
and Fugue in D Minor,” create original tonal colors and sonorities and, possibly,
different dynamics, through their employment of musical instruments other
than or in addition to the original ones. The orchestra also magnifies the origi-
nal themes both tonally and in volume, as well as the melodies, with a hundred
or so different ranges and tonal qualities. But between the orchestral transfor-
mation of the original, we find various thematic and other “family resem-
blances” to the original works, so that we still recognize the originals in their
new transformation: as in any successful transcription. Nonetheless, they create
aesthetic values in some ways different from or additional to the original. Addi-
tionally, they tend to alter the positions and perhaps also the frequency of the
rests/silences found in the original, by adapting the themes qua formally trans-
formed. And just as with the executant’s interpretation, transcriptions may be
good or bad, successful or unsuccessful in attempting to lend the work a new
lease on life and, in certain ways new or additional aesthetic qualities. . In addi-
tion to the aesthetically satisfying transcriptions I mentioned, Villa Lobos’ beau-
tiful, moving arrangement of Bach’s “Prelude in E # Minor for eight ‘cellos’” is
another example. On the other hand, had Weber had scored his “Clarinet Con-
certo No. 1 in F, opus 73” with any other instrument for the solo part, even, say,
for the oboe, the total effect would have been quite different—and, I believe, not
as satisfying as in its present form—though, obviously, that is something we can
never know.
Finally, we must distinguish transcriptions and those works of e.g., Bach’s,
that are sometimes played, say on guitar. These are not arrangements or tran-
scriptions in the usual sense, and leave the work’s dynamics, including the rests
and silences, in their original positions, though obviously not its tonal colors.
Famous examples are André Segovia’s guitar transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s
Suites for lute.109
||
109 In a documentary film he made at his house in Granada, Segovia mentioned in that con-
nection that when he performed the works in concerts, the critics were critical. But he contin-
ued performing the transcribed works.
6.6 Silent Musical Compositions

Earlier I spoke briefly about John Cage’s silent composition, 4’33” (1952). But in
addition to it, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia lists a number of other silent
compositions.
I shall list a sampling of classical compositions. I quote from Wikipedia:
Some composers have discussed the significance of silence or a silent composition with-
out ever composing such a work. In his 1907 manifesto, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music,
Ferracio Busoni described its significance: “That which, within our present-day music,
most nearly approaches the essential of the art, is the Rest and the Hold (Pause). Con-
summate players, improvisers, know how to employ these instruments of expression in
loftier and ampler measure. The tense silence between the movements—in itself music, in
this environment—leaves wider scope for divination than the more determinate, but there-
fore less elastic, sound.”
“When Hindemith read that, he proposed a work consisting of nothing but pauses and
fermatas.”110
– Funeral march for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man (1897) by Alphonse Allaisa,
French humorist (1854-2905).
Nine blank measures. Earlier title: Great sorrows are mute; incoherent funer-
al march. The composer instructed: “Great sorrows being mute, the per-
formers should occupy themselves with the sole task of counting the bars,
instead of indulging in the kind of indecent row that destroys the august
character of the best obsequies.”111
– In futurum (1919) by Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942).
Silent, notated in great rhythmic detail, employing bizarre time signatures
and intricate rhythmic patterns.’112
– Monotone-Silence Symphony (1949), by Yves Klein
In two movements, a single 20 minute sustained chord followed by a 20-
minute silence.’113
||
110 da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna (21 April 2013). “Slyly pricking the Wagnerian Balloon”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/94/21arts/music/hindemit-master-and-prankster-at-weill-
recital-hall.html. New York Times, Retrieved 21 April 2013.
111 Whiting, Steven Moore (1999). Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall
http://books.google.com/books?id=SD2RZ3taYQUC&og=PA81&. NY: Oxford University Press,
pp. 81n.
112 Betz, Marianne (1999). “In futurum” – von Schulhoff zu Cage”. Archiv fur Musikwissen-
schaft 56(4): 3312ff. includes one facsimile, p. 335.
113 Yves Klein, Overcoming the Problematics of Art: The Writings of Yves Klein (Spring Publi-
cations, 2007).
F. Aesthetics of Silence in Dance | 79
Finally for our purposes:

– 4’33” (1952) by John Cage (1912-1992).
6.7 Aesthetics of Silence in Dance 114

In “Movement and Action in the Performing Arts,”115 I maintained that dance, as
an art of movement and stillness, can exist on its own apart from or inde-
pendently of music (or any other art form such as simultaneously recited poetry
or prose). In other words, it can exist in silence. However, I know of only three
“silent dances,” dances performed on the New York stage without musical ac-
companiment: “Moves” (1959), by Robbins, “made waiting for the score to be
composed, then decided not to use any music at all”,116 by Twyla Tharp, and the
most recent, “Silent Ballet” by the Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat. Regard-
ing it the New Yorker writes: “… [H]is new “Silent Ballet,” presented at the Lin-
coln Center Festival, proceeds, as the title indicates, without accompaniment.
The stage is also bare, and across it the ensemble clumps and disperses in shift-
ing groups and pairings, sometimes freezing in tense tableaux, sometimes play-
ing a sombre game of tag.”117
Dance, whether silent or accompanied by music, has—and its musical ac-
companiment also has—variable tempi and rhythms. Cf. the slow, fast, slow,
very fast etc., rhythms of flamenco dance (similarly with folk dances across the
world), with the rhythms (hence pauses) of the taps, castanets, with the
rhythms and tempi of the accompanying guitar keeping pace with the dance, or
vice versa—and they play in real life, and are exploited in the same way in good
fiction, drama, film and opera. There pauses/silences play the same kinds of
“cognitive” expressive communicative roles that they play in literature, drama,
film and opera.
||
114 Since dance and film are both temporal and visual art-forms, the present discussion can
also be considered as applicable to the discussion of the aesthetics of silence in the visual arts
in Chapter 7.
115 Music, Film and Art (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers), pp. 81-103.
116 The New Yorker, “New York City Ballet,” May 14, 2007, p. 30.
117 July 6 & 13, 2009, p. 14.
7 Silence in the Temporal Arts II: The Literary Arts
The ideal poem…is a stirring awake
of words in a haunted silence
(John Ciardi, On the Importance of Unimportant Poems)
In relation to the literary arts, it is worth reminding ourselves at the start of

some familiar poetic forms, in sense 12 of ‘form’ distinguished in Chapter 6.
Among them, in English poetry, are the Medieval Ballad form, the Shakespeare-
an, Miltonic, and Romantic Sonnet forms, the Ode,118 and the contemporary free
verse form. In prose literature, the short-story, the novel and the novelette are
familiar literary forms. The specific structure of different novels, short stories,
plays, etc., like the specific structure of different sonatas, tries, quartets, sym-
phonies, and so on in music, usually vary in various ways, especially in con-
temporary literature: in the short-story, novel, play, etc.
In chapter 6 I quoted Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous statement that “Form
follows function.” Sometimes a writer, playwright, etc.—and similarly a com-
poser—starting with a certain theme or subject in mind, creates the form he/she
believes would be best suited for it; in other instances, he/she may use an exist-
ing, say, traditional form for it. The suitability of a particular literary form for its
particular contents, and vice versa, is a main ground for the resulting work’s
excellence or lack of excellence as art, or as art of its particular kind. In terms of
the various formal elements, here at the poet’s, the novelist’s, etc., disposition.
That means the way(s) in which the author uses the rhythms, meter, tempo,
volume, pauses and silences. In addition the resulting work’s style would be,
albeit not entirely, a result of the specific way(s) in which these formal elements
are organized. In particular, the work’s particular style would also importantly
depend on the nature of the theme or themes created; for example the kinds of
rhythm and meter used. In English and American poetry such rhythms as the
iamb, trochee and anapaest; and the dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter and pentame-
ter are examples. For instance, the verse of Shakespeare’s plays consists of un-
||
118 The dictionary defines an Ode as follows: “1. In classical literature, a poem intended to be
sung by a chorus at a public festival or as part of a drama. 2. A lengthy lyrical poem, usually
rhymed, often addressed to a praised object, person, or quality and characterized by exalted
style.” The American Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985. In the 19th Century English
Romantic Period, the Odes of Shelley—e.g., “Ode to A Skylark” and “Ode to a Nightingale”, and
Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” are excellent examples.
Formal Aspects of Temporal Art; Roles of Rests/Pauses/Silences in Literature | 81
rhymed iambic pentameters, i.e., of blank verse, except for the rhymed couplets
that round off each Scene of any given play.
The wedding of the poem’s, novel’s, play’s etc., form and its content deter-
mines the positions of the pauses and silences in the lines, hence their aesthetic
qualities in the work. In both prose and verse, pauses and silences besides those
that occur between individual words, phrases, sentences, and so on, would be
designed by the successful writer or poet to produce the various special effects
he or she desires to produce in the reader; just as people ordinarily use pauses
and silences to produce special effects in the hearer or reader. Similarly in dra-
ma, fiction, film, opera, song.
In a literary work the aesthetic roles of the pauses-silences—hence their var-
ious meanings—are determined by their particular verbal and aural contexts,
where they occur in the particular work. More precisely, they are determined by
the meaning-relations of the words, phrases and passages, that come before and
those that follow them in the text. They determine the nature, length or duration
of the pauses, silences in the particular passage, etc. In turn, in good literature,
these pauses and silence enhance, reinforce, underline or heighten the expres-
sive/communicative force of the particular context(s) and theme(s) in which
they occur, in the general sense of ‘force’ we met in Chapters 1-3. Similar re-
marks apply, mutatis mutandis, respecting the ideas, the imagery, and the
thoughts and feelings that the pauses/silences evoke, discussed in Chapters 1
and 2 of this book.
The durations and specific positions of pauses in a particular work of litera-
ture, as in music, obviously vary with different parts of the particular poem’s or
the prose work.
7.1 Formal Aspects of Temporal Art; Roles of

Rests/Pauses/Silences in Literature
We now turn to a somewhat more precise discussion of the formal aspects of the
roles of pauses/silences in literature.
Rhythm
Definition 4 a. in the preceding refers to English metrical verse where each of

the conventional rhythms (“feet”), such as iambs and trochees, judiciously
used, lends its special expressive qualities to the verse. A prime example is
82 | Silence in the Temporal Arts II: The Literary Arts
Shakespeare’s use of the iamb as the fundamental rhythm of his blank verse in
his plays. Similarly Christopher Marlowe’s use of it in e.g., Dr. Faustus, and John
Milton’s use of that rhythm in “Paradise Lost” and in “Paradise Regained,” and
the iambic rhythm (together with the pentameter meter) of Shakespeare’s and
Milton’s sonnets.
In free verse the variability of the rhythms of the lines in a poem and their
different lengths allow for greater variety of rhythms than in traditional metrical
verse. The absence of rhymes at the end of the lines also allows for enjambment,
which consists of “the continuation from one line or couplet of a poem to the
next” 119 without a pause, rather than, what is often the case, a brief pause at the
end of each rhymed line. As J.C. Nesfield usefully notes, “The effect of rime [or
rhyme] however [i.e., a pause] is not produced unless the lines succeed one
another immediately or near-immediately for the resemblance of sound to strike
the ear. “ And “Rime is a matter of the ear, and not the eye… Pronunciation, not
spelling, is the only test of rime.”120
Meter
What I said about the judicious use of rhythm is also true of meter. Judicious
variation of a poem’s rhythmic patterns that, for example, we find in Shake-
speare’s and Milton’s blank verse—in the latter’s case in “Paradise Lost” and
“Paradise Regained”—avoids monotony. In Shakespeare’s plays the occasional
use of a trochee instead of an iamb at the beginning of a line provides welcome
variation and relief from the repetitiousness of the iamb. In sharp contrast to
Shakespeare’s and Milton’s poetry in e.g., the works I mentioned—and, indeed,
to English poetry as a whole—Classical Arabic poetry all the way from the pre-
Islamic period to, for example, the Abbasid poetry of al-mutanabbi and abul-
ala’-al-mu’arry, employs the same rigid, unvarying, monotonous rhythm and
meter throughout a poem, in sharp, refreshing contrast to the lyrical, much freer
Andalusian Arabic poetry together with at least some modern Arabic poetry;
which like European poetry in general, strives for greater prosodic and structur-
al freedom, in addition to the its contemporary contents.
||
119 The American Heritage Dictionary, Second Edition, 1985.
120 Manual Of English Grammar And Composition, pp. 284, 285.
Form
It is clear that the pauses-rests in a literary composition are longer in slow works
or parts of works and longer in fast and very fast works or parts of works; and
that we speak of “how fast” or “how slow” the lines of a poem or the sentences
or passages in prose literature are read on a particular occasion. And though
rhythm and tempo (or speed) are independent of each other, there is a close
relation between the two in readings of the lines if literary works or in dramatic
performances, dictated by their particular cadence and rhythm, together with
their meaning or meanings, literal and figurative. The slow movement of the
lines, the highly suggestive pauses and silences, that inform Hamlet’s famous
“To be or not to be” soliloquy in Act Three, Scene One,121 provide weight, signifi-
cance, importance to his thoughts of deep disillusionment and life-weariness,
as well as to his contemplation of suicide. Similarly, the subject and meaning of
Hamlet’s other soliloquies—for example, the soliloquy in Act I, Scene ii, begin-
ning with: “O that this too sullied flesh would melt, /Thaw, and resolve itself
into a dew,” also require slow thoughtful reading with long pauses between the
words, phrases and lines. A similar example respecting the slow movement of
the lines, hence of the long pauses, is Alfred Lord Tennyson’s dark, melancholy,
even elegaic poem, beginning with “Break, Break, Break/ On thy cold gray
||
121 Which in part goes as follows:
To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a set of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to….
Another fine example is John Donne’s famous sonnet “Death Be Not Proud,” which in part goes
as follows:
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me,
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
…
One short sleep past, we wake eternally.
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
(5) 12 Poets, Glenn Leggett, ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958, p. 42.
stones, O sea/And I would that my tongue could utter/ The thoughts that arise
in me,” where the repetition of ‘b’—in the first line, as well as in the last stan-
za,122 together with the long pauses between each required by the meaning of
the lines and of the poem as a whole, conjures up a vivid picture of the cold wild
waves’ slow, rhythmic flow—their crash against the rocks—then their slow re-
treat… produce an almost-hypnotic effect. In sharp contrast to that, the subject
of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” requires that the lines be read
at a fast clip. They would lose their expressiveness, indeed sound like a parody,
if read slowly, ponderously. Another well-known poem, Dylan Thomas’ “Do not
Go Gentle Into That Goodnight,” written as his father lay dying, beautifully
illustrates the poet’s love for and his sadness at the pending loss of his father,
with its slow rhythms aided and added to by the many alliterations in practical-
ly every line. Similarly the highly alliterative but in that case, challenging
death, is Dylan Thomas’ “And Death Shall Have No Dominion.,” the first stanza
of which I quote in the footnotes.123 The slow rhythms throughout of Edgar Alan
Poe’s “The Raven,” also beautifully fit its –this time very different, spooky sub-
ject—and tone, together with the alliterations throughout. They too provide an
excellent example of the aesthetic role pauses play in literature: in this case in
poetry. It is clear that every good—and especially, great—poet, writer, compos-
er, and so on has his or her own “voice,” his or her distinctive, indeed unique
style or styles.
||
122 Break, Break, Break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
(Tennyson)
And death shall have no dominion,
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sne,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
And death shall have no dominion.
(Dylan Thomas)
123 And Death shall have no dominion.
Tone
The tone of a work may be dark or light, cheerful, gay, playful, melancholic or
sad, and so on, resulting from the collaboration between its form and its con-
tent. In a good work, with judiciously placed pauses and silences, these ele-
ments can play an important formal role—consequently also in its thematic
components or aspects. As we saw, the tone of Dylan Thomas’ “Do not Go Gen-
tly Into That Goodnight” is somber and sad, whereas the general tone of “And
Death Shall Have No Dominion”124 is its very antithesis; befitting the poem’s
heightened, lyrical expression of the dead person’s triumph over death in life
hereafter. Compare too Matthew Arnold’s melancholy “Dover Beach.” Contrast,
e.g., Robert Blake’s highly alliterative, fast-paced highly- rhythmic lyrical poem,
“The Tyger:” the very antithesis of Tennyson’s bleak poem in its tempi, its tone
and rhythms befitting its veritable paean to the tiger’s tremendous strength and
physical beauty, reflective of its Creator’s “immortal hand or eye,”/ that “Dare
frame thy fearful symmetry?”125
The structure of a musical or a literary work, the number of its themes or
sub-themes, and their formal and thematic relationships additionally determine
the placement of the pauses or silences that separate (but also connect) them.126
In drama each reader and each actor on the stage determines the duration
of the different pauses indicated (where indicated) of the silences and pauses in
the play. An example of a play notable, among other things, for the unusually
large number of pauses and silences in the text, is Harold Pinter’s “The Caretak-
er.” In that bizarre, theatre of the absurd play, particularly in Act I, in which
Mick, the room’s owner, when he comes in, does not have the foggiest who the
rather mysterious “intruder,” Davies, is doing there; where the simplest attempt
||
124 Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems, p. 77.
125 The poem’s first stanza is the following:
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
…
126 Compare melodies in art-songs. In good songs with words the latter play an important role
in the accompanying music’s structure and in the formal relations between the words and lines
of verse and the music. There the text’s structure determines the form of the theme or melody,
hence helps determine–in a good song it does not wholly determine—the placement and dura-
tions of the rests, with close regard to the necessary unity of text and music found in a good
song.
at ordinary exchange continually breaks down or is in danger of breaking down,

continually giving way, practically after every sentence, to a long pause or a
silence of incomprehension. The pauses and silences continue in Acts II and III,
though the conversation between Mick and Davies now run more smoothly.
Interestingly, the conversation between Aston, the flat’s caretaker and Davies,
whom Davies had invited to stay for a while, goes more smoothly. As in the case
of any play, different actors may differ in their interpretation of the meaning of
the pauses and silences in the text differently, including their length or dura-
tion.
I shall conclude this section by illustrating the preceding discussion by us-
ing vertical lines etc., to indicate, in my own reading, where the duration of the
pauses would lie in: (1) Emily Dickinson’s “My Life Closed Twice before Its
Close.” 127 (2) a short passage from Faust’s last monologue in Christopher Mar-
lowe’s “Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,” followed by (3) passages from Goe-
the’s “Faust.” I should emphasize, however, that the duration of the pauses
would naturally tend to vary in the case of different readers, depending on what
they think their readings would bring out the poem’s meaning and aesthetic
qualities best. And as with musical compositions, the same “interpreter” of a
given work may, on different occasions, read the same poem somewhat differ-
ently.
(1) Emily Dickinson’s “My Life Closed Twice” goes as follows:
My life | closed twice | before its close ||;

It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me, |
So huge, | so hopeless to conceive, |
As these that twice befell. ||
Parting | is all we know of heaven, ||
And all we need of hell. |||
*
(2) The passage from Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus:”
Ah,| Faustus, ||
Now| hast thou but one bare hour to live, ||
And then | thou must be damn’d perpetually! ||
Stand still,| you ever-moving spheres of heaven,|
||
127 12 Poets, p. 173.
That time may cease, and midnight never come; ||

Fair Nature’s eye,| rise, | rise again,| and make
Perpetual day;|| or let this hour be but
A year,| a month,| a week,| a natural day,|
That Faustus may repent| and save his soul!||
O lente,| lente,| currite noctis equi! ||
The stars move still,| time runs,| the clock will strike, ||
The Devil will come,| and Faustus must be damn’d. ||
Oh,|| I’ll leap up to my God!|| Who pulls me down? |||
See,| where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!||
One drop would save my soul—||| half a drop: ah, my Christ! |||128
(3) Finally, here are two passages from The Second Part of the Tragedy of Goe-
the’s Faust, the first in the German original and the second as translated into
English by Walter Kaufmann; leaving it to a good reader of the German original
to note the similarities—and, because of the important difference in the two
languages—in the durations and the placements of the various pauses in the
lines.
(a) Faust:
Oh,| wretched specters,|| thus you persecute
The human race | with thousand miseries;||
Days that might be indifferent, | yet transmute
Into a monstrous mesh of tangled agonies.||
Demons,|| I know,|| are hard to drive away,|
One cannot break the spirits’ iron ties;||
And yet your power,| Care,| creeping and great,|
I shall refuse to recognize.|||
Mephisto:
I too?|| What draws my head that way? ||What for?|||
I’m pledged| against them| to eternal war!||
I used to hate this sight,|| nothing seemed worse,||
Has something alien pierced me through and
through? |||
They are such charming boys, || I rather like the
View.||
What keeps my tongue tied| I cannot curse?||
If I am fooled by such sweet bait,
Who will be called a fool | in days to come?||
||
128 Introduction, Goethe’s Faust, trans., Walter Kaufmann (Garden City, New York: Doubleday
And Company, Inc.), p. 15.
The little villains that I hate

Seem lovely,|| sweet,|| and frolicsome! |||129
*
(b) Faust:
Unselige Gespenster! So behandelt ihr
Das menschliche Gschlecht zu tausend Malen;
Gleichgultige Tage selbst verwandelt ihr
In garstigen Wirrwarr netzumstrickter Qualenn.
Damonen,Weiss ich, wird man schwerlich los,
Das geistig-strenge Band ist night schwerlich los,
Doch deine Macht, o Sorge, schleichend gross,
Ich werde sie nicht anerkennen.
Mephistopheles:
Auch mir! Was zieht den Kopf auf jene Seite?
Bin ich mit ihr docj in geschwornem Streite!
Der Anblick war mir sonst so feindlich scharf.
Hat mich ein Fremdes durch und durch
gedrungen?
Ich mag sie gerne sehn, die allerliebsten Jungern;
Was halt mich ab, daass ich nicht fluchen darf?
Und wenn ich mich bestoren lasse,
Wer heist den Kunfltighin der Tor?
Die Wetterbuben, die ich hasse,
Sie kommen mir doch gar zu lieblich vor!
7.2 Silence as a Theme or Part of a Theme in Literature

In addition to the formal roles of rests, pauses or silences in literature and mu-
sic, some works utilize silence as part of their content, subject-matter; while a
relatively small number of extant musical works employ silence as a “work’s”
entire content; where the work is either totally silent, or about silence itself. That
may be true in one of two ways: (1) the abstract idea or concept of silence itself
may be part of work’s subject-matter; or (2) the idea or concept of silence is (a)
symbolically or (b) metaphorically used as a vehicle for ethical, political, meta-
physical, religious or other sorts of views or ideas, states of being, or states of
affairs. In (1) ‘silence’ is used in its literal meaning; while in (2) it is used meta-
phorically. For example, silence as an inner state of being may be the theme or
part of the theme of a literary work, where the poet or writer describes a particu-
||
129 Ibid., pp. 480, 481 respectively.
Silence as a Theme or Part of a Theme in Literature | 89
larly significant or meaningful silent occurrence or experience, or imaginatively

suggests silence through the imagery specially chosen.
The following are a few examples of silence as a theme in poetry:
(1) The epigraph of this book, “Silence,” is an example of a poem whose
subject is silence.
(2) Walter de la Mare’s “The Listeners” is a powerful portrayal of (a) physi-
cal absence on (i) the literal and (ii) metaphorical level, together with (b) ab-
sence on a symbolic—perhaps allegorical—level.
“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head;
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
“Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still,
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark
stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still
house,
From the one man left awake;
Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.130
Commenting on the poem, Robert Lynd writes in the Introduction to the book:
Of all contemporary poets, there is none who is so obviously the poet of home-sickness as
Mr. de la Mare. He is the poet of “love shackled with vain-longing”—vain-longing for love-
ly things that pass, for love that passes. He draws consolation, however, from the fact
that, though things pass, they pass in a perpetuity of beauty. The stream remains though
it does not stand still—the stream of lovely things that change, watched by loving eyes
that change.131
I tend to believe that in addition to “vain-longing for lovely things that pass,”
the absence symbolized by silence, the absence the poet describes, may be addi-
tionally interpreted as the silence-absence on a metaphysical if not mystical-
religious level, e.g., in the words:
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,” he said.”
And:
“Ay, they heard his foot on the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,”132
(3) The mystical poetry of St. John of the Cross provides many magnificent ex-
amples of the poet’s description of the mystical ascent of his soul to union with
God, in which silence, both physical and spiritual, is symbolically linked to the
“dark night of the soul” symbolized by the darkness of his house “upon a
gloomy night.” The following are two examples.
From “Songs of the soul in rapture of having Arrived at the height of perfec-
tion, which Is union with God by the road of spiritual negation”133 :
||
130 An Anthology Of Modern Verse, Chosen by A. Methuen, With an Introduction by Robert
Lynd (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1959) pp 57-58.
131 Op cit, p. xxi.
132 Who are “they” that heard “his foot on the stirrup…”?—Cf. the discussion of the absence-
silence of God in Chapters 12-14.
133 Poems of St. John of The Cross, Translated by Roy Campbell (New York: The Universal
Library Glosset & Dunlop).
Silence as a Theme or Part of a Theme in Literature | 91
Upon a gloomy night,

With all my cares in loving ardours flushed,
(O venture of delight!)
With nobody in sight
I went abroad when all my house was hushed.
In safety, in disguise In darkness up the secret stair I crept,

(O happy enterprise)
Concealed from other eyes
When all my house at length in silence slept.
…
Oh night that was my guide!
Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride,
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved bride
Transfiguring them each into the other.
Within my flowering breast
Which only for himself entire I save
He sank into his rest
And all my gifts I gave
Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave. 134
…
And so on to the end of the poem.

Again, in St. John’s “Verses written after an ecstasy of high exaltation,”
which also masterfully describes his mystical ascent to union with God, the
poet, inter alia, stresses what mystics have always stressed—the ineffability of
the mystical experience, its inexpressibility in words; as well as “…the peace
and piety” attained in that union that has been “interwound” with the “perfect
silence … within the solitude profound.”135 In the second stanza he writes:
…
Strange things I learned, with greatness fraught,
Yet what I heard I’ll not declare
But there I stayed, though knowing naught,
Transcending knowledge with my thought. 136
The mystical poet’s descriptions of human experiences, particularly romantic

love, endeavor to symbolically describe the ineffable inner experience of the
||
134 Ibid., pp. 11, 13.
135 Ibid., p. 31.
136 Ibid.
divine presence and “union” with the divine. There heightened language and
imagery drawn from the most passionate of human experiences, only “hint” at
that which is quintessentially unspeakable, unutterable, silent in the most pro-
found sense of the word.
The poem is especially significant in its use of a series of striking reiterated
oxymoron’s to dramatize drive home that the mystical experience, in which the
soul attains a form of wisdom transcending all human knowledge, hence all
human thought, and so is, in its very essence, indescribable.
(4) John Keats “Ode On A Grecian Urn” is a fine example of a poem with si-
lence as a central theme, evoked in the poet’s delicate imagination by his view-
ing a decorated ancient Greek vase. The fact that the poem is about “A Grecian
Urn” also ties it in with the discussion of the aesthetics of silence in the visual-
spatial arts in Chapter 8. I quote the first stanza and the first two lines of the
second:
I
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
II
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;137
…
Other examples are found in Chapters 13 and 14 of this book.
||
137 12 Poets, Glenn Leggett, ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart And Winston, 1958), pp. 116-117.
8 Silence in the Visual-Spatial Arts
8.1 Visual-Spatial vis-à-vis Temporal Arts
Like the readings or the performances of a literary or a musical work, a painting,
a sculpture as a physical object—e.g., as a painted design on canvas or wood or
as a chunk of hewn marble respectively, is likewise temporal. The same is true
of a work of architecture. But as an aesthetic object, as an object of aesthetic
appreciation, they are a-temporal. Literary and musical works too, as aesthetic
objects, as “abstract particulars” or “constructs,” are also a-temporal; but they
have the potentiality, the capacity for being performed in readings-recitations
(poetry, prose), and in performances (music). However, works of music or litera-
ture, as abstract particulars, are neither silent nor sounding. These concepts are
inapplicable to them.138 Only their readings or performances arise out of the
silence “enveloping” these creations, and eventually, when the performance or
the reading ends, “sink” into silence.
Works of architecture139 are particularly interesting in relation to literary
and musical works and other temporal works on the one hand and paintings
||
138 A noteworthy, perhaps unique exception to the fact that a work of music as an abstract
particular is the eleatory avant-garde “work” John Cage “created-performed” on the campus of
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee some years ago; where he created-performed 138 a kind
of eleatory “music”/music, by touring various parts of the campus with members of the audi-
ence who assembled in the concert hall anticipating a talk or a musical performance by him,
using a randomly-mapped tour of the university campus provided by some students. As he and
his “audience” toured the randomly designated areas, they heard the various un-pitched,
urban natural sounds and noises that happened to come and go along their route, together
with their awareness of their immediate urban context or environment—the sound or noise of
the passing cars and city buses, the drone of a planes flying overhead, combined with the
conversational voices of people on and off campus—in a way the very opposite of his treatment
of silence and sound in “Four minutes and thirty-three seconds,” described in Chapter 6. What
was especially significant in the “work” he collaboratively created-performed is that in that
“work,” Cage “improvised” an “accidental” “composition” as well as extended the traditional
realm or reach of music by appropriating natural sounds—both like and unlike traditional
extempore musical improvisation. Indeed, he also put aside the concept of a work of music as
an “abstract particular.” Got in that “performance-art” the whole notion of a “musical perfor-
mance,” arising out of silence, was absent. The “work’s” creation-performance consisted of
“natural” sounds and noises, except whenever they were “interrupted” by fleeting moments of
silence.
139 In speaking of architecture and works of architecture throughout this chapter I mean
structures that qualify as works of architectural art as distinguished from purely functional,
utilitarian structures lacking aesthetic qualities.
94 | Silence in the Visual-Spatial Arts
and sculptures on the other; insofar as they ontologically share certain similari-
ties with the spatial-visual arts of paintings and sculptures and share other
similarities with the temporal arts of literature and music. As functional objects,
they endure and function in real time—and like paintings and sculptures they
deteriorate or altogether cease to exist in the course of time. Yet like literature
and music, the design of an architectural work is also a kind of “abstract partic-
ular” that can be reproduced in other structures with the same design, albeit a
rather uncommon practice except, for example, in the case of historic buildings
reconstructed at the original site or in a different site; as used to be the practice
in Japan whenever an old temple was partially or completely destroyed every
twenty years. In that particular respect an architectural design is ontologically
like a literary work or a work of music, in being a kind of “abstract particular”
reproduced or reproducible— like a poem’s text or a musical score— in its draw-
ings as well as, sometimes, in small-scale models that follow its design.
If a previously existing architectural structure such as a historic mansion
has ceased to exist or has become a ruin, and at some future point it is desired
to reconstruct it as closely to the original as possible, thus, e.g., using the same
site, its original design and the original materials, the new structure will still be
an original work of architecture and a possible aesthetic object in its own right,
numerically distinct from the original structure, whether or not the reconstruc-
tion is done by the same architects and engineers. The same would perhaps be
more obviously true if the new mansion is built on a different site from the orig-
inal.
The preceding will also be true if the reconstruction is done with different
materials, colors, décor, etc., from the original. Then too the reconstructed
mansion would be an architectural work and a possible aesthetic object in its
own right, numerically distinct from the original mansion. And in both cases the
reconstructed mansion’s aesthetic value as architectural art would depend on
its own qualities. The fact that it is a reconstruction of an original mansion
would not diminish its aesthetic value, if any, or automatically turn it into an
aesthetically worthless “reproduction” or “copy.” (Contrast painting and sculp-
ture). It would, however, lack the original’s historic and cultural value. The
main thing is that it would not be automatically considered inauthentic or aes-
thetically inferior to the original edifice.
With these general preliminary remarks I turn to the aesthetically and other
expressive uses of silence in the visual-spatial arts, concentrating on painting,
sculpture and architecture.
Aesthetic & Other Expressive Uses of Silence in the Visual-Spatial Arts | 95
8.2 Aesthetic & Other Expressive Uses of Silence in the

Visual-Spatial Arts140
The spatial-visual arts are, in a literal sense, are obviously silent arts, in contrast
to the temporal arts. But good works of visual art “speak” eloquently to the
viewer—are aesthetically expressive— with “voices” that are similar in certain
respects but different in others both from each other and from the ways the
temporal arts “speak” to the reader or listener. The way a good painting
“speaks” to the viewer crucially lies in the fact that it is a painting, not a sculp-
ture or a work of architecture; and the same is true of a sculpture or a work of
architecture. In other words, the identity of a painting as a painting is crucial in
the way it aesthetically “speaks” to the viewer. The same is true in the case of
sculpture and architecture. The medium(s) of painting on a usually flat surface,
or a mass of carved metal or marble, and so on, or a large structured volume of
wood, brick, stone, concrete, etc., in a setting of other such structures, in a
meadow, garden, lakefront or some other natural or man-made setting, define
to a very considerable extent the manner in which the particular kind of visual
art speaks to us, is silently expressive.
In both the temporal and the visual arts141 silence is a presence, is positive,
not an absence, a negation of sound: in the former arts silence by “bracketed”
||
140 See also my “Film as Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, xxxiii/3, Spring 1975, pp.
271-284. Reprinted in my Music, Film and Art (New York & London: Gordon & Breach Publish-
ers, 1985)
141 In speaking of them as literally silent as opposed to music, literature, theatre, etc., we
must not forget that they too endure in time; and how, through time, they gradually suffer the
ravages of age as painted surfaces, fashioned or carved marble or bronze, etc., gradually losing
their original aesthetic qualities and becoming increasingly dark. The Mona Lisa is a para-
mount example, which, after five hundred years, has lost a great deal of what Leonardo da
Vinci’s contemporaries have told us were his prized “glowing colors.” During the three times,
over the years, I saw it in the Louvre—the last time in the summer of 2013—it had become quite
dark: in telling contrast to the utter beauty and glowing colors of an ingenious “replica” or
better, a “restoration” of the way the painting originally was in its original glory when it was
painted 500 years ago, I saw at an exhibition of “Da Vinci’s The Genius,” inventions replicated
in wood and metal, at the Brussels Bourse, “Une Evocation Exceptionnelle Du Genii De: Leonar-
do de Vinci,” a few days later; which, through an ingenious use of a specially invented laser
camera, restored it to the viewer to its original glory, by means of the replication of each layer
and part of the painting, then combining them into a “replica” of the original painting. The
exhibition brochure described the method used thus: “La Joconde devoile tous ses secrets, 25
decouvertes surprenantes et 40 images immenses en tres haute resolution de differentes par-
ties du plus celebre chef-d’oeuvre du maître florentin.”
by sound; in the latter, it is the essence of the arts. In the temporal arts we hear
the silence; while in the visual arts we “see” it as well as mentally hear it, are
throughout, mentally aware of it.
However, insofar as paintings, sculpture, and architecture are visual arts,
that is, literally silent as opposed to literature and music, they also share a
common way of aesthetically utilizing silence different from the way(s) the tem-
poral arts utilize silence. That is, as forms of visual “movement” or dynamism,
harmony or disharmony, tension or relaxation of tension, color harmony or
disharmony; together with texture, composition, color harmony or disharmony
in painting and in an architectural structure’s exterior and interior(s).
8.3 Silence in Painting, Sculpture and Architecture

Paintings, sculptures, works of architecture, still photographs, and pantomime
are literally silent arts: they exist or endure in silence. Because of that, however
much movement some paintings or sculptures may suggest, there is a kind of
stillness about works of these art-forms not found in the arts of literature and
music, as well as in the performing arts of theater and dance (with music) but
only in the bosom of nature, on those occasions when no sound breaks the en-
veloping stillness. But because of the temporal nature of silent films without
accompanying music, the characters and other movements seen on the screen,
lack the stillness of still photograph or of a painting, a sculpture, or a work of
architecture. These kinds of art speak to the viewer in unbroken silence.
In all these arts the psychological/aesthetic effects of the silence is signifi-
cantly different from (a) the mere absence of sound, and (b) the absence of ac-
tual movement, in temporal works of art, as well as of actual events in the
world. The silence has a different kind or sort of aesthetic/psychological effect
on the viewer. The world of a painting, sculpture, still photography, etc. is a
world of silence that we can only imaginatively experience, enter into or pene-
trate. Through silence good visual art expresses and communicates physical
and psychological states, feelings and emotions, experiences, events and hap-
penings more directly than words, hence more directly and immediately than
literature. Consider for instance the immediate or direct expression of joy, mel-
ancholy, or sadness in a portrait(s facial expression, especially the expression of
or in the eyes, and of the subject(s) pose or posture. In this respect, because of
its non-verbal character. Pure, i.e., instrumental music is like visual art in the
directness and immediacy of its possible impact or effect. It is true that in the
case of all works of visual art of any kind, what is seen in a painting or sculp-
ture, still photograph, or silent film—or a work of music that is listened to—
Silence in Painting, Sculpture and Architecture | 97
needs to be assimilated by the listener or viewer, and sometimes, needs to be

interpreted by her. In these respects visual art and music are no different from,
e.g., literature; though, as T.S. Eliot says in relation to poetry, all kinds of art
can communicate through their sensuous qualities before they are understood—
or even when they are not understood. Further, the interpretation of a painting
or a sculpture may be immediate because of the viewer’s past experience.
Some paintings, sculptures and works of architecture are dynamic, full of
movement, while others are filled with stillness and repose. The Taj Mahal in
Agra, India, exemplifies stillness and repose in a very high degree, through its
beauty its garden, its natural setting, as well as the long, tranquil mirror-like
narrow rectangular pool placed at right angles to the mausoleum’s center. In-
deed, all beauty both in the arts and in nature, as balance and harmony, is es-
sentially expressive of stillness and repose. (The full moon in a summer sky is
an excellent natural example of this.) Other great classic Indian structures I
might mention here include the Raj Ghat, the Shah Shahan’s palace, the Agra
Fort,142 and the Amber Palace, all of which, like the Taj Mahal, majestically
stand in silence on the vast plain, and affect the viewer with their majestic tran-
quility.
In contrast to beauty, the sublime is highly dynamic, indeed stormy in its
aesthetic effect, as Longinus and Immanuel Kant have stated. As far as Nature is
concerned, the stormy winter ocean or sea, the enormous gnarled crags and
elevations of the great mountains and mountain ranges—above all, the Himala-
yas.
The sublimity of many of J.S. Bach’s organ works and solo cello suites, and,
above all, his sacred music masterpieces; e.g., St. Matthew Passion and Mass in
B Minor, create a veritable emotional maelstrom in the souls of sensitive listen-
ers by their majesty, their immense spiritual power and their profundity. Pergo-
lesi’s Stabat Mater, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony, Brahms’
German Requiem and Verdi’s Requiem, are some of the most outstanding ex-
amples. As for secular architecture, I might mention here a few of the great art
museums, such as the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam. The juxtaposition of the modern Pei Pyramid and the Louvre’s
classical architecture is clearly intended to create both an interesting symbolic-
aesthetic relationship between the old and the new, coupled with the architec-
||
142 Where Shah Shahan was imprisoned by his son until his death eight years later.
Other famous works of architecture that are expressive of stillness and repose—in their case,
eternal stillness and repose—are the three great Pyramids, particularly the Great Pyramid, and
the mysterious Sphinx, in Giza, Egypt.
tural contrast between them. To these relationships and contrasts we should

add the millennia-long historical associations of the pyramid and those of the
Louvre itself— the ideas and thoughts evoked by the latter as a repository of
great art. The result of all this is the mutual enhancing and heightening of the
expressiveness of the two juxtaposed structures.143 Similar considerations, mu-
tatis mutandis, apply to the Guggenheim Museum, as a modern architectural
masterpiece—in this case in relation to its interior design as a novel repository
of modern visual art. Its silent aesthetic expressiveness as a work of art is en-
hanced by its personal-creative association with its creator, Frank Lloyd Wright,
with its historical and cultural associations as a work of the 20th century, and
its relationship to the other structures in its surrounds, its architectural urban
American setting. The same is true—to mention just a few examples— about the
associations evoked by the magnificent Parisian architectural and natural sur-
rounds of The Louvre; and, in Amsterdam, the park adjoining the Rijksmuse-
um144 and Van Gogh Museums, as well as the Peter the Great Hermitage Art
Museum that stands just off the picturesque Amsterdam canal.145
Aesthetic Uses of Silence in Painting and Sculpture
Portraits and sculptures of the human form speak silently to us through their
eyes and faces, their poses and their gestures, in a way very much the same way
that gestures, the look in their eyes and their facial expressions silently express
and communicate certain feelings or emotions, thoughts, yearnings, and so on.
The great paintings of Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer, Van Gogh, Franz Hals, and
other Dutch painters of the period—to mention just a few—superbly exemplify
these and other states of the mind and soul. But just as human beings some-
times conceal or try to conceal what they are thinking or feeling at a given mo-
ment from their viewer, through put-on looks, facial expressions, gestures and
||
143 I must however confess that when, in the summer of 2013, I actually saw the pyramid
cheek by jowl with the Louvre—indeed, as the entrance to the building’s first floor, I felt that it
was completely out of place; rudely obtruding on the classical structure rather than adding to it
or complementing it in any way—including, by contrast.
144 The museum houses “Dutch Art and History” from 1600-1650, 1700-1800, 1950-2000,
together with Special Collections. (Floor Plan. Brochure.)
145 The brochure of the museum states that “The Hermitage Amsterdam is based in the
Amstelhof, one of the largest seventeenth-century buildings in Amsterdam… [It] is situated in
the Plantage district, the eastern part of Amsterdam’s inner city. Amsterdam’s greenest neigh-
borhood is a paradise for culture lovers.”
Contextual Optimum Conditions of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture | 99
poses, so also some portraits and sculptures of the human form lack expres-
siveness through their creator’s lack of or defective technical skill, inspiration,
or inventiveness.
8.4 Contextual Optimum Conditions of Painting, Sculpture

and Architecture
Paintings, sculptures and architectural works—indeed, all works of art, whether
spatial-visual or temporal, or both spatial and temporal— “exist” and can be
appreciated, perceptually, imaginatively, intellectually and emotionally, on a
number of planes, in terms of five sorts of contexts in which or conditions under
which they exist: (A) Functional, Environment Conditions; (B) Aesthetic Condi-
tions; (C) Conceptual Conditions; (D) (1) Social-historical Conditions, and (2) Bio-
graphical Conditions. Ideally, to view and enjoy and appreciate paintings, sculp-
tures and architectural works— indeed, all work of any kind—fully or optimally
as art, the preceding kinds of contexts or conditions need to be optimally pre-
sent. Conditions (A)-(D) must be realized by the work-in-context; while condi-
tion (E) pertains to the viewer’s knowledge or understanding of those aspects or
parts of the painter’s, the sculpture or the architect’s life itself. Since the same
contextual conditions apply to all the visual arts (indeed, to all other arts as
well) I shall defer a discussion of conditions (D) at the end of the discussion of
contextual conditions (A) –(C) of painting and sculpture.
As spatial objects, the visual arts “exist in a spatial context: in a particular
location, site, setting, and a general environment, in the sense of a particular
physical environment, setting or milieu; in the case of paintings and sculptures
and other visual objects such as vases, the way they are displayed in an art
museum, art gallery, or a private home”. “In the case of [paintings and sculp-
tures] an important question is [therefore] the nature of the optimum physical
together with the other contextual conditions [((B)-(E)] for their display and
viewing.”146 In the article cited here I explored the four sorts of optimum contex-
tual conditions in relation to architecture. I shall therefore present these condi-
tions first in relation to architecture, and will consider them, in the Sections that
follow, in relation to painting and sculpture. I shall then turn to painting and
sculpture. Condition (E) will be left for another occasion.
||
146 “Architectural Art in Context,” Memorial Volume for Milan Damnjanovic (Belgrade, 1996),
pp. 450.
Optimum Contextual Conditions of Architecture
(A) Functional conditions

(1) Shape and size as contextual conditions
The shape and size of the plot or ground, its topography and the character of its natural or
human environment are functionally optimum if—within the natural and human con-
straints they impose on its design—it serves well the particular work’s utilitarian function.
The degree to which a plot’s shape and size, etc., can constrain a structure’s form and in-
ternal design can vary greatly.147
Climactic and atmospheric conditions, especially over long periods of time, also clearly
constrain a structure’s overall form and design.148
(B) Aesthetic Optimum Conditions 149

(1) The physical setting of any given present or past architectural work in rela-
tion to its physical environment or setting, such as other buildings, bridges,
highways, meadows, and so on is an important contextual matter. In the article
referred to above I considered the settings of some well-known architecture,
including various medieval European castles; temples such as the Parthenon in
Athens, the temple of Apollo at Delphi, monuments such as the Arc of Triumph
and the Louvre, in Paris, the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx in Giza, The temple of
Karnak in Egypt,150 to ascertain whether their particular settings enhanced or
optimized their appeal, aesthetic qualities, or the opposite.
The physical setting or context of an architectural work creates an aestheti-
cally optimum setting for a work of architecture
A context creates an aesthetically optimum setting for a particular work of architectural

art if (1) it effectively displays the work’s pleasing, especially finer aesthetic qualities; and
if (2) its visual qualities harmonize with and accentuate the work’s pleasing visual and
visual-tactile qualities. Best of all, if, in addition, (3) it is aesthetically satisfying in its own
right and so adds its own charm or beauty to the work’s charm and beauty. These condi-
tions would be present if (a) the context complements the work formally and stylistically;
if (b) it is formally and stylistically integrated into the work, “blending” with its colors,
||
147 Ibid., p. 452.
148 Ibid.
149 See also my “Conditiones fisicas optimas para el goce del arte visual” (“Optimum Physical
Conditions of Visual Art’), Sobretiro de Dianoia, 1973, pp. 89-103. See also my “Standard Condi-
tions of Aesthetic Perception,” Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Aesthetics,
Athens, pp. 637-640.
150 Ibid., pp. 453f.
lines and forms and in that sense forming with it a visually new complex whole; or if (c)
context and work become so closely interrelated (in a greater degree than is possible in
(b)) that they form a complex organic whole with interdependent parts; a whole that pos-
sesses, as a consequence, greater aesthetic value than the sum of its parts. Or, finally, if
(d) the context satisfies conditions (1)–(3)… by means of various formal and stylistic con-
trasts between itself and the work 151
(2) Context complementing Architecture
In many parts of the world gardens have traditionally been among the most popular ways
in which beautiful landscapes have been created for their own sake, and to complement
and heighten the architecture’s qualities. Outstanding examples are the Taj Mahal garden
and reflecting pool in Agra India, the Boboli Gardens in Florence and the Villa D’Este,
with its myriad fountains, outside Rome; the Versailles gardens and the gardens of the
summer palace of Peter the Great outside St. Petersburg, stretching to the edge of the Gulf
of Finland.”152
(B) Blending of setting and work
The blending of setting and architecture involves a more intimate aesthetic relationship be-
tween the two than a setting’s complementing a work.153
An outstanding example is
the bush-clover courtyard garden at the Seiryo-den ceremonial hall of the Kyoto Imperial
Palace… [which] embodies the most essential elements of the whole wide and complicated
world of the Japanese garden.”154
Another example is the “Phoenix Hall built by the aristocrat Fujiwara Yorimichi
(992-1074) … 155 The site and the elevation of an architectural work are also opti-
mum contextual conditions in the case of notable architectural works; exempli-
fied by “many religious shrines in various parts of the world, e.g. the position-
ing of a shrine [in a site of special historical or other symbolic significance] “on
a plateau, hilltop or mountaintop, symbolizes for his worshippers the dwelling
of some supernatural power, a deity or number of deities.”156
||
151 Ibid., pp. 452-453.
152 Ibid., pp. 453-454.
153 Ibid., p. 454.
154 Massao Haykawa, The Garden Art of Japan , translated by Richard L. Gage. Second Print-
ing, New York, 1974, p. 9.
155 Ibid., p. 455. See also my “Architecture in Context,” pp. 456ff.
156 Ibid., p. 460.
Notable examples are the temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, the Acropolis in Athens, and
native Indian monument mountain shrines.157
Organic unity of architecture and setting/environment
“Organicism, which had its origins in classical Greek art…found in Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Prairie Houses, 1900-1910—perhaps most notably in “Falling water” 158 —
and from 1936 to the early 1940’s, its famous 20th Century expression in architec-
ture.
In organic architecture the achievement of an organic work setting relationship requires

an active partnership, so to speak, between architecture and site/setting.159
“Interdependence of parts, collaboration in serving the whole’s function or purpose” are

“defining features of organic unity in architecture (indeed, in all art) and helps to distin-
guish it from ‘blending’ in my sense, which involves a different kind of relationship. But
both blending and organicity are a matter of degree. Only ideally are all the parts of an or-
ganic whole completely interdependent in existence and nature.”160
(D) Conceptual Optimum Conditions

(a) Light/Lighting as optimum condition
The common practice of the lighting of public buildings, churches as well
as public monuments and sculptures at night can add to their aesthetic appeal,
provided the light is not harsh and garish, but brings into relief the structure’s
or the sculpture’s aesthetic qualities.
Good examples: the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and Pei Pyramid. Another
good example is the soft light that lights the interior of the Hagia Sophia in Is-
tanbul, revealing the elegant columns leading to the inner copula, and the
paintings, icons and other Byzantine and Muslim decorations on its walls.
(b) Light/Lighting as Symbolic
||
157 Ibid.
158 “{A} vacation retreat cantilevered over a waterfall at Bear Run, PA, was considered by
many critics the finest house of the 20th century.” “Wright, Frank Lloyd,” Collier’s Encyclope-
dia, vol. 23, p. 636.
159 Ibid., 457. See also “Architecture in Context,” pp. 457-458.
160 Ibid., p. 458.
For many ancient peoples… heavenly bodies… light and darkness had special often reli-
gious significance. …Although we no longer think of heavenly bodies in that way, light
and darkness continue to have… symbolic meaning of one sort or other.161
Apart from that, lighting public buildings, religious edifices such as churches
and cathedrals, major city fountains, and public monuments at night is not
uncommon, and if properly used, can aesthetically bring into relief the artistic
features of the works highlighted. Two outstanding examples in my own experi-
ence are the lighting at night, in Paris, of the Louvre and pyramid, and the Eiffel
Tower. In the former case the soft golden light bathing the façade of the Louvre
building and the light blue color of the pyramid next to it, is a thing of beauty.
Likewise the austere black, metal Eiffel Tower is transformed into a breathtak-
ingly beautiful sight by its nightly draping, from top to bottom, in soft golden
light; and for five breathtaking minutes from 10:00 p.m. - 10:05 p.m., every
night, twinkling patinas of light in a variety of colors, cover the edifice, adding
to its unique beauty.
Donald N. Wilbur, in an article in Collier’s Encyclopedia, “provides a won-
derful example of the kind of effect a sunset can have on a great work of archi-
tectural art [in this case, the Taj Mahal].” He writes:
The infinite variety and richness of detail and the consummate skill displayed in the
[mausoleum’s] execution make the structure unique in its general class. The structure
seems to mirror the mood of the skies: at sunset the [white] marble assumes a rosy hue.162
Again, churches and cathedrals traditionally illuminate the icons, paintings,

and statuettes of God, Christ, the Madonna or various Saints within their an-
cient walls; with soft lights lighting the holy images in the silence of the night.
Or, as with the Armenian St. James Cathedral on Mount Zion in the Old City of
Jerusalem, with its many many-colored oil lamps high above the cathedral inte-
rior not only reveal the wall paintings and other sacred images to the worship-
pers during night services, but also illumine them symbolically as objects of
worship. What is more, on those evenings when no night services are held, its
silent ambiance becomes a soulful haven for anyone who stands or sits in it in
silent meditation. 163
||
161 Ibid.
162 Ibid., p. 463.
163 In a poem entitled “The Grass There is Never So Green,” in my The Raven and the Cardinal:
Poems of Remembrance and Celebration (New Orleans: University of the South Press, 2010), p.
33, I described the above thus:
(2) Site/ Location as Symbolic

(a) The pyramids at Giza and Sakkara in Egypt,
those gigantic monuments to timelessness, changelessness, resurrection, immortality and

eternity, and the [ancient] Egyptian obsession with death, the Temple of Karnak, the rock
tombs and the monuments in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, power-
fully illustrate the use of open spaces to accentuate and enhance the religious and meta-
physical significance of these time-defying edifices. 164
In these and other grand monuments and structures, such as the great Mayan
temples and pyramids, where size symbolizes grandeur, has clear analogue in
painting and sculpture.
(b) Site and elevation as symbolic
In the St. Louis Arch we have a graceful but powerful modern structure whose abstract
symbolic meaning as a ‘gateway’ was made specific by locating it strategically, in an open
expanse (symbolic of the wide plains of mid-America), between the edge of St. Louis, the
geographic ‘Gateway to the West’, and the great waterway of midway America, the Missis-
sippi river. When the Arch is seen from some distance, from ground level, or when one
looks from the observation room at its top down at the river and then at the city, one is
struck by the way it symbolically ‘links’ river and city.165
“Elevation, characteristic of many religious shrines in various parts of the

world, symbolizes for the worshippers the dwelling of some supernatural pow-
er, a deity or… deities.” “The Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, the native
Indian mountain shrines in the Andes in South America, the Hindu Angkor Vat
(or Wat) temple in Cambodia, ‘soaring above the plain’, .. are … a few notewor-
thy examples.” 166 The dizzying tallness of the skyscrapers is another, modern
||
“in the cathedral
Where rests the sainted head of James beloved of Christ.
It’s never morning or night: the oil lamps.
(vying with Jacob’s robe in delicate hues)
each rainbow-tinted, haloes in the twilight
and candles immaculately white lick
the sculpted shadows with golden tongues
as sterneyed prophets and saints stare down
from the walls
painted by crude artists in perishing oil”
…
164 Ibid., p.462.
165 Ibid., p. 460.
166 Ibid., p. 460.
example.167 Likewise such secular edifices as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de
Triumph in Paris, to give just a few notable examples.
Conversely, the descent from the shrine may symbolize the return of the purified and il-
luminated if not enlightened soul to the world below.168
(c) Physical isolation as expression of withdrawal from the world, otherworldliness
For centuries, following early Christian tradition, some monastic orders in the Holy Land
and Egypt built monasteries in remote, isolated locations, which included the Sinai and
the Egyptian desert. In addition to being perfectly suited to the monks’ preoccupation
with salvation, these locations were or are also powerful expressions of the moral and re-
ligious beliefs about God, religious life, death and the afterlife, etc. that mandated free-
dom from mundane worries and concerns.169
(4) “Blending” and “organicity” as expressions of harmony of man and Nature
In addition to their aesthetic significance the blending of garden and shrine or residence
in traditional Japanese architecture, and the organicity of [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s early ar-
chitecture, are imbued with important metaphysical, moral and practical human signifi-
cance. Both are philosophically similar though culturally different expressions of a moral
or moral-religious ecological vision of harmony of man with Nature called deep ecology.
In Wright’s case we have a vision of fellow Wisconsinite Aldo Leopold; while in the afore-
mentioned Japanese architecture we find a powerful expression of the traditional religious
[e.g., Zen Buddhist] philosophy of man as part of Nature, coupled with his moral-religious
duty to live in harmony with it.”170
(E) Social-historical conditions
Among the important work-context changes that occur in urban centers, which may af-
fect… some or all of the [five] types of work-context relations . . . involve the impact, aes-
thetic and other, of new, more “modern” structures placed in close proximity to older
structures belonging to a markedly different social-historical periods or even different cul-
tures. Since the relation between them is necessarily one of stylistic and formal contrast,
the examples I shall consider will at the same time illustrate the challenges that the archi-
tect faces in trying to design contemporary structures which would harmonize aesthetical-
ly, conceptually and social-historically, with an existing human environment; or alterna-
||
167 Ibid. I should mention that when I came to New York for the first time, I felt utterly small
and intimidated walking in the canyons created by its skyscrapers. The feeling was so strong
that I wanted to go back to Beirut, from where I had come.
168 Ibid., p. 460.
169 Ibid., p. 461.
170 Ibid., p. 462.
tively, of finding an aesthetically, etc., suitable urban locating/site for a projected struc-
ture with a contemporary style and design.171
Judicious contrast between a structure and its human context, formally or stylistically, is a
source of interest and dynamism. … Indeed, my... [three] examples illustrate two sorts of
possible clashes rather than harmony between work and setting.
“My first example is the Guggenheim Museum of art, in Manhattan, New York, a
‘radical departure from traditional museum design spiraling upward and out-
ward in smoothly sculptured coils of massive, unadorned white concrete,’ …
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1959…. [It] dramatizes the
consequences of the mislocation of architectural works in an urban setting un-
suited to [it]. For … [it is] surrounded by nondescript buildings. … The museum
would have found an architecturally more modern, more innovative environ-
ment, closer to yet at a discreet distance from the gleaming glass-and-steel sky-
scrapers …” 172 “The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation (1956) in a
suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright—‘a bowl-
shaped auditorium on stilts’173 –[rising all by itself in a meadow used for, e.g.,
the annual summer Greek Festival] is living proof that an innovative modern
design which nonetheless preserves the spirit of an ancient tradition, is possi-
ble.”174
Finally, “I.M. Pei’s 1989 ‘modernistic [metal and] glass pyramid in the…
[Louvre’s] vast central courtyard”,175 has, as Sancton says, ‘brought accusations
of aesthetic heresy’ because of the stark contrast between its abstract geomet-
rical design and materials with the museum’s classical 18th century architec-
ture’.” “Sanction …speaks approvingly of Pei’s bold innovation…” 176
The new cheek by bowl with the old, the present, the contemporary, with
the past, the classical; indeed, the present—the Pyramid as the passage the
visitors must descend to enter the past, the Louvre buildings, is clearly, highly
symbolic. But, aesthetically speaking, the physical juxtaposition of two archi-
tecturally so-different structures I find aesthetically the very opposite of opti-
||
171 Ibid., p. 463.
172 Ibid.,pp. 463-464. My hope is that, by now, the nondescript buildings in its vicinity have
been replaced with modern structures more congenial to the Museum’s architecture.
173 “Wright, Frank Lloyd,” Collier’s Encyclopedia, vol. 23, p. 637.
174 Ibid., p. 464.
175 Thomas Sanction, “Pei’s Palace of Art,” Time, November 29, 1993, p.69.
176 Ibid.
Painting & Sculpture | 107
mum. (However, as I noted earlier, the complementing lights enveloping the

two structures at night are quite beautiful.)
8.5 Painting & Sculpture

(A) Optimum Contextual Conditions of Painting & Sculpture
What I said above about (1) the physical setting or an architectural work ap-
plies, mutatis mutandis, to all other visual-spatial arts. (Indeed, similar consid-
erations are also relevant and important in relation to the temporal arts; e.g.,
the physical setting, such as the architecture and acoustics of a concert hall or a
theatre, in relation to the musical and dramatic performances, respectively, in
them.177) Thus the specific physical setting in which paintings are found or dis-
played on the walls of an art museum or gallery, or in a private residence, rela-
tive to the other paintings or sculptures adjacent to them on a wall, etc., is an
important factor that affects, for better or worse—depending on their particular
environs—the viewer’s aesthetic understanding and enjoyment (or lack of en-
joyment or understanding) of them. The same is true with regard to the actual
physical setting of a sculpture, in or outside an art museum or gallery, or in a
private home.
A common—optimum— way in which paintings and sculptures are often
juxtaposed and displayed is (a) by historical periods— as in the case of many art
museums, such as the Louvre and the Rijk museum; together; where (b) works
by one artist are displayed next to or close to one another, as well as close to the
works of their contemporaries; thereby helping the viewer to see, study and
compare and contrast them together, by style and technique, subject, etc.178
Often the same, mutatis mutandis, is true of displays of works of sculpture. In
the case of art museums or galleries devoted to a single artist’s works, as in the
case of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam or the Rodin museum in Paris, one
way of doing so is—as the case with Van Gogh—by the artist’s various artistic
periods, from his early works to his latest, mature or most mature works. (But I
do not know whether that is the order in which the paintings of Magritte in the
Museum dedicated in Brussels to him are displayed. Likewise with Rodin’s
||
177 See the relevant part of Chapter 6.
178 Some successful examples: Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam; and Rodin’s “Thinker” and
“Balzac” in the Rodin Museum in Paris. Also, the Dutch painters, particularly Rembrandt in the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The most notable exception is the “Mona Lisa,” which has been
displayed in significantly different ways over the years, during the three times I was able to see
it over many years. (See above.)
sculptures in the Museum dedicated to his sculpture.179) But “The Thinker” and
“Balzac,” given their size and special importance, are felicitously displayed in
the garden leading to the gallery building. In addition, the grass lawn with sev-
eral of Rodin’s sculptures adjoining the reflecting pool, create a beautiful physi-
cal context for the gallery building itself.
(2) Size as an aesthetic factor

A few examples: the large size of “The Night Watch,” Rembrandt’s greatest
painting, and his three-quarter size self-portrait depicting him in his old age, in
the Albertina in Vienna; Raphael’s “The School of Athens”; Leonardo’s “Last
Supper”; or the triptychs in various European churches and cathedrals; as well
as Rodin’s “Balzac and “The Thinker” in the Rodin Museum in Paris; and larger
than life statues of famous composers, painters, etc., in American and European
cities. However, the size of a painting or sculpture may also depend on its theme
or subject-matter, including the number of persons represented, as in the pre-
ceding examples. Thus the size of a painting or a sculpture may not always be
an important factor in its expressive force; but some portraits are large even
though they may be paintings of a single—often important person, such as a
member of the aristocracy or a royal personage . On the other hand, Leonardo’s
“Mona Lisa”— the world’s most famous painting— is a remarkably small paint-
ing, and depicts just the upper part of its subject’s body together with some
nature background.
(2) Although the size of an architectural work may be an aesthetic, often
symbolic, factor, size in a painting may or may not be an important factor in its
expressive force. But as with architecture, size in painting may indicate the
importance of their subject or subjects.
The preceding is also true of sculpture, where large size may indicate its
subject’s importance; as for example, Michelangelo’s “Moses” and “David,”
Rodin’s “The Thinker,” and “Balzac” both in the nude and clothed, and Picas-
so’s “Guernica.”
||
179 I should note, however, that quite a number of his sculptures, including his famous white,
life-size sculpture, “The Kiss,” were crammed together, without any apparent order—obviously
for lack of space for them, in some physically unattractive “annex” outside the Museum build-
ing itself; perhaps awaiting display somewhere in the museum building. In fact, some years
ago “The Kiss” was prominently displayed in the Museum. This time—last summer—one had to
look for it practically everywhere to to find it.
Silent Cinema | 109
(4) Lighting as an aesthetic condition

The proper lighting of the rooms or halls in which paintings and sculptures are
displaced is an essential condition for their aesthetic appreciation. In their case,
natural light whenever possible would be best, but is sometimes difficult to
obtain inside galleries and museums; hence the necessary use of soft artificial,
electric lights. In any case, whether the lighting in natural or artificial, it should
be sufficiently bright (but never glaring) for the proper viewing of the displayed
works. Unfortunately that is not always the case. 180
8.6 Silent Cinema181

This brief discussion of silent film182 in the early decades of the 20th century, will
concentrate on a few of Charlie Chaplin’s silent films, followed by a brief dis-
cussion of two of Greta Garbo’s silent films.
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American
cinema. With his trademark baggy pants, oversized shoes, tiny jacket, bowler hat and a
mustache trimmed down to ‘tooth brush’ size, he took Hollywood by storm. His writing,
direction and comic timing put him head and shoulders above his fellow Hollywood
filmmakers. This DVD Set displays Chaplin’s great talents.183
In the first DVD, to which I shall confine myself, the films include The Tramp,
The Immigrant, Pawn Shop and The Knockout. Later noteworthy silent films of
his include The Gold Rush, City Lights, and Modern Times (1936).
||
180 A glaring example is the lighting of the lowest floor of a private art museum in Lausanne,
Switzerland, largely dedicated to works of Picasso donated to the artist. The lighting was so
poor that it was hardly possible to see the paintings in anything like their true character. When
I told the person at the desk, she said that she herself had pointed that out to the gallery’s
curator, but was told that it was necessary to preserve the paintings!
181 For a detailed discussion of Silent Film, the reader is referred to Paolo Cherchi Usai, Burn-
ing Passions, An Introduction to the Study of Silent Cinema, translated by Emma Sansone Rittle
(London, UK: British Film Institute, 1994).
182 Although the visuals of the films were silent, the films were accompanied by music, e.g.,
the piano.
183 The Charlie Chaplin Collection. Over 15 hours on 5 DVDS. Color and B&W. Fully Restored
and Enhanced Digital Masters.
In all the films in the first DVD disc, whether, for example, in Face On The
Barroom Floor, Musical Tramp, Mr. Rich Buys Piano, or The New Janitor, the
main interest is Chaplin’s antics and horseplay; and since the films are silent,
generally (and in the case of Face On The Barroom Floor) with silent dialogue in
the subtitles, action—hence Chaplin’s trademark “couture,” inimitable body
language, takes center stage, including occasional fights with assorted unsa-
vory characters in, e.g., bars; disguises, slips and falls— takes central stage in
these slight comedies. One particularly humorous example is in Mr. Rich Buys a
Piano, in which we see funny, maladroit attempts to help deliver a heavy bulky
piano to its buyer, a Mr. Rich; including his humorous strenuous attempts to
help haul and load the back-breaking piano onto a one-horse carriage who
strains to pull the heavy weight together with the two passengers; then, upon
arriving at the buyer’s house, attempting— while slipping all the way down—
Chaplin’s repeated humorous attempts to help push the darned thing up to
second floor.
In Face On The Barroom Floor we see Chaplin drinking with a number of
people in a bar, getting drunk, while messing with a painting “on the floor”
with a paint brush, pretending to be the artist, depriving the woman artist from
getting the subject’s accolade. But in a way he gets his comeuppance when he
reads a letter struck onto the painting—and ends up feeling sad since he thinks
the romantic letter was addressed to him. The film has no subtitles but is ac-
companied by piano music.
Another film I might mention is The New Janitor, in which he plays the role
of a janitor—and saves a woman who is almost strangled by an enraged man by
pointing at the culprit a pistol he happens to carry. At first the policeman who
arrives at the scene arrests him, mistaking him for the perpetrator. But the error
is quickly rectified when she thanks the janitor, explaining that it was he who
had saved her.
In all the films accompanied by piano music, the persistent monotonous
music detracts the viewer from the action on the screen.
Films with Significant Silences | 111
Greta Garbo
Here I shall concentrate on two of Garbo’s silent features, The Temptress (1926),
and The Mysterious Lady (1928),184 which reveal two quite different, indeed op-
posite facets of Garbo’s acting and personality. In the former film, “Garbo estab-
lishes her magnetic screen persona as a vamp who destroys the lives of those
who cannot resist her charms.” 185 In that film she destroys the friendship be-
tween two friends by betraying her lover during the time he has been away, by
marrying the friend entrusted by him to help her financially in his absence.
The two silent Garbo films consist of cinematic art of a quite different kind
from Chaplin’s brief slap-dash comedic episodes. For one thing, the two Garbo
films are serious full-length feature films, involving good acting and body lan-
guage by Karl, the German officer who unknowingly falls in love with the Rus-
sian spy, Tatiana, played by Garbo. But Karl’s, the officer-lover’s acting, pales
beside Garbo’s/Tatiana’s superb acting, in which the actress employs all her
unequalled feminine charms and wiles as a woman who first falls in love with a
dashing German officer (Karl), then hates him, only to finally loves him again.
In addition, the central themes of the two films, though opposite in outcome,
are both the very antithesis of Chaplin’s funny comedic antics. The Myseriou
Lady, involving a cloak-and-dagger spy story with Russia spying on Austria-
Germany, is comparable to the best of, for example, James Bond movies, is hap-
py, sad. Always passionate moments and episodes—including hair-raising, life-
threatening dangers to the two main actors, Tania the Russian spy, and Karl,
her German lover and love.
8.7 Films with Significant Silences

Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon 186
Brimming with action while examining the nature of truth, Rashomon is perhaps the finest
film to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and
||
184 “The Garbo Silents Collection. TCM Archives“; Movies that define Greta Garbo’s status as a
cinematic legend.” “She was dubbed the ‘Sphinx of Hollywood,’ and the ‘Sarah Bernhardt of
Films’ and “the Dream Princess of Eternity.” (From the back jacked of the DVD)
185 From the back jacket of the DVd.
186 Black and White, monoaural, In Japanese with optional English subtitles. 88 minutes,
1950, Daili Co. Ltd, 1950. First Printing, U.S.A 2002. The Criterion Collection DVD.
flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount
different versions of the story of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife.187
Kurosawa shows four versions of the crime, as related by the woodcutter [witness], the
thief, the woman, and the spirit of the husband. Thus, the narrative continually retraces
the same series of events, four times over. Each retelling… is different from the others …188
The four flashbacks of the putative events are for the most part silent, only bro-
ken in the wife’s and the thief’s flashbacks, by the thief’s triumphant mocking
laughter as he attacks and parries with the Samurai; the Samurai’s wife’s flash-
back in which she whimpers and sobs and throws herself on the ground after
being raped; or when she points her dagger to her breast, beseeching her hus-
band to kill her. These moments are in sharp contrast to the husband’s unbro-
ken silence throughout the main protagonists’ three flashbacks. The woodcut-
ter’s flashback is completely silent, since the woodcutter only sees, or claims to
have only seen, the dead Samurai lying on the forest floor, making him flee the
scene. The body-language of the three main protagonists—the Samurai and his
wife, and the thief— the deeply humiliated husband’s sad look in his dark eyes,
in his drawn sad face; his erect but nonetheless passive, yielding posture, tied
up to a tree— is in sharp contrast to the expression in the thief’s triumphant,
mocking, flashing eyes, his shouts, his lithe movements as, for example, he
skillfully parries with his sword the husband’s repeated attacks. We should also
not forget the woodcutter’s brooding on the steps of the wooden structure where
he is sheltered from the continuous rain, silently brooding with bowed head and
a sad perplexed expression on his face when egged on by his companion, who
sees his silence, brooding, bowed head and sad, puzzled expression, and as he
slowly, painfully tells him what he saw in the forest when he went to cut wood,
and his shock followed by his fleeing from the forest upon seeing the murdered
Samurai. It is interesting that he does not testify during the trial at the end of the
film, and does not offer an explanation to his companion for not doing so.
Throughout the film the four protagonists’ body language speaks volumes.
Alain Resnais, Last Year At Marienbad
Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of
modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year At Marienbad has been puzzling apprecia-
||
187 Quoted from back of box of the Japanese original version.
188 From the Booklet accompanying the Japanese version of the film.
Films with Significant Silences | 113
tive viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet,
this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in tell-
ing the ambiguous tale of a man and a woman… who may or may not have met a year [ear-
lier], perhaps at the very same cathedral-like mirror-filled chataeau they now find them-
selves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings,
diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the
nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.189
The film’s “investigation into the nature of memory” thematically relates it to

Rashomon, which as we emphasized, is, to quote the same words, is “an inves-
tigation of memory.” But by the very same token —leaving aside Rashomon’s
investigation of justice as well—it like the former—and fundamentally not in a
very different way— is “an investigation of the nature” of “subjective” truth,
truth in human experience.
Last Year At Marienbad, like Rashomon, is full of significant silences, which
in some ways function like the thematic function(s) in Rashomon’s, but unlike it
in others. And the thread that thematically joins the two is fundamental subjec-
tivity, hence uncertainty of memory. One’s genuine uncertainty as to whether
what one believes, or wants to believe, is a genuine memory; some experience
that did really occur in one’s past and is actually, truthfully being remembered,
recalled in the present.
The film opens with the central male character’s description of his memory-
flashbacks reminiscent of the memory-flashbacks in Rashomon: flashbacks of
what he now, a year later, meets in a hotel: a beautiful young woman, who he
claims was the same woman he had accidentally met the year before in the gar-
dens of the Fredericks chateau. This time, a year later, he claims to have met
and had fallen in love and had made love in her room: which she denies. To his
continued pursuit of her she keeps insisting that she had never met him before,
telling him time after time—at least until the film’s end or near its end, to please
leave her alone.
The film opens with the male character’s initial flashback, and his slow,
sotte voce voice-over description of the interior of the alleged chateau: vast,
well-appointed, luxurious, but completely empty, silent. The unfolding images
of the vast interior are, however, accompanied by soft organ music, creating an
aura of some church or cathedral. He speaks, for example, of “silent rooms
where one’s footsteps are absorbed by carpets so thick, so heavy, that no sound
reaches one’s ear… silent, empty corridors… stucco, dark-toned heavy por-
||
189 DVD. “The Criterion Collection”, 1961, 94 minutes black & white monaural, in French with
English subtitles, 2.35:1 aspect ratio.
traits… galleries, salons heavy with … sculpted doorways that in turn lead to
empty rooms, galleries,… rows of doorways… this sprawling, sumptuous ba-
roque gloomy hotel…” And so on.
After the flashback the film moves on to its “present” setting a year later: a
crowded hotel filled with conversation and action, including a theatrical per-
formance and later, some strange parlor games. To the man’s repeated pursuit
of the woman she responds by denying that they had ever met before, and asks
him to leave her alone. But at some point we see them dancing together.
Like all that precedes it, the ending of the film and, with it, the events in the
“present” are quite puzzling and ambiguous, and seemingly contradictory. For
instance we see the woman occasionally with a tall man who may be her pre-
sent husband or companion. The ending is particularly puzzling, since we do
not know whether she did or did not finally leave with the man who has been
pursuing her, her “suitor,” or whether she stays with the presumed husband or
companion. The latter seems to be the case since we see her lying on a bed with
him beside her, telling her that she had screamed and fainted. Yet he adds that
the other man (the “suitor”) who he thinks was, or may have been her former
husband, has come back to reclaim her. In fact we also see the two descending
the steps and departing together. The explanation, I believe, is that it is a flash-
back of the year before, when it may have been the case that the two had indeed
gone together.
The film can be thought of either as the male protagonist’s remembrances of
a night-dream or a series of phantasmagoric episodes he had imagined; the
memory of dream or an imagined story in which he meets a beautiful woman in
the gardens of the Fredericks chateau, falls in love with her, relentlessly pur-
sues her a year later in a hotel, and eventually conquers—or fails to conquer her.
The silences that frequently haunt the chateau’s largely empty halls and corri-
dors—broken only by soft haunting organ music, or by the brief exchanges with
the few other hotel guests we occasionally witness—give credence to the suppo-
sition that the film is a recounting of a dream, or a recreation of things imag-
ined. On both of these possible scenarios the film’s central theme would be the
real or imagined memories of the man’s dream, or a figment of his imagination:
a “recherche du temps perdu.”
9 Silence in Nature
Nature is not only that which is
Visible to the eye—it also presents
the inner pictures on the reverse side
of the eye.
(Edvard Munch)190
I stated at the end of Chapter 8 that visual art silently “speaks” through silence,
is significantly different from , indeed, in significant contrast to the ways natu-
ral, inanimate object such as rocks, natural monuments, hills and mountains,
flowers, forests and trees, silent waters and lakes, and all the other living and
inanimate things in nature “speak” their own unique silence to the sensitive
viewer and “listener” at those moments or times when nature is still and silent—
but not “like a nun in prayer.” This should be kept in our minds throughout
what follows, as we explore the aesthetics of “silent Nature.”
Silence in nature is balm to the tired soul in an increasingly noisy, frenetic

world. It gives one a sense of serenity, repose, inner calm or peace, and stills the
heart and the mind; like tranquil music, or the babbling of a brook, it has a
healing emotional and spiritual power. The silences of nature, enveloping one,
serve as the counterpart of the silence of deep inner feeling, emotion, or
thought; and some of the best ways of seeing and experiencing the possible
aesthetic and soothing effects of silence in nature is in the descriptions of poets,
writers, and painters, and the capturing of nature in documentary nature films
and in nature photographs such as those of Anselm Adams; individuals with
heightened aesthetic sensibilities who recorded their experiences of and re-
sponses to it in their particular art.
The kinds of aesthetic qualities and, with them, the particular aesthetic
qualities present, differ as we move from its direct sensuous and imaginative
aesthetic enjoyment in (1) pristine nature, such as nature in the wild, and (2) in
formal gardens, such as the art gardens of Japan; to (3) the imaginative, vicari-
ous hence indirect enjoyment of nature in (a) painting, still photographs or film;
or else as described in (4) poetry or prose literature. In (1) and (2) nature—and
its silences—are directly and physically as well as imaginatively enjoyed; while
||
190 Quoted from Course No. 7126-2010, The World’s Greatest Paintings, The Teaching Com-
pany, Professor William Kloss, The Smithsonian Associates, Smithsonian Institution, Chantilly,
VA, U.S.A.
116 | Silence in Nature
in (3) and (4) it is indirectly experienced in sense and imagination as seen and
felt by the particular artists. Stated somewhat differently, unlike in (1) and (2),
the viewer as experiencer in (3) and (4) is twice removed from nature and is
silence or the opposite. In relation to silence this ties in with the distinction
between (a) silence directly experienced—together with the calm, tranquility and
repose it engenders--in (1) and (2, and (b) the sense of silence—and its accompa-
nying sense of calm, etc.—as experienced in (3) and (4). I now turn to examples
of (1)
In Chapter 8, “Silence in (and of) the Visual-Spatial Arts” I described some
of the ways in which visual art “speaks” to our vision and imagination, our
intellect and our feelings. Here, however, I am concerned only with the expres-
sive uses of silence in “nature” in a broad sense: landscapes, seascapes, and the
19th century French impressionist and post-impressionist Still Life paintings,191
as expressive of silence. Even when a painting or a still photograph depicts
cascading waterfalls, rushing rivers or seascapes depicting stormy seas, the din
of the cascading or rushing water, or the sounds of the sea, are only “heard” in
the viewer’s imagination. Visually, the rushing water, the toiling sea is silent as
silent can be. The silence is physical: their natural sounds are felt and imagined.
The expressive qualities of silence in Nature—its beauty imbued with si-
lence and stillness—or the opposite—in the “nature art” I shall discuss, and the
multifarious other examples in the natural world, are examples of beauty
imaginatively captured and presented, and so consists in imagined and felt
silences, or in the opposite. In some instances natural beauty is surpassed by
the sublimity and grandeur of the view, as for instance the sublimity of the cloud
and snow-and-ice-mantled Himalayas, and the Matterhorn, Yung Frau and
Monk in Switzerland; as well as the vast star-studded heavens, especially in
southern climes.
One of the dictionary senses of the word ‘sublime’ (sense 3) is “inspiriting
awe; impressive.”192 In Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant provides a
famous analysis of the concept of the sublime. According to him the “dynami-
cally sublime” as he calls it, “the sublime consists in a feeling of superiority of
our own power of reason, as a supersensible faculty, over nature.”(#28, 261)193
“In the case of the dynamically sublime, the feeling of reason’s superiority to
nature is more direct than in the mathematically sublime” when we consider it
||
191 For example, Paul Cezanne’s “Still Life with Flowers.” See p. for other examples.
192 The American College Dictionary, Second College Edition.
193 Hannah Ginsberg, “Kant’s Aesthetics and Teleology” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso-
phy). Htm#2.7
Silence in Nature | 117
as ‘a power that has no dominion over us’ (#28, 260). We have the feeling of the
dynamically sublime when we experience nature as fearful while knowing our-
selves to be in a position of safety and hence without in fact being afraid. In this
situation ‘the irresistibility of [nature’s] power certainly makes us, considered as
natural beings, recognize our physical powerlessness, but at the same time it
reveals a capacity for judging ourselves as independent of nature and a superi-
ority over nature… whereby the humanity in our person remains undemeaned
even though the human being must submit to that dominion.’ (# 28, 261-262)
Kant’s examples include overhanging cliffs, thunder clouds, volcanoes and
hurricanes. (# 28, 262) 194
“The feeling associated with the sublime is a feeling of pleasure in the supe-
riority of our reason over nature, but it also involves displeasure…” Kant also
describes the feeling of the sublime as a ‘pleasure which is possible only by
means of a displeasure.” (# 27, 260) and as ‘a negative liking’ (General Remark
following # 29, 269). He also appears to identify it with the feeling of respect,
which in his practical philosophy is associated with recognition of the moral
law. (# 27, 257) 195
My own view of the “sublime” differs sharply from Kant’s preceding sum-
mary position. Stated briefly, in contrast, it is my view is that sublime natural
phenomena such as Mount Everest and the rest of the Himalayan mountain
range, evoke in us a sense of their grandeur 196 and, by their vastness or immen-
sity a sense of awe in our contemplation of them. And contrary to Kant’ view of
what he calls the “dynamical sublime,” sublime natural phenomena give us (or
the listener in the case of literature, music, art, etc.) not only a sense of awe but
also may arouse in us a sense not of our “superiority by virtue of our reason”
but, on the contrary, a sense of our own impotence or powerlessness in the face
of these immense natural forces or objects. However, a quite different sense of
joy and oneness may be aroused in those gargantuan objects, etc., in their con-
templation; as in the case of cultures such as those of the Native Americans and
the Japanese Shinto or Buddhist worshipers, who deeply believe and live in
accordance with the vision of man as an integral part of nature, and of his one-
||
194 Ginsberg, ibid. My italics.
195 Ibid.
196 Sublimity and grandeur go together. If a natural phenomneon is sublime, it will also have
grandeur; and vice versa. But note the difference between grandeur and grandness. The Grand
Canyon in Arizona is grand, as its name implies; but we would not call it “possessing grandeur
or sublime.” However, some but not all things that are grand have sublimity and grandeur as
well.
ness with nature. That would also be true of those societies, past or present,
that believe in hylozoism, the view that nature is animate.
Finally, pace Kant, a thunderstorm and lightning, a volcanic eruption, a
hurricane a tornado or cyclone, a Sunami, may have a strange fear-inspiring
fascination and beauty, like the fear-inspiring beauty of a lion, a tiger (compare
the tiger’s “fearful symmetry” in Robert Blake’s “Tyger”). But that is not sublim-
ity. Vesuvius as it is at present and thankfully has been for quite some time, may
evoke in the viewer who knows about its legendary power in utterly destroying
the city of Pompeii, a fearful sense of awe. But that is not the sense of the sub-
lime! Similarly with the sense of fear and premonition that has recently resulted
from the tragic deaths of a number of Sherpa on Mount Everest.
9.1 Silence in Nature in the wild and in national parks

The glory of untamed nature is enhanced by its silence and stillness; for exam-
ple, in the ice and snow-covered landscapes of Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, and
the Arctic and Antarctic. The well-known national parks in the United States are
justly famous for their natural beauty and for the wild life inhabiting them.
Other parks in Europe, Africa, The Far East, Australia, including the Australian
National Park of Kakadu, and parks in New Zealand, also come to mind.
9.2 The Silence of the Deep

The silent beauty of the deep in the world’s lakes and particularly its seas and
oceans in many parts of the world, including the Arctic Ocean and Antarctic
Ocean, the Pacific ocean embracing the Hawaiian Islands, the Atlantic Ocean
surrounding the islands of Fiji, Tahiti and the other tropical islands in the ar-
chipelago, teeming with whales and dolphins, like those that ply the waters of
the Pacific Ocean from the Arctic, via the channel between the Island of Maui
and the Island of Lanai, to Southern California and thence to Baha California
and further south, only to go back, with the seasons, to the Arctic. We must also
not forget the marine life in the Mediterranean and especially the Red Sea; and
perhaps most famous for its vast area of marine life, the Great Australian Barrier
Reef, teeming with incredibly varied species of marine vegetation, coral, and
fish, adorned with rainbow colors and delicate hues.
We must also not forget the teeming marine life in the world’s great aquari-
ums, such as the Georgia Aquarium, and the Chicago and Los Angeles aquari-
ums in the United States; the Barcelona Aquarium in Spain; the aquarium on
The Art Gardens of Japan | 119
the Island of Maui, Hawaii, and the one at Hotel Atlantis on Paradise Island in
the Bahamas; where one can see and marvel at the immense variety and beauty
of species of marine life behind glass, performing their graceful circles and arcs
in absolute silence.
9.3 The Art Gardens of Japan

At their best, Japanese and other formal gardens in other parts of the world
create a visual and aural as well as olfactory organic whole, a human creation
integrating and unifying Nature and human feeling and thought. These gardens
create a kind of visual and aural art out of a piece of nature. Their aesthetic
qualities are a result of the harmonization and organic interrelation of nature
and human design, creating and integrating nature and human feeling and
thought.
Their silence, which informs in the viewer a sense of calm, repose and tran-
quility and summons the spirit to contemplation or meditation, together with
the sensory and intellectual-emotional qualities of the shrubbery, rocks, peb-
bles, pool or fountain, and so on, imbue in the viewer a sense of harmony and
unity with nature, the outcome of the harmonization and organic interrelations
of Nature and human design. A few examples: The rose garden of the Pasadena
Art Center, Pasadena, California, the gardens of Victoria Island off the coast of
Vancouver, Canada and the rose garden and park of Henry VIII’s Hampton
Court Palace in Richmond upon Thames I mentioned earlier.
I should add that Japanese gardens are intended to and succeed in creating
a sense of oneness of man with nature. Their silent moments—except when the
stillness is broken by the natural sounds of bird or wind—concentrates the
senses and the mind and heart on the beauty before one. One commentator on
Japanese Gardens speaks of a sense of oneness that endures in the Far East (as
well as in the Native Americans of the United States and Canada), based on their
traditional religious beliefs: in the case of Japanese Gardens, on their Zen Bud-
dhism.
The Murin-an garden in Kyoto (Figs. 121, 122, 143) …The view across the pond from in front
of the residence [the famous Zen temple Nanzen-ji] seems especially deep because it
makes use of borrowed scenery. Beyond the gently rolling lawn, which occupies most of
the garden and is cut by two small streams, the Higashiyama range of hills is visible in the
distance. The streams and the pond are fed by a spring that was already on the site and by
water piped in from a canal that flows from Lake Biwa. Because of the abundance of wa-
ter, it was possible to create not only the streams and the pond but also a waterfall. Some-
how the quiet gurgling of the water in the deep tranquility of the garden seems to calm the
spirit and at the same time to bring to mind concepts of garden design that had been un-
dergoing refinement since the Heian age.197
(b) Other famous formal gardens I might mention include the Ganna Walska
Lotusland, “consisting of 37 exotic acres sprawled across a hillside in Monte-
cito, California.”198 Edwin Kiester jr., the article’s author, writes: “The gardens of
Versailles, it isn’t. Well, sure, you walk around scrupulously barbered hedgerow
and emerge into a neat rose garden laid out in precise geometric beds. The Sun
King probably would have liked that. And down by the Japanese pond where
golden koi swim languidly, a bed of crowd-pleasing azaleas blossom in scarlet,
crimson and lavender.”199
Here, vivid blooms give way to muted greens and grays and beiges, in spiky, droopy and
phantasmagoric shapes. Towering needle-leafed tree ferns shade the curving gravel walks
with greenish gloom. Small succulents called burro’s tails hang from live oaks, protected
from marauding birds by conical hats fashioned of copper mesh. Dragon trees drip what
looks like human blood. Cacti bristle and palms fan the sky. More than 100 species of
bromeliads catch rainfall in miniature reservoirs formed by their leaves. Perhaps the most
prized display is made up of rare cycads, plants dating from the days of the dinosaurs.200
The Shaw gardens in the coastal town of Ocho Rios, Jamaica, in the Caribbean,
are another example of a tropical paradise showcasing, along a series of ter-
raced walks down to a beautiful view of the Caribbean, a wealth of tropical
flowers and trees and boasting of cascading waters and a reflecting pool. Once
again, however, it is a tourist magnet and its enjoyment in peace and quiet is
something to be desired.
The Caribbean islands are rich in natural beauty, with, as far as the present
writer is concerned, the breathtaking natural beauty, including the beauty of its
calm, azure inlets and lakes; and, not much far behind, the rugged beauty of St.
Thomas, its sister island St. John, and St. Croix, the third gem in the crown of
the USA Virgin Islands, are no less endowed with natural beauty. And we must
not forget to mention as well the beautiful, lush Hawaiian islands.
Some of the most famous formal gardens in the world are attached to great
palaces, such as Versailles outside Paris, Schoenbrun Palace in Vienna, and the
King Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace on the Thames, in Richard Borrow
||
197 Masao Haywakawa, “Gardens Of The Meiji Era,” The Garden Art of Japan New York:
Weatherhill/Heibonsha Tokyo, 1974, p. 143.
198 Smithsonian, Smithsonian Associates, Washington, D.C., March 1997, p. 105.
199 Ibid.
200 Ibid.
Silent Nature in Poetry | 121
outside London, mentioned earlier, attract thousands of people every day and
so can scarcely be seen and enjoyed without the noise and commotion of admir-
ing crowds. Fortunately, that is not the case with the formal Gardens of Japan,
which are meant as places where the meditative, silent individual can be at one
with a small part of nature formally arranged for that purpose.
9.4 Silk Screens of Yokoyama Taikan201

Here are some examples of some Japanese silk screens that depict natural sce-
nary:
– Cherry Blossoms At Night (Plates 18 and 19. Left-hand and right-hand of a
pair of screens, 1929. 202 Edwin Kiester jr. describes the garden as follows:
Taikan has always tended toward symbolism, and it is for this reason as much as for Mt.
Fuji’s eminently paintable shape that he has drawn more pictures of it than any Japanese
artist, more even than did Hokusai. But then Hokusai, while deeply interested in Fuji’s
changing appearances, regarded it essentially as only scenery. Taikan, on the other hand,
looks upon it as a symbol of his nation, and his whole concept of Japan is symbolized in
his representations of the mountain.203
Other examples:
– Plate 18. Cherry Blossoms At Night. The left-hand of a pair of screens. 1929.
– Plate 19. Cherry Blossoms At Night. (See explanation following Plate 32)
– Plates 31 and 32. The Mountain In Fresh Color. Color on silk. A Scroll for
hanging. 1928.204
9.5 Silent Nature in Poetry

As far back as the 19th century, with the rise of the industrial revolution, Words-
worth wrote that “the world is too much with us” and extolled the then-silence
and stillness of London in his well-known sonnet, “Composed Upon Westmin-
ster Bridge”—combining a moment of silence and stillness of the sleeping city
||
201 Kodansha Library Of Japanese Art, No. 4. Text by Seiroku Noma. Charles E. Tuttle Com-
pany, Rutland, Vermont—Tokyo, Japan, 1960.
202 Ibid. [n.p.]
203 Ibid. [n.p.]
204 Taikan, Kodausha, Library of Japanese Art. (Rutland, VT: Charles Tuttle Co., Publishers).
with the silence and the stillness of the city’s natural setting 205—while Robert
Blake positively dreaded what he called “the dark satanic mills” and the trains
that frightened the grazing cattle as they sped through the English countryside.
Wordsworth’s “aesthetic pantheism” in his famous “Lines Written Above
Tintern Abbey” 206too captures the silence and stillness of Nature as revelatory
of the divine, in the following lines:
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
||
205 The sonnet is the following:
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering the smokeless air.
Never did sun most beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will;
Dear God! the very houses sees asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
206 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For I have learned ,
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Silent Nature in Poetry | 123
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and if all that we behold
From this green earth...207
Other noteworthy Wordsworth nature poems include “It is a Beauteous Eve-

ning, Calm and Free,” “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold,” “I Wandered Lonely
As A Cloud,” “The Daffodils,” Certain parts of Wordsworth’s famous “Intima-
tions of Immortality”—indeed, a great part of the Ode, including sections I, II,
III, IV, VI, and XI are either about nature or include significant descriptions of it.
Now, with an increasingly urbanized world, where large metropolises never
sleep, even the depths of the night bring no relief from urban commotion and
noise. In many parts of the world, only in some suburbs, villages or small towns
one can sometimes still enjoy the silent starry heavens enveloped in the sooth-
ing dark, or has to travel deep into the countryside and even the jungles or the
wilderness, e.g., in Central and South America—or climb tall mountains, deep
valleys or gorges, to find the silence one may seek.
Many Japanese haiku offer exquisite little silent bouquets of nature seen
through the poets’ eyes, and provide a sense of silence and stillness, repose and
tranquility. In “A Note On Japanese Haiku,” the editor of The Four Seasons,
Japanese Haiku Second Series, writes: “The HAIKU is a seventeen-syllable poetic
form that has been written in Japan for three hundred years. … The haiku does
not make a complete poem in our usual sense; it is lightly-sketched picture the
reader is expected to fill in from his own memories. Often there are two pictures,
and the reader is expected to respond with heightened awareness of the mysti-
cal relationship between non-related subjects. This mystical awareness is one of
the seekings of Zen Buddhism….Almost every haiku holds a season key-word;
often the name of the season itself, otherwise a seasonal reference easily under-
stood”208 And in Cherry Blossoms, Japanese Haiku Series Three, the editor writes
in “A Note On This Book Of Haiku”: “In Japan cherry-blossoms are a favorite
subject of paintings and poems, and are indeed a symbol to the Japanese people
of the transitory delights of the “floating world”—as they have called this life on
earth. For cherry-blossoms last only three days, and the Buddhist Japanese
thinks of his own life as an equally brief flowering in the endless cycle of rein-
||
207 Wordsworth’s above-mentioned poems are in Literature Of The Western World, Volume II,
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: 1997.
208 The Peter Piper Press: Mount Vernon New York, 1958. (No editor name; no page numbers.)
carnation and dissolution.” … “The haiku is…usually a brief poignant insight

into the universality of this endless cycle…”209
A sampling of haiku might include the following by Onitsura, Basho, Taigi,
Onitsura, Shiro, Chora and Roka, respectively:
Green at early dawn …

On the tips of
Barley leaves
Little last pale frost
Up from April snow

Rising Udo sprouts
Tender
Purple succulent
Above the Hamlet

Green the silent
Bamboo-grove…
White lingering snow
Silent cherry-bloom…
Again with your
Old eloquence
Address my inner ear
Mountain-top of clouds
Towering behind
The Hedge…
Or a flowering plum?
After spring sunset

Mist rises from
The river…
Spreading like a flood.
Last night a snowfall…

Today clear cobalt
Heaven and
White-mantled pines 210
||
209 Cherry Blossoms, Japanese Haiku Series Three (Peter Piper Press: Mount Vernon New
York, 1960.
210 Cherry Blossoms, Japanese Haiku Series Three: The Peter Pauper Press, 1960.
Still Nature Photography: Ansel Adams | 125
9.6 Silent Nature in Landscape Painting

Many examples of landscape painting that give the viewer a wonderful sense of
silence and stillness, quietude, tranquility and repose in nature are found in
European painting, not least many of works by the impressionists, post-
impressionists and other artists. Here is a list of just a few:
– Gustave Loiseu, Paint, “Haystacks”
– Edmund G. Warren, “Harvesting on the Coast”
– Camille Pissarro, “The Haystack,” 1872
– Claude Monet, “The Haystacks, End of Summer,” 1891
The following paintings provide a nice contrast to the preceding, since they all
depict human activity, giving the viewer a sense of action or movement, not of
stillness or silence:
– Vincent van Gogh, “Woman Harvesting Wheat” 1885
– Paul Gauguin, “Yellow Haystacks, or Golden Harvest” 1889
– Vincent van Gogh, “Wheatfield with Reaper”1889. 211
– Claude Monet’s large “water-lilies” series of watercolors panels inspired by
his garden and pond at Givenchy; with each panel depicting the changing
light on the pond and his garden —from sunrise to sunset--thus adding a
novel element of duration, of the passage of time, by the successive can-
vases.
In addition to nature paintings, we must mention the numerous Still Life paint-
ings of, for example, the impressionists, post-impressionists, and twentieth and
twenty first century artists; including, for example, Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir,
Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne, who, among other great works, is
widely known for his Still Life paintings.
9.7 Still Nature Photography: Ansel Adams

Still photographs of nature provide us with a still another way of viewing and
enjoying still and silent nature. Although we usually speak of nature alive with
||
211 Where a sense of stillness and silence due to the depiction of the hills in the distance, the
golden sun. and the abundant golden wheat together with a little “island” of activity due to the
lone green-dressed farmer in process of ‘cutting the wheat with his sickle.’ Solomon von Ruys-
dael, “Flusslandsschaft,” 1645. Hamburger Kunsthalle, p. 21.
the sounds and sights of birds and wild animals, silent nature is equally alive
and is by no means dead nature. Rather, it is nature in a different but equally
fetching mood.
Describing the Sierra Nevada in the Foreword to his masterly “Yosemite and
the Range of Light,”212 which contains one hundred sixteen of his photographs,
mostly of Yosemite National Park but also include photographs of Kings Canyon
National Park, Sequoia National Park and Ellery Lake, Sierra Nevada, Ansel
Adams writes:
Those who have seen uplifts of the Himalayas, the

Andes, the Alps and the Alaskan range may not
think of the Sierra Nevada as mountains. They have
neither formidable rivers of ice nor skies cut with
forbidding towers of rock. I think of the Sierra as
sculptures in stone, rather delicate and gentle, yet not
small! The canyons reach seven thousands feet in
depth, and the eastern face of the range rises more than
ten thousand feet above the Owens Valley. The
juxtaposition of rock, glacial lake, meadows, forests
and streams is extraordinary. It is the detail of the
Sierra that captures the eye and entices the camera. One
wanders in open forests and wild gardens of infinite
variety studded by boulders of whitish granitic or
lichined metaphoric. Spring follows the elevations
from the low, rolling foothills; at eleven or twelve
thousand feet September flowers will bloom in the
crevices of the clean and shining summits.213
Although each photograph in the book silently captures a different striking

aspect or detail of the manifold natural beauties Adams describes in the above
passage and elsewhere in the Foreword,214 we can here touch on only a relatively
few to illustrate their tremendous variety, richness and details.
Here are a few examples of Ansel Adams’ one hundred and eighteen photo-
graphs of Yosemite National Park, Kings Canyon National Park and the Sierra
Nevada, etc., in which a heightened sense of silence and stillness informs and
pervades the magnificent scenery he captured for all time:
||
212 Introduction by Paul Brooks (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979).
213 Ibid., pp. 7-8.
214 Ibid., p. 10. There, inter alia, writes: “The problem is not whether we must save the natural
scene but how e may accomplish it.” Italics in original.
Silent Feature Films & Silence in Film | 127
1. Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite Valley, 1944. Frontspiece

6. Thundercloud, North Palisade, Kings Canyon National Park 1933 (Ibid.,
p. 11)
9. Half Dome, Yosemite Valley c. 1935
** 10. Cathedral Rocks, c. 1935 Yosemite Valley c. 1949
13. Evening Cloud, Ellery Lake, Sierra Nevada 1934
* 14. Yosemite Falls, Clouds and Mist, Yosemite Valley c. 1960
16. Trees and Cliffs of Eagle Peak, Winter, Yosemite Valley c. 1935 [the soft
silent fall of snow]
19. Mount Winchell, Kings Canyon National Park c. 19233
21. Half Dome, Merced River, Winter, Yosemite Valley x. 1938
23. Waterwheel Falls, Yosemite National Park c. 1940
24. Mount Morrison, Sierra Nevadac. 1945
32. Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain, Yosemite Valley, c. 1948
33. Rocks, Merced River, Autumn, Yosemite Valley c. 1962
Compare the preceding to a Japanese Garden—a “natural Japanese garden.”
42. Evening Clouds and Pool, East Side of the Sierra Nevada, from the
Owens Valley c. 1962
*** 44. El Capitan, Merced River, Clouds, Yosemite Valley, c. 1952
9.8 Documentary & Nature Films

Although documentary nature films are standard examples of films that display
nature’s beauty, films with a beautiful natural setting, such as those of various
PBS nature documentaries, also exemplify tranquility and repose in the way
they capture nature in photographs and in silent films.
9.9 Silent Feature Films & Silence in Film

In thinking of silent film—or in this case, of film that includes a considerable
amount of silence, we immediately think of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, one of
the greatest if not the greatest feature feature-film ever created; whose central
theme is the nature of truth: whether truth in human existence or experience is
subjective and relative to the individual, or whether it is objective, independent
of the individual’s experience or perception of reality. For except in the last
section, the central events it depicts: for example, the thief’s killing of the hus-
band and his abduction of the wife, are all shown in complete silence. Another
masterpiece—this time, with periods of eerie silence only broken by snatches of
conversation between the man and the woman he claims to have met the year
before in Marienbad or at some other spa, or the eerie organ music that some-
times we hear but, by contrast, punctuates the recurring disorienting moments
of silence, is of course Alan Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad. (See also the ex-
amples of silent nature or partly nature films described in Chapter 8.)
9.10 Prose Descriptions of Silent Nature

There is hardly a better way to round off this chapter than with some examples
of marvelous Nature word-painting from two masterpieces by the 19th century
novelist and writer Ivan Turgenev’s On the Eve, Sketches From A Hunter’s Album
(also rendered as A Huntsman’s Sketches), together with some passages from his
Specters, A Fantasy. In the first the author describes the natural charms of Ven-
ice in April, and in the second, provides vignettes of silent natural beauty in the
19th century rural Russia he knew and loved and wrote about so well. The pas-
sages I have culled from Specters provide further examples of the author’s in-
imitable way of painting Nature’s beauty with his pen.
I shall begin with the excerpts from On The Eve:215
No one who has not seen Venice in April knows the full, the indescribable charm of that
magical city. The gentleness and softness of spring are to Venice what the bright sun of
summer is to majestic Genoa, what the gold and purple of autumn are to that grand old
man among cities, Rome. And just as the spring stirs us and fills us with longing, so does
the loveliness of Venice; she provokes and tantalizes the innocent heart with a sense of
some imminent joy, a joy which is both simple and yet mysterious. Everything about her is
light and lucid, yet over everything hands a drowsy haze of tranquil sensuousness; every-
thing is silent, yet everything is welcoming; everything about her is feminine, even to the
very name; not for nothing is she called ‘Venice the Beautiful, … there is something fabu-
lous and enchanting … in the silky gleam of her silent, rippling canal waters, in the silent
movement of the gondolas, in the absence of rude city noises, in the freedom from clatter
and turmoil and uproar. … No one who has seen her, knows her… was able to record the
silvery delicacy of her air, her vistas, so near and yet so fugitive, her marvelous harmony
of graceful lines and melting colours … [For] him who still has strength and confidence
within him, she will be sweet; let him bring his happiness to her and expose is to her en-
chanted skies, and however radiant his happiness may be, she will enrich it with her own
unfading light.216
||
215 A New Translation by Gilbert Gardiner (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics, 1950.
216 Ibid., p. 209-210.
Prose Descriptions of Silent Nature | 129
⁎
From Sketches from a Hunter’s Album:
…[O]ne evening, as the ebbing of the tide, on the smooth sandy shore of a sea… a large
white seagull; it stood motionless, its silky breast turned to the crimson brilliance of the
evening, and only now and then slowly spread out its long wings in a gesture of welcome
to the familiar sea and low, blood-red sun;…217
When I awoke, everything was already dark; the grass scattered round me had a strong
scent and was ever so slightly damp; through the thin laths of the half-covered roof pale
stars winked feebly. … The glow of sunset had long since died away…. [T]he sky … clear
and transparently dark, quietly flickering with numberless but scarcely visible stars.218
… [T]he extremely beautiful regions through which our road took us. These were free-
ranging, expansive, well-watered grassy meadowlands with a lot of small pastures, minia-
ture lakes, streams and large ponds overgrown at each end with willows, ... [E]verything
flowed past so softly and surely under the friendly moon.219
[On] the dark grey sky stars wink at you, light waves of a moist breeze occasionally stir the
air about you, the muffled, indistinct murmurs of the night can be heard and the trees rus-
tle, immersed in a shadow… Every sound hangs as if frozen upon the still air—hangs there
frozen and motionless…. Stripes of gold have risen across the sky and wreaths of mist form
in the ravines; ... Everything is so fresh, gay and lovely! …The river winds away… a faint
blue glimmer through the mist; beyond it are water-green meadows; beyond them, low-
lying hills, … How strong one feels in the grip of this fresh springtime atmosphere!220
The sunset has burst into flame and covered half the sky with fire. The sun sinks. The air
near by is somehow particularly lucid, .. as if made of glass; in the distance a soft haze is
settling, warm as heat-haze in appearance; along with the dew a crimson glow is descend-
ing on the open fields which were so recently inundated by torrents of liquid gold; from
trees, from bushes, from tall haystacks have run long shadows. … The sun has set; a star
ignites and twinkles in the fiery sea of the sun’s sinking … Now the sun pales; the sky
||
217 Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1967. Selected and Translated by Richard Freeborn,
p. 163.
218 Ibid., p. 165.
219 Ibid., pp. 234-235.
220 Ibid
grows blue; separate shadows vanish away and the air fills with dusk. … [N]ight descends;
… [A]bove the blackness of the bushes, the rim of the sky shines dimly …. What’s that? Is it
a fire? No, it’s the rising of the moon...221
⁎
222
From Specters, A Fantasy :
The sun had just set, and it was not the sky alone that mantled red: all the air had sud-
denly filled with some almost unnatural purple tint; the leaves and grasses, looking as if
they had been freshly lacquered, did not stir; in their petrified immobility, in the sharp
vividness of their outlines, in this coupling of overpowering glitter and dead silence there
was something strange, enigmatic. A rather large bird suddenly, without the least noise,
flew up and perched on the very edge of my windowsill. I looked at it—and it looked at me
askance with its round eye.223
||
221 Ibid., pp. 248-249.
222 The Portable Russian Reader, translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney (USA: The Colonial
Press, Inc., 1959), p. 106.
223 Ibid., p. 106.
|
Part III: Ethics and Politics of Silence
10 The Ethics of Silence
Ethics of Silence: Some Questions
There are a number of important ethical questions relating to silence that any
discussion of the “ethics of silence” must consider. Among them are the follow-
ing:
1. Under what conditions does silence commit the “agent” to what is being
said or done at a given time, by her community, government, people, etc.?
2. When is silence tacit agreement, consent, and when (if at all) is it not? Why?
3. In what contexts or circumstances is it morally right to keep silent; and
when it is morally wrong to do so? Clearly it cannot be either right or wrong
to do so whenever being silent or keeping silent does not commit the
“agent” to any particular right or wrong course of action or to a morally
good or bad state of affairs.
In dealing with these questions other ethical questions relating to silence will be
touched upon.
To begin with we must distinguish two sorts of locution: an “In-“ and a “By”-
locution, in ordinary language, which were profitably used by J. L. Austin and
John Searle in their seminal writings on speech-acts, basic to which are the
distinctions between “illocutionary speech acts”(i.e., “In”-speech acts) and
“perlocutionary speech acts” (i.e., “By”-speech acts.) In the domain of ethics or
morality, the former is illustrated by: “In acting in such-and such a way (per-
forming act C), A did such-and-such.” For example, “In hiding the sick cow in
the cow shed, the farmer was trying to prevent the health department officials
from knowing that he had a cow infected with hoof and mouth disease.” The
“By”-locution, “By doing (saying, etc.) such and such P intended, wanted, etc.
to bring about a certain state of affairs S,” is exemplified, for instance, by: “By
trying to prevent the health department official from finding out that he had a
cow infected with hoof and mouth disease, the farmer was trying to avoid the
bad publicity to his herd that would result from the health official’s discovery
that he had a cow with that dread bovine disease.” And: “By saying “He’s hid-
ing it in the cowshed” (hence by betraying the deserter), the farmer sought to
get the reward promised by the government to anyone helping to round up de-
serters (or sought to cover up for his own collaboration with the enemy).”
As would be expected, “In-“ and “By”-moral acts, as moral acts or actions
are logically in the same boat as any other moral acts or actions; i.e., involve the
134 | The Ethics of Silence
sort of “doing something” with which people may be concerned in everyday life.
In other words, whatever moral principles make an action right or wrong, good
or bad, also make a silent “In”- or “By”-moral/immoral act right or wrong, good
and bad. In the case of questions relating to the rightness or wrongness of silent
acts, and to what they morally commit the “agent,” are “epistemological” ques-
tions: they pertain to the interpretation of and the difficulties encountered in
particular cases of attempting to interpret the meaning of silent “acts,” in any of
the senses in which, as we saw in earlier chapters, silence can be meaningful.
Additionally, it is necessary in their case to ascertain when a given “act” of
silence is meaningful, e.g., is “symbolic,” and when it is not; thus encountering
such problems as vagueness and ambiguity, and multiplicity or multivocity of
meanings, analogous to those considered in Chapter 1 in relation to the mean-
ings of words and sentences, signs, signals and nonlinguistic symbols. But there
are additional problems peculiar to silence by virtue of its special nature.
“By”-acts of silence, like all other sorts of acts, logically presuppose the cor-
responding “In”-acts. To illustrate this in relation to speech, in a speaker’s per-
forming the illocutionary special-act of telling a soldier looking for a deserter:
“He’s hiding in the cow shed,” the speaker informs on, betrays, the deserter.
(We also say that the speaker betrays the deserter by informing the police of his
whereabouts.)
But are not what I call moral “In”-acts simply the moral dimension, so to
speak, of an “In”- act in general? The answer is “yes.” For example, telling a lie
is a moral act committed both in and by making a statement in certain circum-
stances.
By way of introduction to the present subject we can say that saying noth-
ing is sometimes a form of not doing anything, of not acting at all, and some-
times a form of doing something, of acting. Let us distinguish these by calling
them “negative” and “positive” silences. Depending on the context, on the rele-
vant circumstances, it is morally right or wrong to be, or to remain, silent,
whether the silence is negative or positive. An example of culpable, “positive”
silence would be my misleading you by withholding from you—through my
silence—certain vital facts, resulting in your being hurt. But misinforming is
also morally wrong—and just as culpable—whether it takes the form of giving
someone false information or by not responding to her request for relevant in-
formation. That occurs when the agent has the necessary information or knows
how one can have access to it. But the duty to inform must be duly qualified,
since it involves important restrictions or exceptions. For example, it would be
wrong to give information to someone one knows or suspects to be a would-be
rapist or killer in hot pursuit of his would-be victim. But if one cannot avoid
The Ethics of Silence | 135
lying without holding his peace, silence would be precisely what his moral duty
would dictate. Otherwise furnishing the information would in effect make the
speaker a moral as well as possibly a legal accomplice in whatever ills befall the
victim.
The situation becomes more complicated still if the information is not solic-
ited. In that kind of situation the crucial question would be whether the person
P who has the necessary information, has a general moral duty to provide it: a
duty in the absence of a special relationship to the other person, Q, hence in the
absence of a “special moral obligation” to provide the information. The answer
again depends on the kind of situation involved. If P is in a position to predict
that Q would refrain from supplying it; e.g. by being silent (if that does not itself
provide the answer Q needs). It is more difficult and more controversial to know
whether there are circumstances in which P would have a general moral duty to
tell Q rather than to keep silent.; that is, a duty in the absence of a special rela-
tionship to the other person, Q, hence in the absence of a special moral obliga-
tion to provide the information. The answer again depends on the kind of situa-
tion involved. For instance, those who, like the present author, believe in the
existence of a general moral duty to promote the welfare of others and not just a
general duty not to harm others or to diminish their welfare224 would maintain
that the answer to the foregoing question is sometimes “yes.”225 If P is in position
to predict that Q would misuse the information in any way, it would be P’s gen-
eral moral duty to refrain from supplying it, by, for example, being silent – pro-
vided that that itself would not constitute the answer Q needs. On the other
hand, those who deny the existence of the said putative duty would deny that P
would have a duty to tell Q. But why ought P to give Q the necessary infor-
mation, even if he has good reasons to believe that Q would not misuse it but,
on the contrary, use it wisely and well, to her or to others’ benefit? Is there, in
other words, a general prima facie duty to impart potentially or actually useful
information to those who are likely to use it well, for moral ends?
||
224 In Concept Of Art (Oxford At the Clarendon Press, 1961) H.L.A. Hart distinguishes two sorts
of duties or obligations. Although the book is primarily a treatise on philosophy of law, he
devotes a chapter to “Justice and Morality,” where he distinguishes what he calls “general
obligations” and “special obligations.” The following passage explains these two important
concepts: “There are both general and special obligations which all normal adults are con-
ceived as having throughout life (e.g. to abstain from violence) and special obligations which
any such member may incur by entering into special relations with others (e.g. obligations to
keep promises or return services rendered.),” p.167.
225 For example, in line with the Christian Gospel Ethic.
The most difficult moral problems in the ethics of silence do not concern
particular “acts” of silence as much as not speaking out in general, in defense of
right or against wrong in a particular place and time or in the world as a whole.
Specifically, a crucial and well recognized problem is whether silence in the
face of palpable wrong always or necessarily means acquiescence in or even
acceptance of, not to say complicity in, that wrong; or whether such silence can
have a no culpable explanation or justification. The Nazi atrocities against Jews
and other prisoners in death camps during the Second World War; the atrocities
perpetrated by Stalin’s orders during his rule of the Soviet Union; and the Viet
Nam War, are classic cases in point. The answer, I believe, is that only the con-
text can tell: specifically, how the subject overtly behaved prior to and/or sub-
sequent to her silence. For the meaning of silence, as I emphasized in Chapter 1,
is necessarily contextual. It follows that the basic problem in the attempt to
ascertain whether a given “act” of silence is right or wrong (or neither) is the
common difficulty of correctly interpreting the meaning of the silence in the
particular context; in the sense of what the agent intends to mean by it. That, in
general, would not commit an Intentional Fallacy analogous to the putative
Intentional Fallacy committed in the interpretation and evaluation of works of
art that was claimed by William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in their classic
article, “The Intentional Fallacy.”226 For as I noted earlier, what the agent does
or refrains from doing by her silence is what she intends or has in mind in being
silent. Unlike actions in the usual sense, there is no objective, independent way
in which others can determine, hence evaluate, what the silence means or
meant. The one exception—which necessitated the proviso “in general” in the
above statement that no Intentional Fallacy is, in general, involved here – con-
sists in instances in which the agent is truly ignorant of her silence’s “real”
meaning, inasmuch as that meaning is hidden in her subconscious. But in that
case the agent cannot be validly held responsible for the silence’s “latent mean-
ing”; in fact, the silence cannot be reasonably regarded as anything but morally
neutral; since the agent cannot be responsible for a meaning she is not (and
normally cannot be) aware of.
Whenever it is possible to discover what a particular “act” of silence means,
it would be subject to moral evaluation like any other moral act, in terms of its
nature as a kind of act and its actual or probable consequences, the agent’s
||
226 The Verbal Icon (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, KY [n.d.]). Briefly
stated, the fallacy erroneously identifies a works meaning(s) with its creator’s intended mean-
ing(s). Stated in T.S. Eliot’s famous words, “Between the conception and the execution falls the
shadow.”
motives or intentions, and whether the act violates anyone’s moral rights. In the
case of silence what the phrase ‘kind of act’ means is whether it is, respectively,
an act of tacit acceptance, acquiescence, collaboration or complicity, or of res-
ignation.
The question is the kinds of circumstances in which (a) a particular person,
(b) any citizen of a particular country, and (c) any adult or adolescent individu-
al, as a human being, is morally obligated to speak out in a certain way under
certain conditions, or to keep his peace: In general, the kinds of situations or
circumstances in which, in cases (a), (b) or (c), one is obligated to do certain
things or act in a certain way. Part of the complexity of this question lies in the
fact that no single general answer to (a)-(c) appears to be forthcoming, since the
answers depend on the kinds of contexts or circumstances involved. For exam-
ple, was it the moral duty of Jesus to defend himself verbally before Pontius
Pilate? Consequently, was his not defending himself morally wrong? The fact
that a person accused of a crime has the right to defend herself does not auto-
matically make Jesus’ not speaking out in his defense227 (contrast Socrates, for
instance) morally wrong. For though he had the moral right to defend himself
(even if he were guilty, which he was not), having a right does not obligate the
right-holder to exercise it, even once—unless possibly when not exercising it at
all would result in a general net balance of evil over good in the world. For ex-
ample, if that entails neglecting one’s abilities or talents; for instance by jeop-
ardizing one’s life or helping to end it. The obligation to exercise a particular
right one has depends on circumstances; such as the actual or probable conse-
quences of so doing. Sometimes it is one’s moral duty not to exercise a given
right. An example is the putative right to die with dignity when one is in good
health, reasonably happy, and has family or other important duties; even when
that right does not conflict with another, higher or logically prior putative right.
Clearly, there are occasions on which one has a moral duty to speak out, not
to be silent. One such occasion is when silence would harm someone else, such
as incriminate him or her; consequently, when speaking out would serve anoth-
er person’s well-being. It is also one’s duty to speak out if one has a special
obligation to do so by virtue of a special transaction or relationship. Thus if I
promise you to testify in court on your behalf if you are falsely accused of a
crime, I clearly have the moral obligation to do so.
In significant contrast to the legal right to be silent when speaking would
tend to incriminate oneself before the law, there is no moral right to be silent if
||
227 When brought before Pontius Pilate, accused of claiming to be King of the Jews.
one has committed an ethical or legal wrong. If one has committed a moral
wrong, one has the moral duty to admit one’s guilt to oneself and to try to rectify
or undo the wrong. If one is Roman Catholic, one would have to confess her
guilt to one’s confessor, as well as admit it to oneself. One would also have to
ask God’s forgiveness and do penance. As for legal violations, I think it would
be one’s moral duty not only to confess one’s action to the police, if questioned,
but to volunteer the information to the authorities whenever the legal violation
constitutes a moral wrong. For example in the case of a felony, such as theft,
kidnapping, murder, or rape.
Is it our moral duty to speak out about every single issue that concerns our
community, state or country, our ethnic community, of which we become aware
of day by day? In fact, is it our duty to keep track of the local, state, national and
international news by reading papers or listening to the radio or TV, to become
continually aware of vital issues and to speak out about them? For most peo-
ple—that is, for those who are not ex officio concerned with these matters; those
whose job, position, or office does not require him or her to do these things—
hence for those who do not have a special legal or moral obligation to do so, by
virtue of a contract or the like—this would be carrying the notion of individual
responsibility and duty to absurd lengths. Bernard Williams maintains that we
are only responsible for our own “projects,” not also for the projects of others,
including those into which we are drawn by coercion or other circumstances
beyond our control.228 That raises the question whether Williams’ principle of
limited responsibility is acceptable—or whether it goes to the other extreme
from utilitarianism; assuming that Williams is correct in his explanation of the
unlimited responsibility with which classical utilitarianism is burdened; and (b)
whether his central concept of “integrity” is sufficiently precise and clear. In
particular, whether he restricts our “general” responsibilities and duties too
much—so much so that he rejects, by implication, any moral duties we have
based on the human rights of others.
Although we cannot deal with these complex issues here, since they go be-
yond the subject of this chapter, one important question is relevant here: name-
ly, whether it is our responsibility to speak out, or to hold our peace, to act or to
refrain from acting, in relation to any sorts of projects initiated by others. My
answer to it is definitely “yes,” it is our responsibility to speak out, etc.; i.e.,
whenever (1) we are physically and mentally able to affect or influence the pro-
ject or its outcome; by which I mean: “whenever we have the physical and men-
||
228 “Consequentialism And Integrity,” Consequentialism And Its Critics, Samuel Scheffler, ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 20-50.
tal capacity, intelligence, knowledge, or requisite skill, in the particular situa-

tion, to affect the project’s course or outcome.” And (2), whenever the available
evidence shows that without our intervention the project or its outcome would
likely be harmful to the agent and/or to others. But that is not always all. In
certain types of cases it is necessary that (a) our help be solicited, or (b) that we
have good evidence that our help would be welcome. Whenever we have a spe-
cial moral or legal obligation to help, resulting from a promise, contract or other
agreement, no problem would exist. Whenever the moral or legal obligation is
absent, the situation would sometimes be ambiguous; just as when we find
ourselves unable to determine whether and especially be sure that we do have a
moral responsibility or a duty to intervene; because we do not know or are not
sure whether the conditions for such a duty or responsibility are satisfied.
Granting that silent acts are in the same boat as acts in general, respecting
their morality, the question arises as to whether in certain situations silence
may not be as culpable (or as praiseworthy) as either speaking out or perform-
ing some physical action. I am inclined to think that sometimes it is a lesser evil
or wrong than speaking out. In fact it may be the golden and prudent course.
Yet, depending on the situation, it may sometimes be more wrong than speak-
ing out. But I do not think that it is ever more culpable or wrong than wrong
physical actions. Let me illustrate. Suppose I am an Israeli and morally strongly
opposed to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, especially in response to the
Palestinian Intifadas: (a) would my silence in public (rather than voicing a pub-
lic condemnation) of Israel’s actions be less or more wrong than (b) actively
trying to thwart them by spying for the PLO or some Arab State; or (c) joining
the PLO or some Palestinian guerilla group? And what about (d) speaking out in
public; e.g. writing magazine articles, readers’ letters, or giving public lectures
condemning them? If act-utilitarianism is right even (a) would not necessarily
be right; since the consequences of speaking out may be extremely drastic for
me and my family, while having negligible influence on the Israeli military or
political policy. In that case would not my silence in public (a) be at least less
wrong than speaking out in public? It may, indeed, be right even vis-à-vis (b)
and (c). That is, if and when the consequences of either (b) or (c), on the whole,
are worse than the consequences in the case of (a). On a special form of conse-
quentialism, namely an “ethic of caring,” which I have elsewhere developed,
based, with some significant additions, to the feminist “ethic of care,” 229 the
situation would be significantly different; e.g. silence in the face of great evil
||
229 “An Ethic of Caring,” Community and Communitarianism, Part 2 (New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, Inc., 1999), pp 61-114.
[(a)], as a general stand or policy, would help-result in further violations of the

rights of Palestinians. But the cost of such silence in terms of human suffering
and death compared with the consequences of (b), (c) and (d), are much more
difficult to determine with any degree of assurance, since they are much more
complicated than on act-utilitarianism or straightforward rule-utilitarianism.
The main point of the foregoing discussion is, I think, is that silence is not
always or necessarily less wrong or more right than either speaking out or overt-
ly acting overtly appropriately. That discussion appears to lead to one main
conclusion; namely, that since silence is an analog of refraining from action in
the usual sense, an act of silence is morally right whenever refraining from ac-
tion is morally right; and an act of silence is morally wrong whenever refraining
from action is morally wrong.
The next question is this: When is refraining from acting morally right?
When is it morally wrong? My answer is that it is right (a) whenever refraining
from action (hence also silence) results or tends to result in greater good than
evil; i.e. with respect to those kinds of circumstances in which refraining from
acting (as well as silence) is the best general policy; or (b) when not acting (or
silence) constitutes an exercise of the agent’s (or “agent’s”) right to refrain from
any action (keep silent); and/or (c) when not acting (as well as silence) is an
instance of upholding someone else’s right or rights; and/or (d) does not violate
anyone else’s moral rights. Refraining from acting (being silent) is morally
wrong whenever any one of the preceding, (a)–(d), is not the case.
A related question is whether there ever is a moral right to silence, and if so,
in what circumstances. I believe that there is indeed a moral right to be or to
remain silent, in certain specifiable sorts of circumstances: specifically, the
right to freedom of expression. Being silent is a form of expression in a broad
sense, but like all other rights it is not absolute. First, it is limited by the com-
munity of the other human rights. The exercise of these rights is also restricted
by the goodness or badness of the general consequences of (a policy of) exercis-
ing them on particular sorts of occasions. Thus there are occasions on which
one has a moral duty to speak out, not to be silent; for instance, when silence
would harm someone else—e.g., if it may incriminate her; consequently, when-
ever speaking out would further another’s welfare. Second, it is one’s duty to
speak up if and when one has a special obligation to do so by virtue of a special
transaction or relationship. Thus if I promise you to testify in court on your be-
half if you are falsely accused of a crime, I clearly have the obligation to do so if
that eventuality occurs. Third, I believe that a psychiatrist or psychotherapist
has a moral obligation to speak out by warning a potential target of a patient’s
repeated threats to harm him, even if confided during therapy. The confidential-
ity of the patient-therapist- relationship, hence the patient’s special right to the
confidentiality of his utterances, cannot be absolute; notwithstanding the fact
that as empirical evidence shows, psychiatrists and psychotherapists at present
cannot predict with any assurance when a patient who threatens someone,
herself or another, with bodily harm ,will carry out his/her threats. (Whether the
therapist should also be legally obligated to warn the authorities is a complex
and controversial matter into which we need not go here.)
A similar situation can arise in the law; although so far the American Bar
Association has refused to limit or override the lawyer-client confidentiality
privilege in cases where the client, accused of a crime, tells his lawyer of his
intention to harm, say, a witness for the prosecution.
In significant contrast to a defendant’s legal right, in the United States,
against self-incrimination by taking the Fifth Amendment, there is no moral
right to be silent if one has committed a moral or legal offense. If one has com-
mitted a moral offense, one has the moral duty to admit one’s guilt to oneself
and, at a minimum, to the wronged persons, if any, and to try to rectify or undo
the wrong done, for example, by restitution, doing penance, etc. As for legal
offenses, I think it would be one’s moral duty not only to confess one’s offense
to the police if questioned but to volunteer that information whenever the legal
offense constitutes a moral wrong, for example, in the case of theft, murder,
rape, kidnapping, and the like.
How far does the duty to speak out extend? Do we have limited or unlimited
moral responsibility to speak out about actual or potential corruption, crime or
any kind of human problem, involving our community (including our ethnic
group, if any), our state or country, or the world as a whole, of which we be-
come aware day by day? Indeed, is it our duty to keep track of the local, state,
national and international news by reading papers and listening to the radio or
television, day in, day out, to be abreast of the vital issues, hence to speak out
about them? To most people, I believe—i.e., for those who are not ex officio con-
cerned with these things; whose position, office or occupation does not require
him or her to do these things, hence for those who do not have a special obliga-
tion to do so by virtue of some kind of a promise, agreement or contract—the
preceding would carry the concept of responsibility and duty to absurd lengths.
The view that we have an unlimited responsibility and duty always to do what-
ever increases the general good (if not, also, to maximize it), is felt by many
unfairly to thrust on every normal adult with responsibilities and duties that
stem from actions, occurrences and states of affairs that are not in any way his
or hers, or part of his or her own “projects” in Bernard Williams’ apt expression.
Granting that silent acts are in the same boat as acts in general, respecting
their morality, the question remains whether, in certain situations, silence may
not be as culpable (or as praiseworthy) as either speaking out or performing
some physical action. I am inclined to think that sometimes it is a lesser evil or a
lesser wrong than speaking out. In fact it may be the golden and prudent
course. Yet it may be sometimes be more wrong than speaking out. But I do not
think that it is ever more culpable or wrong than wrong physical actions. The
main point of the foregoing discussion is, I think, that silence is not always or
necessarily less wrong or more right than either speaking out or overtly acting
appropriately. That discussion appears to lead to one main conclusion; namely,
that since silence is an analog of refraining from action in the usual sense, an
act of silence is morally right whenever refraining from action is morally right;
and an act of silence is morally wrong whenever refraining from action is moral-
ly wrong.
To sum up: When is refraining from acting morally right? When is it morally
wrong? The answer is that it is right (a) whenever refraining from action (hence
also silence) results or tends to result in greater good than evil; i.e. with respect
to those kinds of circumstances in which refraining from acting (as well as si-
lence) is the best general policy; or (b) when not acting (or silence) constitutes
an exercise of the agent’s (or “agent’s”) right to refrain from any action (keep
silent); and/or (c) when not acting (as well as silence) is an instance of uphold-
ing someone else’s right or rights; and/or (d) does not violate anyone else’s
moral rights. Refraining from acting (being silent) is morally wrong whenever
any one of the preceding, (a–(d), is not the case.
11 Ethical Political Social Dimensions of Silence
In this chapter I shall largely concentrate on the silence of two groups of “the
insulted and the injured” in in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s famous words in Crime and
Punishment: individuals and groups that are, or in a past period or date were
condemned to silence, often lifelong silence, as a result of being subjected to
and survived horrific acts of social, political, religious, military and/or ethnic
cleansing, oppression, predation or violence; whole groups of people subjected
to slavery and/or sexual enslavement; often as a result of war, revolutions, de-
portation or ethnic cleansing, genocide, or other “acts against humanity.” The
victims can be divided into three major, broadly-defined, often overlapping
categories.
In Part I, I shall consider what I call “The Silent.” They include (a) survivors
of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or other horrors or atrocities such as war, who
silently carried the memories of the traumatic experiences to their grave; and (b)
those who, on some occasion or at some point in their life, were able to break
their silence and reveal, to some extent or other, in various degrees or forms,
what they had seen and suffered; and, finally, (c) in the case of the Armenian
Genocide, the very few I have been able to know about, who were even able to
reveal their memories in autobiographical writings.
In Part II I shall turn to the “The Voiceless”: those individuals and groups—
including ethnic, religious or racial communities or groups’, that are “voice-
less” in being or having been forcibly stripped of their dignity as human persons
by being deprived of all their human rights, hence their political economic and
social rights. These unfortunate individuals or groups include (1) The Voiceless
Slaves; (2) The Voiceless Sex Slaves; (3) the Voiceless Indian Untouchables; (4)
The Voiceless Child Soldiers in Africa; and (5) the stateless refugees fleeing from
war, genocide, ethnic cleanings, revolution or civil war; and finally, (6) The
Voiceless Colonized Peoples around the world.
144 | Ethical Political Social Dimensions of Silence
11.1 Part One: “The Silent”

The Armenian Genocide 1915-1923
Who does now remember the Armenians?

(Adolf Hitler, 1939)230
I shall start with the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century.
Although that genocide predates the Holocaust, I shall draw on the silence’s
fundamental three-fold classification of the subject, with their subdivisions in
Ruth Wajnryb’s The Silence, How Tragedy Shapes Talk,231 to throw light on the
traumatic silence of the survivors of Armenian genocide.
In sharp contrast to the Holocaust, which has been recognized by Germany
and the rest of the world, with Germany’s reparation for the Nazi Holocaust of
Jews during World War II, the Armenian Genocide—though now increasingly
recognized by many European countries, including France, Germany and Swit-
zerland, as well as elsewhere, 232 and after ninety-nine years since it began in
1915 and the death of all but a few survivors, the successive Turkish govern-
ments continue to vigorously deny that the massacre and deportation of one
and a half million Armenians from Turkey; in addition to the fact that succes-
||
230 In support of his argument that the world would soon forget the extermination of a peo-
ple. Quoted from the Frontispiece of Adam Bagdasarian, Forgotten Fire, a novel (Dorling
Kindersley Publishing, Inc.: New York, NY, 2000)
231 Allen & Unwin: 83 Alexander Street, Australia, 2001.
232 But not the United States Government. Note for instance the following: “US And Turkey
Parliament Leaders Discuss Armenian Genocide,” US House of Representative Speaker John
Boehner, who is visiting Turkey, met with Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cice, who spoke
about the Armenian resolution that is introduced to the US Senate. Cicek noted that, in the
context of American—Turkish relations, Turkey is yet again concerned by the new American
resolution that has entered the US Senate… The Armenian genocide issue has become a burden
on our relations. … Parliaments need to build the day and the tomorrow. We are ready to con-
front our history. Let scholars, historians study this topic, and we are ready to accept the out-
come, we have announced this to the world,’ Camil Cicel specifically said.” Nor Or Weekly, Vol.
92, No. 16, Thursday, April 17, 2014, p. 7. Armenians insist that there is nothing to study. The
Genocide is a historical fact.
On April 24, on the 99th Armenian Commemoration of the Genocide, President Obama
again failed to use the word ‘Genocide’ and instead, only used the phrase ‘Medz Yegern’,
which, in Armenian, only means “Great Crime’—in honoring “those who perished in one of the
worst atrocities of the 20th century….In so doing, we remind ourselves of our shared commit-
ment to ensure that such dark chapters of human history are never again repeated.” And so on.
(Armenian Weekly, April 24, 2014 <newsletter@armenianweekly.com>
Part One: “The Silent” | 145
sive Turkish governments have denied that it was Genocide; i.e., i.e., the Otto-
man government’s and, later, the government of the Free Turks under Kemal
Ataturk,233 planned and organized the extermination or attempted extermina-
tion of an ethnic or religious minority (as ‘Genocide’ is defined by the United
Nations)234, ascribing the deaths and deportations to the ravages of war between
the Ottoman Empire and the Western Allies. In addition, silence still reigns in
some parts of the world with regard to that first Genocide of the 20th century.235
In addition to being unknown in various places, some governments, including
the USA administration, continue to be silent about it; while successive Turkish
governments pressure other governments to join them in denial. Nonetheless,
during the past several years a dozen or so courageous Turkish figures—e.g.,
historians, Taner Akcam 236 and Halil Berktay, intellectuals and academics
Selim Deringil and Ahmet Insel, among an increasing number of other Turkish
intellectuals, etc., 237—have, at great personal risk, through their writings and
lectures outside Turkey itself, where they are persona non grata—to try to set
the record straight. “Berktay has uncovered that the Turkish government
purged many of the evidence[’] s and documents regarding the Armenian Geno-
cide found in the Turkish archives. According to him, the archives cleansing
was ‘most probably implemented by Muharrem Nuri Birgi, a former Turkish
ambassador to London and NATO, and Secretary General of the Turkish Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs.’238 Berktay almost claims that “at the time he was combing
||
233 About 200,000 women were kidnapped and violently killed during the genocide. For an
account of the layers of responsibility for the genocide, see, e.g., Muriel Mirak Weissbach,
Through the Wall of fire (Frankfurt/Main: Edition Fischer GMBH, 2009), Chapter 2, “If Not The
Turks, Then Who?” pp. 64-86.
234 For a modest contribution to the literature of Turkish denial see my “Compensation and Repa-
ration As Forms of Compensatory Justice”, Metaphilosophy, Issue 3-4, July 2006, pp. 429-448.
235 See for instance Kouymjian, Dikran, A Crime of Silence; The Armenian Genocide. (London:
Zed Books, 1985.).
236 “The Genocide of the Armenians and the Silence of the Turks,” In Dialogue Across an
International Divide: Essays Towards a Turkish Armenian Dialogue. Toronto: Zoryan Institute of
Canada, 2001.
237 Selim Deringil a “ Turkish academic and professor of history at Boghazici University,
Istanbul...is one of the few Turkish historians who openly accept the Armenian Genocide.”
http://outlookaub.com/2013/03/12/faculty -profile-selim=deringil-visiting-professor/
Ahmet Insel is a Turkish Economist and University Professor. Hambersom Aghbashian,
Turk Intaellectuals Who Recognized The Armenian Genocide, 10- Ahmet Insel, Nor Or Weekly,
Thursday, March 27, 2014, p. 9.
238 Hambersom Aghbashian, “Turk Intellectuals who Recognized The Armenian Genocide 12-
Halil Berktay,” Nor Or Weekly, April 10, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halil_Berktay.
the achives, Nuri Birgi. ‘met regularly with a mutual friend and at one point,
referring to the Armenians, ruefully confessed: ‘We really slaughtered them.’”239
The Silenced
The Turkish genocide of Armenians in Turkey, which began in 1915, was not the
first of the series of massacres of Armenians perpetuated by the government.
For example, a systematic massacre was carried out in the city of Adana in 1909.
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau later called the “sadistic orgies”240 of Turkish
massacre that include rape, torture, and even crucifixion. In “The Dance,” a
poem by the Armenian poet Siamanto, “Armenian women are burned to death
while they are forced to circle-dance…” 241 “In ‘the Cross’ a mother is forced to
watch the Turks nail her son to a cross. ‘We’ll do it to you like you did it to
Christ’.” 242 In another instance, Armenian men, women and children who had
taken refuge in a Church are burned to death. 243 Other gruesome examples re-
vealed in the newly-opened Secret Vatican Archives, “The testimonials, … de-
scribe ‘in detail, the ‘procedures of torture that the Turks used towards the Ar-
menians’. ‘For example, … there is evidence of how the soldiers of the Sublime
||
239 http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halil Berkley.
In an interview with K. Muradian, Aztag Daily, Beirut, Nov. 12, 2005, Berkley stated that “it
was clear that the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were rounded up, socially deracinated
and deported, and therefore, in the process, comprehensively uprooted and dispossessed, for
no other reason than that they were Armenians and it was very clear that simultaneously,
extra-legal secret organizers for massacres to be organized were sent to the Teskilat-1 Mahsusa,
the special organization of the Committee of the Union and Progress.” (http://www.google.com/
search?q=berktay&ie (The Specter of the Armenian Genocide Halil Berklay)
240 Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris The Armenian Genocide And America’s Response
(HarperCollins Publishers: New York, NY, 2003), p. 155.
241 Ibid.
242 Ibid. According to the autobiography of Aurora Mardiganian, a survivors of the genocide
born in a Turk “ [“after her parents, together with most of the Armenians in the town were
slaughtered by Ottoman forces”],” who, “together with many other Armenian young women
who lived in Diarbakir in Western Armenia,” describes how, “were rounded up for a forced
march toward Diyarbakir …The Turkish soldiers decided to nail the 17 girls in the group to crosses
but they miscounted and only constructed 16 crosses; she was the lucky one who was not cruci-
fied.” The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, ibid.
243 “It is stated that about 200,000 women were kidnapped or violently killed. “Panel on Geno-
cide Held in Istanbul,” The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 35, Issue 4329, p. 1.
Porte would bet on the sex of fetuses in the wombs of pregnant women before
they quartered them and with the same knife, killed the babies.’’’244
The Armenian Genocide, as in the case of the ‘later’ Holocaust and Rwanda
Genocides, in addition to murdering numerous individuals, also included the
impoverishing of a whole generation of Armenian culture by silencing many
Turkish Armenian poets, writers, artists, musicians and other intellectuals.
The silencing of the immediate victims of the genocide by death, the perpe-
trators also succeeded, in perhaps many instances, of silencing the survivors of
the massacred. In the case of the Armenian genocide, with the death of all but a
handful, if any, survivors, it is now too late to learn much about the horrific
experiences of those who, after years or decades of silence, somehow have the
emotional strength to be able to breathe in some form, way or degree, about
what their loved ones went through until they reached some kind of safety.
However, through communications with a handful of the present author’s rela-
tions whose late 19th century or early 20th century ancestors survived the geno-
cide, I am able to record the following:
The grandfather of one of my close relatives who was able to escape the
atrocities and eventually find a safe haven, never broke his silence about his
traumatic experiences, only telling his family, many years later, that as a boy he
fled from his parent’s house at the moment he witnessed the murder of his
pregnant mother by a Turkish soldier who came into their house and disem-
boweled her with his rifle’s bayonet—which he followed by killing the unborn
baby. His father must have already been taken away by the soldiers and killed,
as was the usual procedure then. How he survived and eventually found his
way to Jerusalem no one in his family found out or was told.
In another instance too, the grandfather and father of my living cousins
never broke their silence. When, after her grandfather’s death, one of his
granddaughters wanted to record what her father had passed through as he and
his father escaped from city of Marash in Anatolia, where they used to live, fi-
nally ending up in Jerusalem, the sounds that came from his throat were more
like the sounds of a man being drowned or in the throes of death. She immedi-
ately thought it wise to stop. As for her grandfather’s second wife, the only in-
formation she had later given to her family, was that she was deported from her
town of Firnus, Turkey; when as a child, she was forced to walk, along with the
other deportees from that town, all the way to Deir Zor in the Syrian Desert—
the usual way in which the Turkish authorities ethnically cleansed Armenian
||
244 “Vatican reveals unpublished Armenian genocide documents from its secret Archives,”
USA Armenian Life Weekly Issue, 1411 English Edition, April 11, 2014.
men, women and children—she lost all the toes on her feet walking (no doubt
barefoot) on the frozen ground in the dead of winter; until she was rescued by
Protestant German missionaries who had opened an orphanage.
Again, an elderly relative told me that his parents never broke their silence
about their traumatic experiences. All that he knows is that, after somehow
escaping from Turkey, they found themselves in Iraq and even Trebizond; until
finally, with his two older brothers, he ended up in an orphanage church
(whose name he never knew) somewhere in Palestine.
A cousin who wrote an account about his father’ survival and eventual
landing, with the Turkish army in then Trans-Jordan, expressed his sadness at
the fact that he and his siblings knew little about their father’s escape from the
genocide, mentioning to me that he thought that his father did confide to their
now-dead mother about it. What they did somehow know is essentially that
when, as a young boy, both of his parents were killed by the Turks, he escaped
and was somehow rescued and sheltered by a while by a Turkish family and
given work to do. Sometime later he worked for and lived with another Turkish
family. Eventually, when in his teens, he volunteered and was accepted by the
Turkish army. He was then sent with the army to Trans-Jordan, which was then
still part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Burning Tigris245, the title of one of Peter Balakian’s books dramatizes
the tragic fate of the many Armenian women and girls deportees who chose
death by drowning in the Tigris River rather than be raped and murdered by
Kurd outlaws on their death march to Deir Zor. (Among the victims were a grand
aunt of my wife’s and her two young daughters.)
The last case on the present list, described in The Black Dog of Fate246, dif-
fers in some ways from the preceding cases of total or near-total silence. It is
psychologically precipitated by his aunt Gladys discovery that John Kennedy
had been assassinated, and reacts emotionally to it saying, as her voice “was
getting louder each time she spoke:” “The world is full of crime.... Look at what
they did to Armenia.” 247 He says he was “stunned to hear his aunt’s indignation
and her language.” Balakian adds that he knew that she had been a small child
when the genocide began. But “no one had spoken about it,” and he felt that
that “might be the moment to talk.” So he asked her what she remembered—
about how she got out of Turkey, with her mother and sister Alice. His aunt
answered that she herself does not remember; that many years later it was told
||
245 New York: Basic Books, 2009.
246 Ibid., p. 182.
247 Ibid., p. 182.
to her. What she was told was that while her parents and aunts and some serv-
ants were riding back to the city, they were told that their house had been
burned down and that “everyone in the family had been killed.” Before long
they were “put on a deportation march.” Since she was then two years old and
her sister was an infant, she remembered nothing about the march.
Her nephew then asks her whether his grandmother “ever talked about that
period in her life.” The answer: “Not really—not in any specific way.” But: “in
1945 she gave a commemorative speech.” In 1940 her mother invited “all the
Armenians in the area” to the house. Since she spoke in Armenian, she herself
does not remember anything her mother said. But she remembers that “when
she finished there was silence, then awkwardness. People looking at their laps.
Then, some people weeping, some even sobbing, and then some talking… and
the evening turned into laughter and storytelling… I watched from a distance… I
don’t know, it was strange. People stayed, I think till the middle of the night.”
Balakian then asks:
Was this the first time people in your community [in the United States] talked about the
genocide?” She replies that she “imagined that most of these people had been silent for
those years.… They just wanted to be left alone to raise families, do business in peace. The
events of the past were not only too painful, they were beyond words.248
Later we learn that her mother had a nervous breakdown, became paranoid.
“The news of Pearl Harbor, the news of the war, set her off. She thought it was
happening again. Her house burned down; her family killed; death marches
into the desert. She thought the zaptieh, the Turkish military police, were com-
ing.’” 249
In footnote 243 I quoted from the autobiography of Aurora Mardiganian, a
survivor of the genocide, about some of the atrocities committed by the Turkish
authorities which she fortunately escaped. After many misadventures she wrote
her autobiography, Ravished Armenia; The Story of Aurora Mardigian, the Chris-
tian Girl, Who Survived the Great Massacres, and the book was published in the
United States in 1918. The book was eventually made a silent Hollywood film,
entitled “Ravished Armenia”, in which she herself. starred. “Just 19 by this
point, she showed evidence of her mental anguish by screaming in fear when
seeing actors in Turkish costumes, forgetting that it was a movie set. After all,
she had gone through so much trauma not long ago [including the murder of
||
248 Ibid., pp. 182-185.
249 Ibid., p. 185.
her parents?], and she was forced to reenact going through the crimes on
film.”250
There is at present a growing number of written testimonials by survivors of
the genocide. 251 We also learn that Steven Spielberg is collecting testimonials
concerning the Armenian Genocide, after having collected testimonials about
the Holocaust.252
I shall conclude this section with another quotation from The Burning Tigris:
The sultan’s response to the Armenian massacres

and the responses of the successive Turkish regimes
depict what Judith Herman in her book Trauma and
Recovery describes as criminal behavior. “Criminal
Behavior,” she notes, ‘is always defined by the
Perpetrator.’ Compulsion to ‘promote forgetting.’
‘Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line
of defense.’ ‘If that fails “the perpetrator attacks
the credibility of his victim’; ‘he tries to make sure
that no one listens,’ ‘by either blatantly denying or
rationalizing the crime.’” 253
The Jewish Holocaust
The one who is silent means something just the same

(Yiddish proverb)254
In The Silence, How Tragedy shapes talk the scholar Ruth Wajnryb, the daughter
of Holocaust survivors, describes in detail her interviews of “twenty of the chil-
dren and ten others of the Holocaust survivors,” “who had parallel experiences
of trauma and silence.”255 In the Preface she writes that since the Nazis gassed
her grandparents, “literally silencing them”, her parents survived but “were
||
250 “Scholar [Dr. Hayk Demoyan] Captures Tragedy, Miracle of Aurora Mardiganian’s Life
Story,” The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, March 22, 2014, pp. pp.1, 12.
251 Among them are Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdassarian, and Black Dog Of Fate,
A Memoir, and The Burning Tigris, by Peter Balakian, and Through the Wall of Fire by Muriel
Mirak-Weissbach, mentioned earlier.
252 “Steven Spielberg is collecting testimonials about the Armenian Genocide,” Nor Or, March
27, 2014, p. 4. From <telegram.com> Title translated from Armenian.
253 Epilogue, p. 375.
254 From the book’s Frontspiece.
255 Preface, p. xi.
silenced metaphorically.” With their death a story that was “never told”256 end-
ed. “Tragedy so devastating sweeps away everything in its path—and more,
even the capacity to represent it.”257 The home in which she grew up “was
bathed in a silence wrought by trauma. Yet because silence transmits its own
messages, it is impossible not to communicate. Meanings are constructed.
Snippets of text and fragments of allusion are calibrated in the skills of infer-
ence and versed in the language of the oblique. I became literate in the grammar
of silence.”258
In Chapter 7, “The Unspoken Text,” she considers various ways in which
the survivors she interviewed reacted to her questions about what they knew
about the Holocaust. One way in which they responded was “the active exclu-
sion from the standard discourse of Holocaust households.” The “taboo topics”
“mainly involve “losses so intense that they continue to cause great emotional
pain”.…“Sometimes all you know is that your name or one of your siblings’
names belonged to someone who was dearly loved and lost in tragic circum-
stances—beloved but unspeakable….”259
Another sort of response she found was the omission of detail. “Where pain-
ful topics were broached, key detail was often omitted, contributing to the lis-
tener’s difficulty in piecing the fragments into a coherent whole.”260
Again, she encountered what she calls “disallowed behaviors”: Their par-
ents’ conversation included “messages inside messages. These referred to disal-
lowed behaviors.”261 An example was that a survivor responded to death with
“stoicism in the face of loss.”262 “Crisis meant the suppression of emotion.”263
Later she adds: “The containment of emotion” was a major pattern264 she found
in her respondents’ interviews. The expression of nostalgia was a “major disal-
lowed behavior. … It was not an emotion that refugees fleeing trauma could
afford.”265 Later she observes that some survivors managed to achieve nostalgia,
||
256 Ibid., p. xi.
257 Ibid.
258 Ibid.
259 Ibid., p. 249.
260 Ibid., pp.249-250.
261 Ibid., p.253.
262 Ibid., p. 254.
263 Ibid.
264 Ibid.
265 Ibid., p. 257
and that survivors “who’d had a happy childhood themselves were more likely
to talk about their pre-war lives.”266
Another response she found was iconic messages, referring to “the mean-
ings embedded in certain tangible objects, certain distinctive behaviours and
attitudes, and certain formal occasions that resonate with Holocaust signifi-
cance.”267 “These are most typically part of the parental home, and include the
behaviours encountered there and the experiences shared as a family.”268
A further response was omissions: “communication that was actively ex-
cluded where text was suppressed; and then at iconic communication where the
text is of the nature of prefabricated, non-verbal built-in meaning.” “The [re-
sponse] that comes closest to pure silence was that “the absences are so absent,
the reference to the past so muted, the ancestral background to family so oblite-
rated, that the child grows up unaware even that something has been left un-
said. My interviews with three children of survivors illustrate this most aptly.”269
The Rwanda Genocide
They say my country is so beautiful that

although God may wander the world during
the day He returns at night to sleep in Rwanda
(Rwandan Proverb)270
We were wild beasts.

(One of the killers who was forgiven by the wife of the
man he killed when he asked for her forgiveness)271
It is estimated that about one million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were
massacred by the majority Hutu. The “Hutu army killed people from all walks of
||
266 Ibid., Ibid.
267 Ibid., pp. 265-266,
268 Ibid.
269 Ibid., p. 276. The entire book is worth careful reading, and is very sobering.
270 From a documentary film by Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman narrated by Rosario
Dawson. On the back jacket are the following words: “The 1991 Rwandan Genocide left the
country nearly 70% female handing Rwanda’s women an extraordinary burden and an unprec-
edented opportunity. An inspiring story of loss and redemption ‘God Sleeps in Rwanda’ cap-
tures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefining women’s roles
in Rwandan society and bringing hope to a wounded nation.”
271 On a recent television News Broadcast.
life, including priests and nuns.” “An anonymous Rwandan woman remembers
her ordeal in central Africa.” “How can I ever forget the scene where my hus-
band was massacred right in my presence. It was a nightmare. It was a night-
mare.” Rape was “a tactic of war, and, “a death sentence.” “No one was spared,
even children.”272 According to the United Nations Commission for Human
Rights two-hundred fifty thousand women were brutally raped. Rape was used
as a deliberate, systematic instrument of genocide. As a result many surviving
girls and women were infected with AIDs. After the genocide, the government
ordered every mother to be tested for AIDs. But many of the women and girls
who were raped and have AIDS are dying. A main problem has been the prohib-
itive price of the AIDs medicine. For example, one of the five women inter-
viewed in the documentary stated that, though her daughter was infected, she
could not afford the medicine.
The then-Minister of Women and Family Affairs, a woman, “instigated sys-
tematic torture and rape,” and has been indicted by both Rwanda and Tanzania
for crimes against humanity, for “instigating the systematic torture and rape.”
She is now “standing for trial charged with genocide and rape, which are prose-
cuted as international crimes.”273
If any good can come out of such evil, it did come out of the Rwandan geno-
cide, good in significant ways has now come to Rwanda. With seventy percent
of the country consisting of women, women have now become empowered,
have acquired a voice, in ways they were not used to and did not have before.
Women were supposed to stay at home, and could not, by law, inherit property.
Now women occupy important social, organizational, political, legal positions
in society. For instance, one of the five interviewed, whose husband died of
AIDs, in addition to taking care of four children, is now a full-time policewom-
an—something that had not happened in Rwandan history— and is studying
law at night to become a lawyer. One of the children is sick, but wants to be a
doctor when he grows up. However, she cannot do anything for him with her
small income, medicine for AIDs is prohibitively expensive, costing 40,000
Rwandan francs.
A young woman remembers how her father was “butchered”, and the rest of
her family was killed. So she was placed in an orphanage with her siblings until
the orphanage was closed. Now she takes care of her dwelling and her sisters,
who go to school. She thinks she’s doing a good job.
||
272 “God Sleeps in Rwanda.”
273 Ibid.
Another woman states that “all the houses in her village were destroyed”
and her mother was killed, when she was only fifteen, and hid in a swamp to
escape being killed. Now, she says, women hold “important political posi-
tions,” pointing to the fact that she is now working at a top development office”
and is “responsible for organizing the community to take care of themselves.” A
road is now being built for trade, health, etc. “She hopes to see her children go
to school and become important people.” She tries to teach that “men and
women should work together.” “Before the genocide [it was] never allowed [for]
woman to participate [in politics].” Now women are “heads of households,
business owners, mayors, politicians, legislators.” Today, she says, “we can say
we have that freedom to participate.” She adds that Rwanda is “a wounded
nation.”
The documentary from which I have drawn is a tribute to the resilience of
the human spirit and its triumph over great adversity. It celebrates the rise of
Rwandan women from near voiceless-ness, from a state of familial and societal
subjection to a triumphant empowerment in various walks of life, including the
financial, economic and political domains.274
The Rwandan genocide is importantly similar in some ways to both the Ar-
menian genocide, and the Holocaust. For as in the first case no Western Powers
intervened, to prevent or to end it. The genocide “took its course” to the horri-
ble, bitter end. In the case of the Holocaust, only after the war’s end were the
Allies able to free the survivors from the death camps. Likewise the Rwandan
Genocide continued unabated and, finally, mercifully ended. In the meanwhile
the UN and the West, including the United States, looked on and did nothing.
Similarly, the atrocities, including the “ethnic cleansing” went on unabated in
the former Yugoslavia until—belatedly— NATO’s military intervention in Koso-
vo.
Most remarkably— unlike the still-festering wounds of the two earlier geno-
cides—the Rwandans, twenty years on, have apparently succeeded in “moving
on,” as one young Rwandan man very recently said on a TV News broadcast.
That remarkable “moving on” to a very different and better present country and
society, is dramatized in a documentary made in and entitled “God Sleeps In
Rwanda.”275 In that documentary the salutary changes that the country has
||
274 The Women for Women International program has issued cards “made by Rwandan women
who participate” in the program. “Produced from banana leaves, each card is created by hand
and sold to help Rwandan women earn an income and care for their families.”
275 It is noteworthy that unlike Rwandans, many Armenians have been unable or unwilling to
“move on” from the Armenian Genocide; particularly, as I described, in light of continued
Part Two: “The Voiceless” | 155
succeeded in achieving, particularly in empowering, hence giving a growing

voice to the traditionally voiceless women into positions of importance within
the family, and power in society.
As I write, the possibility of a new genocide—this time, for example, in
South Sudan— looms large, as ethnic massacres continue unabated. So far,
however, the two sides in the conflict and power struggle have failed to agree on
a peaceful settlement of the conflict.
11.2 Part Two: “The Voiceless”

The silence of the exterminated is obvious, except whenever, in relatively rare
instances, their surviving compatriots, relatives or descendants—or, occasional-
ly, historians and scholars—“bring them back to life” by writing, making docu-
mentaries or feature films about them, and so, in a sense, “resurrect” them and
their silent voices. However, there are many groups of the living in the world
today who are or have been rendered voiceless by being stripped of their human
and other rights as persons, by forces beyond their control, or by being preyed
upon by predatory individuals or groups, or entire countries or nations. What
follows is a very brief account of some of the ways in which these unfortunate
human beings have been or still are rendered voiceless.
A major group of the silent consists of survivors of “ethnic cleansing” of 20th
century genocides and other war crimes or crimes against humanity who some-
how escaped systematic state-planned extermination of their compatriots, and
members of their families and relatives, for racial, ethnic or religious reasons.
Until about two centuries ago the silent victims of political-social-ethical
predation included the thousands upon thousands of human beings—black
African men, women and children—who were bought and sold as chattel and
shipped under the most miserable conditions to the New World to work in the
||
Turkish denial of the Genocide, hence of any resolution of the trauma of genocide by Turkish
reparation and compensation and the opening of the Turkey-Armenia border, together with
normalizations of economic and political relations between the two countries. As of the time
these words are being penned, Turkey continues to impose an economic embargo on Armenia;
in part due to Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia in relation to
Karabagh: a former part of Armenia given to Azerbaijan by Stalin, and reclaimed by Karabagh
Armenians by war with Azerbaijan. The situation has been different and much better with
respect to the Jewish people since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and Germany’s
payment of compensation. However, the status of the paintings the Nazis stole from Jewish and
other owners has yet to be resolved.
sugar cane fields as indentured slaves. Others, for example, Sudanese, Ethiopian
and Circassian slaves, under the Ottoman Empire, were transported from their
homeland to Egypt. The lives and vicissitudes of these slaves and former
slaves— the most famous of whom was the former slave Josephine Bakhita, who
became a Catholic nun and did a great deal of charity work and was canonized
in 2000, are described in detail by M. Troutt Powell in Tell This in My Memory,
Stories of Enslavement From Egypt, Sudan And The Ottoman Empire.276
Traditional slaves who, during their miserable lives, lacked a voice to pro-
test or rail against their owners’ inhumanity and the socio-economic and politi-
cal systems that exploited and were complicit in using them to the extreme of
human endurance, are now joined with slaves of another form, who dared or
dare not speak out of fear of punishment, even death. I mean sex slaves: the
sexually enslaved and exploited women, young girls, even children of both
sexes, who endure a form of enslavement that in some ways is worse than tradi-
tional slavery, and which continues unabated and with impunity around the
globe: 277 except when the fortunate among them are given voices by caring
individuals and groups, including private organizations and public agencies
that attempt to speak on their behalf and try to free them from their tragic condi-
tion. In addition to the defenseless, voiceless sex slaves, we should mention the
child soldiers, the young boys who were forced to kill as child soldiers in the
seemingly endless internecine conflict in the jungles of the Congo.
Another group of the voiceless to note is the ever-swelling number of often-
forgotten transients and refugees from the four corners of the world, who des-
perately seek, often in vain, refuge and a new identity in a foreign society and
culture, but who are frequently tossed from one place to another like pariah, if
not like refuse. Meanwhile, many groups of refugees, such as the Palestinian
and now Syrian refugees languish in squalid refugee camps strewn in neighbor-
ing Arab countries, like those whom God forsook in Dante’s Inferno; yet unlike
these lost souls, they are there through no fault of their own, having been ex-
pelled or forced to flee their homes, for fear of their lives.
||
276 Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. In her dedication, she writes: “This book is
meant to dignify the history of those who find themselves refugees”: a sentiment shared by the
present author in the composition of this chapter. For Bakhita’s life and work see Powell, Chap-
ter 6, and on pp.198ff. , “Bakhita’s Body as Slave, as Nun, and as Icon.” On p. 251, Note 35 in his
book, Bakhita: A Saint for the Third Millenium, Roberto Italo Zanini quotes Bakhita as saying:
“Mi, poverina negra, mi poverina negra!”
277 In an interview on the Charlie Rose television program, former President Jimmy Carter
gave 60 million as the probable number of sex-slaves in the world.
In the Epilogue of her earlier-mentioned book, M. Troutt Powell writes:

“Perhaps the stories of slavery presented in this book can add dignity to the
historical situation in which those refugees find themselves. At the time of this
writing, the maps of their journey may be dramatically and permanently altered
with the establishment of the world’s newest state, South Sudan. May they re-
turn home freely, wherever they decide that home exists.”278
Slaves, refugees 279 and sex slaves are kin: slaves and sex slaves are refugees
in reverse. They are forcibly taken away from their homes—often from their own
countries—and transported to strange, foreign, lands with different traditions
and cultures than their own, to slave for the pleasure and profit of evil masters
they never knew, who exploit them and treat them with savage cruelty as less
than human. In short, they are voiceless beings, shorn of all human, economic,
social and political rights as slaves, sex-slaves, or refugees. Some slaves and
sex-slaves are fortunate to escape from their enslavement, with whatever kind
of life they are able to eke out; and some refugees find refuge in generous, wel-
coming countries such in some parts of the European Union or in Canada or the
USA. But numerous slaves, sex-slaves and refugees from war, revolution, terror-
ism, “ethnic cleansing,” genocide, never find a real home and remain either
unwanted wanderers, Heimatlos, forced out from one place to another, from one
country to another, often for the rest of their lives. According to the Office of the
UN HCFR there are “nearly 23 million refugees in the world.… Eighty percent of
refugees are women and children, and hundreds of thousands of them go to
sleep hungry every night.”280 The 23 million refugees include, among numerous
others, the 750 thousand Palestinian (and now, the continually swelling Syrian
refugees) who fled from their homes during the Palestine Arab-Jewish and Brit-
ish conflict resulting in the creation of the State of Israel in 1948; many of
whom, as I said earlier, still languish with their families and descendants in
poverty, in congested, unsanitary refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries,
with no better end on sight and no hope for return to their original homes.
Shockingly, the United Nations Human Rights Charter does not include or
acknowledge—as it ought to— a human right of refuge to refugees; despite the
fact that during and after World War II the problem of war refugees had already
||
278 Sadly, less than two years after the book’s publication, the brand-new State of South
Sudan is in the midst of seemingly endless ethnic conflict and massacre that have the makings
of a genocide.
279 According to The UN Refugee Agency “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee
his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.” http://www.unrefugees.org/sitec.
280 www.google.com.
become a serious human and humanitarian problem. But it is good to know

that, according to it, the United Nations High Commission For Refugees has
helped over 50 million refugees to restart lives. The Commission is the United
Nations agency mandated to ensure respect for the rights of people.
Traditional Slavery
Until about two centuries ago, the silent victims of political-social-ethical preda-
tion included the thousands upon thousands of human beings—black African
men, women and children—who were bought and sold as chattel and shipped
under the most miserable conditions to the New World to work in the sugar cane
fields as slaves. Others, in addition to Egyptian slaves, Sudanese, Ethiopian and
Circassian men and women, were transported from their homeland to Cairo as
slaves during the Ottoman Empire.281 Fortunately, as Troutt writes, some of the
latter slaves were freed.282
Modern Slavery
Although slavery in the traditional sense may have largely or wholly disap-
peared in the world, various forms modern slavery— preeminently sex slavery of
various sorts including sex tourism, is, as mentioned earlier, a thriving business
across the globe.
Another form of modern slavery is detailed in a recent internet article by
Walk Free.Org, “a movement of people everywhere fighting to end one of the
world’s greatest evils: “Modern slavery,” entitled “Modern Slavery with your
breakfast.” The article points out that “palm oil is a major source of modern
slavery. Recent reports by journalists and workers’ rights organizations have
documented widespread child labour, debt-bondage, and workers trapped on
palm oil palm plantations by threat of violence.”283 In a still more recent internet
article Walk Free.Org speaks against “forced labor in cotton fields,” pointing out
that “in Uzbekistan every year over a million children and adults are forced into
the cotton fields by their government to meet daily picking quotas during the
harvest season. Doctors are dragged from their hospitals. Some colleges stand
||
281 For a detailed history see Ever M. Troutt Powel.
282 For example in Chapter 3 “How Salim C. Wilson Wrote His Own Enslavement.”
283 http://www.laborrights.org/publications/empty-assurances-human-cost -palm-oil.
empty as teachers and students are forced to work the fields.” “And it doesn’t
end there. In Uzbekistan’s last cotton harvest, eleven citizens forced to pick
cotton lost their lives…including a 63-year old farmer who died of a heart attack
after being beaten by an official of the Department of Internal Affairs.”284
…Children and adults subjected to this state-orchestrated system of modern slavery miss
out on education or their wages, and many citizens are threatened and beaten.285
A further form or example of modern slavery, also detailed by Walk Free.org286 is

the enslavement of the crew members on fishing vessels around the world. I
quote: “The vessels were a floating freezer… absolutely appalling conditions
just like a slum… there are definitely human rights abuses out there. They are
slave ships.”287 The article mentions “stories of appalling cases of modern slav-
ery aboard fishing vessels around the world….Reports hit the headlines in 2012
that crew members were toiling as slaves aboard and forced to work 30-hour
shifts. 288 But government action has been slow.” “Crew members are currently
not assured the same labor protections as other workers in New Zealand. Right
now crew are fighting for tens of millions of dollars in owed wages.”289 “The
horror stories from New Zealand are a snapshot of how the US $ 85 billion glob-
al fishing industry profits from the labour of people forced to work without pay,
often under threat of violence.”290
The Untouchables of India are another group of the world’s voiceless. In The
Untouchables, Subordination, Poverty And The State In Modern India.291 Oliver
Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany define the word ‘Untouchable’ as follows:
“The word ‘Untouchable’ is highly evocative of a condition which we see as one
of the more pernicious forms of subordination to be encountered anywhere. It’s
very evocations—the idea that some people are as degraded as to be physically
||
284 http://www.cottoncampaign.org/we-content/uploads/2013/11.
285 Regarding the company Daewoo, “which has continued doing business in Uzbekistan
even after publicly acknowledging that the Uzbek government uses forced labour to produce
the cotton its buys and processes,” see: http: // business-humanrights.org/media/documents/
company responses/Daewoo-re-ilrf-petition-11-06-13.pdf.
286 “Walk Free is a movement of people everywhere, fighting to end one of the world’s great-
est evils: Modern slavery.”
287 http//joeg.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/20`13/09/23/jeg.lbt027.full. Bold letters in original.
288 http://businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-23/thefishing-industrys-cruelest-catch
289 http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9943488/Fishing-pay-fight-damaging-NZ
290 The New Zealand Government “has prepared legislation which would protect workers at
sea by bringing these shipsunder New Zealand labour law. “
and morally ‘untouchable’—has established the word as clearly the best known
of all the terms.”292
In the following discussion of the Untouchables’ voiceless-ness, I shall con-
centrate on their general condition in India at present. “From the late nine-
teenth century to 1930, is the period in which their lives began to change signif-
icantly;”293 so that “such despised people … are [now] standing up and
demanding their rights. Old-fashioned ritual Untouchability may not be [now]
an issue, but clearly a particularly pernicious ‘casterism’ is at work here.”294
“Not until Gandhi’s campaigns of the 1930’s that the huge Untouchable popula-
tion of the Hindu-speaking heartland—the present Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pra-
desh—was touched to any extent by the great ferment.” 295
At the other extreme [at the lowest extreme] among the Untouchables were the slaves, in-
cluding the notorious example of the Pulayas of Travancare, slavery was not an isolated
phenomenon. It was widespread throughout the south, and had been so for centuries
(Kumar 1992: 47-8). … In 1843 the Parliament at Westminster passed the Abolition of Slav-
ery Act for India (Act V of 1843), but the ideological boldness of this act—… failed to be
matched by the diligence of its enforcement.296
I shall conclude with an extract from Salman Rushdie’s short story, “The Shelter
of The World,”297 which provides a telling allegory about people silenced by
autocratic rulers. It tells the story of Akbar the Great, who has decreed that,
during his stays his people must be completely silent. Only when he is away on
his frequent battles and wars can they break the silence, can speak. Among
other things, the story illustrates some of the conundrums facing individuals or
groups who become voiceless and, therefore, silent, because they have no rights
whatever and are constantly in fear of retribution or punishment.
When the Emperor came home from the wars the command of silence felt, in the mud city,
like a suffocation. Chickens had to be gagged at the moment of their slaughter for fear of
Disturbing the repose of the king of kings. A cart wheel that squeaked could earn the cart’s
driver the last lash, and if he cried out under the whip the penalty could be even more se-
vere. Women giving birth withheld their cries, and the dumb show of the marketplace was
a kind of madness. ‘When the King is here, we are all made mad,’ the people said, adding
hastily. For there were spies and traitors everywhere, ‘for joy.’ The mud city loved its Em-
||
292 Ibid., p. 5.
293 Ibid., p. 80.
294 Ibid., p. 43..
295 Ibid., p, 81.
296 Ibid., p. 82.
297 The New Yorker, February 25, 2008, pp. 64-71.
peror, it insisted that it did, insisted. Without words, for words were made of that forbid-
den fabric, sound. When the Emperor set forth once more on his campaigns—his never-
ending …—then the prison of silence was unlocked. And trumpets burst out, and cheers,
and people were finally able to tell one another everything they had been obliged to keep
unsaid for months on end. 298
||
298 Ibid., pp. 64-65.
|
Part IV: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life
12 Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life
In earlier chapter we encountered a variety of forms of silence’s expressive and
communicative powers. But there is no realm in which silence has greater pow-
er to express and communicate a human being’s deepest experiences and
yearnings than in the spiritual/religious spheres. In these spheres the power of
silence greatly exceeds the power of speech, of language: in some instances
even the most expressive poetic language. As we have seen, human silence is
often suffused with feeling or emotion, giving it an additional force or power to
express and communicate. Thus speech is frequently informed by deep feelings
of caring, concern and love, particularly in times of illness, crisis or tragedy. But
speech is frequently also a means for the expression and communication of
ideas shorn of feeling or emotion; as in science and philosophy, or in the coin-
age of business and commerce. In the latter areas, at least in the West, feeling or
emotion is normally, though not always, out of place.
In the spiritual/religious sphere silence, which in everyday life, like body
language, is normally ancillary to speech, acquires and demonstrates as I said,
its greatest powers and depth of meanings. That, as we saw in the preceding
chapters, is true both in everyday human life and relationships; in the various
forms and genres of art; and in ethical and political life. But nowhere, perhaps
not even in art, can silence be more eloquent and powerful and possess greater
depth of meaning than in the spiritual/religious life. A striking example is pro-
vided by Christopher Nugent in Mysticism, Death and Dying,299 in a story “from
the charming collection of stories known as The Little Flowers of St. Francis….
The story concerns Brother Giles, a favorite of Francis, and St. Louis, King of
France, both of whom were something of legends in their own time. The story
relates how St. Louis was journeying through Italy, determined to have a meet-
ing with Giles, whom he had never met. It goes on to tell how Brother Giles was
called from his cell and ran to the gate, whereupon:
Without asking any questions, though neither had ever seen the other, both of them hast-
ed to embrace each other, kneeling together very devoutly and exchanging an affectionate
kiss, as though they had been intimate friends for a long time. Despite all this, they did
not say anything to each other, but they remained in that embrace, with those gestures of
loving friendship, in silence. And after they had stayed that way for a long time without
saying a word, they separated. And St. Louis continued on his journey, and Brother Giles
went back to his cell. Giles, questioned by the friars why he had passed up the opportunity
||
299 Albany, NY: State University Of New York press, 1994.
166 | Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life
to speak to such a great king, responded: Dear brothers, … By God’s grace we looked into
each other’s hearts, and whatever he thought of saying to me or I to him, we heard with-
out sound made by lips and tongue even better than if we had spoken with our lips—and
with great consolation. . . .Because of the defect of human language, which cannot clearly
express the secret mysteries of God except by mystic symbols, that conversation would
have saddened rather than consoled us. And so you should know for sure that the King
departed marvelously consoled.300
The writer comments that “Language was simply not equal to the occasion … No
doubt we have all, on special occasion, experienced something of the more or
less instinctive turn of these saints to silence. Their silent embrace, resonating
with meaning, is a telling metaphor for negative theology.”301
This directly leads us to mysticism, which, in Western religious life and
thought, consists of two main stages: the via negativa, the first, “negative” stage
of the soul’s mystical ascent to the divine, which is followed by the via positiva,
that culminates in “union” with the divine.
12.1 The mystic’s spiritual ascent to the divine

The beauty of the moth is according to the measure of
the candle; after all, are you not a moth of this light—living candle?”
(Jalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī)302
You are the water; I am a stream; how should I seek to join you?
The stream has no luster if you do not open the water.
(Jalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī)303
In his Preface to Roy Campbell’s translation of the Poems of St. John of The
Cross,304 M.C. D’Arcy, S.J. writes about mystical experience thus:
Mystical experience … is attained only by the denial of all that we commonly call experi-
ence. A new world is discovered which is so different from our familiar one that all our
words drawn from our ordinary and familiar experience fail to describe it. They would
seem bound in fact to give a wrong impression, as they make us think of what we know
instead of this new unknown. In a sense, undoubtedly, mystical experience is ineffable: it
||
300 Ibid., pp. 43-44.
301 Ibid., p. 44.
302 Mystical Poems of Rumi 2 , # 335, translated by A. J. Arberry (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press), p. 101.
303 Ibid., # 333, p. 99.
304 New York: The Universal Library, Drosset & Dunlap, 1967.
The mystic’s spiritual ascent to the divine | 167
would not be that experience if the words used to tell of it were common to it and what we
already know.305
Speaking of St. John of the Cross’ mystical love songs he writes: “To appreciate
intelligently the songs of a mystic like St. John of the Cross it is essential to
grasp the nature of true mysticism… Mystical love cannot even begin until the
emotions we are thinking of have been hushed and put to sleep.”306
In his commentaries on his poems, [St. John] explains how with the grace of
God those who are drawn to contemplation may experience the presence of
God… The way, however, is exceedingly arduous, so arduous, in fact, as to terri-
fy all except the bravest of lovers. It comes to this, that we must surrender all
that is dearest to us in the enjoyment of the senses and pass through a dark
night in which we live without their help and comfort. Then when this is ac-
complished we have to sacrifice the prerogative of our way of thinking and will-
ing and undergo another still darker night in which we have deprived ourselves
of all the supports which are familiar to us and make us self-sufficient. This is a
kind of death, the making nothing of all that we are to ourselves; but the genu-
ine mystic tells us that when all has been strained away our emptiness will be
filled with a new presence: our uncovered soul will receive the contact of divine
love, and a new circuit of love will begin, when the soul is passive to an inde-
scribable love which is given to it. 307
In Chapter 7 we met passages from St. John of the Cross’ mystical poetry. A
few additional passages follow:
||
305 Ibid., p. 4.
306 Ibid., p. 5.
307 Ibid., p. 6.
vi
Other verses with a divine meaning

by the same author
Not without hope did I ascend

Upon an amorous quest to fly
And up I soared so high, so high,
I seized my quarry in the end.
.........................
The more I rose into the height
More dazzled, blind, and lost I spun.
The greatest conquest ever won
I won in blindness, like the night.
Because love urged me on my way
I gave that mad, blind, reckless leap
That soared me up so high and steep
That in the end I seized my prey.
.........................
By such strange means did I sustain
A thousand starry flights in one,
Since hope of Heaven yet by none
Was ever truly hoped in vain.
Only by hope I won my way
Nor did my hope my aim belie,
Since I soared up so high, so high,
That in the end I seized my prey. 308
Walter Stace describes what he calls the mystical consciousness as follows:
…The mystical consciousness is destitute of any sensations

at all. Nor does it contain any concepts or thoughts. …This
is the reason why mystics always say that their experiences
are ‘ineffable.’ All words in all languages are the products
of our sensory-intellectual consciousness and express or
describe its elements or some combination of them. But as
these elements… are not found in the mystical consciousness,
it is felt to be impossible to describe it in any words whatever.309
||
308 The Poems of St. John of The Cross, translated by Roy Campbell (New York: The Universal
Library Grosset & Dunlap, 1067), pp. 39, 41.
309 “What Is Mysticism?” Philosophy, An Introductory Reader, Paula Rotherberg Struhl and
Karsten J. Struhl, eds. (New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1972), p. 238.
He observes that “although mystical experiences may in certain respects have

different characteristics in different parts of the world, in different ages, and in
different cultures, there are nevertheless a number of fundamental common
characteristics. … The agreements are more basic and important, the differences
more superficial and relatively less important.”310
The most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical expe-
riences agree... is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in
all things, a oneness or a One to which neither sense nor the reason can penetrate. In other
words, it entirely transcends our sensory-intellectual consciousness.311
He observes that
there appear to be two main distinguishable types of mystical experience, both of which
may be found in the higher cultures. One may be called [a] extrovertive mystical experi-
ence, the other [b] introvertive mystical experience. Both are apprehensions of the One,
but they reach it in different ways. The extrovertive way looks outward and through the
physical senses into the external world and finds the One there. The introvertive way turns
inward, introspectively, and finds the One at the bottom of the self, at the bottom of the
human personality. The latter far outweighs the former in importance both in the history
of mysticism and in the history of human thought generally.312
And so on.
The extrovertive mystic sees [the everyday sensory “world of trees and hills
and tables…”] transfigured in such manner that the Unity shines through
them.” Stace quotes Meister Eckhart:
Here [’i.e., in this experience] all blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One...
When is a man in mere understanding? When he sees one thing separated from another.
And when is he above mere understanding? When he sees all in all, then a man stands
above mere understanding.313
It is noteworthy that though mystics everywhere maintain that the mystical

experience is ineffable, is beyond all thought, hence all expression, all lan-
guage, they share a seemingly irresistible impulse somehow to “declare,” or, at
least, obliquely “hint,” analogically or symbolically—and often paradoxically—
in terms of tender human love, in some of the greatest prose or poetry ever writ-
||
310 Ibid., p. 239.
311 Ibid., pp. 239-240. Italics in original.
312 Stace, op cit., p. 240.
313 Ibid., p. 241.
ten, at the soul’s “union” with the divine. Witness, among others, the sublime
mystical poetry of St. John of the Cross, of the Persian Sufis Rumi, Jāmī and
Ansari, which I shall illustrate with the following few examples.
In The Lawa’ih, or “Flashes of Light,” Jāmī writes:
Believe me, I am naught—yea less than naught.

By naught and less than naught what can be taught?
I tell the mysteries of truth, but know

Naught save the telling to this task I brought.
.........................
With men of light I sought these pearls to string,

The drift of mystics’ sayings forth to bring. 314
The following excerpt from Thou Movest Under All The Forms Of Truth illustrates
the way Jāmī strives to “describe” the “veiled” God:
O Thou, whose memory quickens lovers’ souls,

Whose fount of joy renews the lover’s tongue,
Thy shadow falls across the world, and they
Bow down to it; and of the rich in beauty
Thou art the riches that makes lovers mad.
.........................
.........................
. . . . . . . . . . . .Time it is
To unfold Thy perfect beauty. I would be
Thy lover, and Thine only—I, mine eyes
Seal’d in the light of Thee to all but Thee,
.........................
.........................
Look whence I will, still nothing I discern
But Thee in all the universe.315
||
314 F. Hadland Davis, Wisdom of the East, The Persian Mystics, Jāmī (London: John Murray,
1918), pp. 25-26.
315 Ibid., pp. 41-42.
And,
The Divine Union
Whisper’d one to Wámík, “O thou

Victim of the wound of Azra,
What is it like, that a shadow
Movest thou about in silence
Meditating night and day?”
Wāmik answer’d, . . .
.........................
.........................
All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the wound of absence;
And whoever in Love’s city
Enters, finds out but room for One,
And but in Oneness Union.316
Jāmī advocates, as others have done before him, the destruction of self in order to gain
knowledge of Very Being. ‘Until He mingles Himself with thy soul, and thine own individ-
ual existence passes out of thy sight.’317
In Abdullah Ansari Of Heart, An Early Sufi Master,318 A.G. Ravan Farhadi tells us
that in his “Hundred Grounds” Ansari wrote a didactic treatise on Sufism in
which he distinguishes no less than a thousand stages which are “stages…
through which the wayfarers are going toward God. The servant is either being
transferred, grade by grade..., and he reaches the acceptance and proximity of...
God the Most Exalted, or he himself proceeds station by station… up to the last
station ‘the station which is for him the stage… of proximity…, That proximity,
to where he has travelled is for him a station…; where he is held is a stage…,
This is like (the case of) the angels in the heavens (who say):
There is none of us but has an assigned place,… and, they seek the means of access to
their Lord, whoever of them will be nearest… Each of these thousand stages is a station to
the wayfarer and stage to the dweller…319
Of the thousand stages what is most significant for us are the last three
Grounds: Ground 98. (“Direct Observation”); Ground 99. “Annihilation”; and
||
316 The Persian Mystics (London: John Murray, 1918), pp. 49-50.
317 Ibid., pp. 26-27.
318 Church Road, Richmond: St. John’s Studios, 1996.
319 Ibid., p. 61.
Ground 100. “Subsistence.” “Ground 98 has three aspects, of which the third (3)
is (knowing that) He is not far from those who resolve… (…to reach to Him). He
is not missing to those who (are) devoutly pursuing (…Him).” 320
Ground 99. “Annihilation”
Annihilation is:
annihilation of the seeking in the Found,
annihilation of the knowing in the Known,
annihilation of the seeing in the Seen.
.........................
.........................
Therefore,
all except Him are non-existent …”

however (they are) existing by means of Him …
so all existence is His…
The rain drop reached the sea and found therein its
mellowing,
Just as the star was effaced by the daylight.
Whoever reached his Lord and Master… has
attained his true ‘self’.”321
Ground 100. “Subsistence.”
In this state “attachments… are severed,

secondary causes… are destroyed, (and)
conventions and norms … are nullified.
Limits… are shattered, understandings… are
wrecked, (and) histories… are obliterated. Now
These Hundred Grounds are all absorbed…
in the Ground of Love….322
Here is a sampling of lines of poetry further illustrating Persian mysticism:
Jalāl-ad-Dīn Rūmī
At the end of the thread of union with God is the

Mount of Sinai which cannot endure this light for a
||
320 Ibid., pp. 70-71.
321 Ibid., p. 71.
322 Ibid., pp. 71-72.
single moment. If you were to knot together a hundred

universal reasons, there would be no ladder for this tall
roof;
It I utter a sign of that signless one, the signs of all true
would be prostrated. This word has become for you a
present from that light which transcends the reach of
words.
Words have become a belt for Shams-e Tabriz; come,
fasten it on, if you have a waist.323
And,
.........................
If your desire from faith is security, seek your security in
seclusion.
What is the place of seclusion? The house of the heart;
Become habituated to dwell in the heart;
.........................
Be silent, and practice the art of silence; let go all artful
bragging;
For the heart is the place of faith, there in the heart hold fast to
faithfulness.
And,
.........................
Shall not children rise up white of hair at the
resurrection?
But your resurrection has turned the old men’s hair
black.
Since you bring the dead to life and make the old men young,
I have fallen silent, and occupy myself with prayer.324
||
323 Mystical Poems of Rumi 2, translated by A. J. Arberry (Chicago and London: The University
of Chicago Press), # 339, p. 103.
324 Ibid.
Jāmī, once again:
Believe me, I am naught—yea, less than naught,

By naught and less than naught what can be taught?325
12.2 Mysticism in Buddhism

Hindu and Buddhist mystics generally insist that the idea that the mystical
experience is an “apprehension of the Unity” is “incorrect since it supposes a
division between subject and object. We should rather say that the experience is
the One.” 326
“The aim of Buddhist “yogic concentration... and of the different stages of
the ecstacies attained thereby,” David J. Kalupahana writes in Buddhist Philoso-
phy, A Historical Analysis,327 “is the gradual elimination of sense impressions
together with the defiling impulses, such as greed, which are associated with
them. The process of meditation (jhana), according to the later Buddhist manu-
als, begins with concentration on some sense stimulus such as a circle of light
red sand, or a circle of blue flowers, or even an image of the Buddha.” The first
stage is realized by the temporary suspension of “unwholesome tendencies”; for
example, “desire,” ‘ill-will,’ laziness and “torpor, excitedness and perplexity.”
Then one is able to achieve detachment from these bad tendencies and directs
“all one’s thoughts” to the particular object of meditation chosen.328
In the third stage one acquires a “unified, peaceful, and confident attitude.”
The latter, and the elimination of “discursive thinking” results in a sense of
“elation and rapturous delight.” But the former hinders “peace of mind,” and
has to be transcended. That is realized in the fourth stages. In the latter “jhana,”
one is no longer aware of “ease and dis-ease, well-fare and ill-fare, elation and
dejection, promotion and hindrance.” The mind becomes “supple and recep-
tive” and can dwell either on developing the “higher stages of meditation,” the
“four ‘formless’ (arupta) jhanas,” or “extrasensory perception or knowledge
(abhinna).”
In the first of these “formless” (arupta)” or higher jhanas,” everything is
perceived as “’boundless space’ (annantakasa). In the second, “boundless
space” is seen as “mere consciousness” (vinnana) of space.” In the stage that
||
325 The Persian Mystics – Jāmī, op cit., p.54.
326 Ibid.
327 Honolulu, Hawaii: The University Press of Hawaii, 1976.
328 Ibid., p. 6.
Prayer | 175
follows one becomes aware that “consciousness” is only “emptiness” (literally

‘nothing’ (akinci). In the last stage one reaches a state in which one “relinquish-
es the act that grasped the ‘emptiness’” and arrives at the point “where there is
‘neither perception nor nonperception’ (nevasannanasanna).”329
The author states that the “Buddha… claims that he had attained the last
two stages…. He maintains that he … attained a stage of ‘cessation of perception
and feeling’…”330
Describing this psychic stage in Western terminology, Conze says:
Outwardly this state appears as one of coma. Motion, speech and thought are absent…
Even the unconscious impulses are said to be asleep. Inwardly, it seems to correspond to
what other mystical traditions knew as the ineffable awareness of Naked Contemplation, a
naked intent stretching into Reality the union of nothing with nothing, or of the One with
the One a dwelling in the Divine Abyss, or the Desert of the Godhead.331
12.3 Visions
Like the mystical experience, religious/spiritual visions are frequently experi-
enced in the silent depths of the religious visionary’s soul; and like it he or she
strives to describe—or at least hint at—the experience in metaphor, symbol,
analogy or allegory. For Christians the most famous example that comes to
mind is Saul’s vision on the way to Damascus, which resulted into his conver-
sion as Paul. Another, modern, example is Blaise Pascal’s vision of what he
claimed was Jesus, which he expressed in snatches of words thus: “Certainly,
certainly, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. My God
and your God.”332
12.4 Prayer
Vocal prayer in places of worship is a communal act in the individuals’ relation-
ship to one another and to the deity. Silent prayer, on the other hand, is inti-
mate, personal, directly between the individual and the deity, unmediated by
the particular religious institution to which he or she may or may not belong.
||
329 Ibid., pp. 6-7.
330 Ibid., p. 7.
331 Ibid. Quoted from Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (New York:
Harper & Row, 1963), p. 101.
332 John Meacham, “Religion,” Newsweek, April 9, 2007, p. 55.
Prayer, which even agnostics or unbelievers may sometimes resort to during

personal crises or tragedy is, minimally, a way of summoning one’s inner re-
sources but for the believer a private way of reaching to—pleading, requesting,
thanking—his God or whatever divinity or divinities one happens to believe in.
It is an intimate private communion in a way that prayer aloud in church,
mosque or temple cannot be.
St. Teresa of Jesus (of Avila) 333 writes about what she calls four degrees of
prayer. In the “second degree of prayer” “… the Lord grants the soul experience
of more special [supernatural] consolations” than in the first degree of prayer.
In the second degree of prayer one’s state “is a recollecting of the faculties with-
in the soul, so that its fruition of that contentment [of the soul] may be of greater
delight [than in the first degree]. But the faculties are not lost, nor do they sleep.
The will alone is occupied, in such a way that, without knowing how, it be-
comes captive. It allows itself to be imprisoned by God, …”334 In the fourth de-
gree of prayer St. Teresa describes, in the translator’s words, “the great dignity
conferred by the Lord upon the soul in this state….This lofty state, which it is pos-
sible to attain on earth, …by the Lord’s goodness.335
Describing this state, St. Teresa writes: “In this state of prayer … there is no
feeling, but only rejoicing, unaccompanied by any understanding of the thing in
which the soul is rejoicing... In this rejoicing all the senses are occupied, … In
this state the soul’s rejoicing is beyond comparison greater [than in the previous
three states], and yet can be much less effectively expressed, because there is no
power left in the body, neither has the soul any power, to communicate its re-
joicing.”336 And so on.
In Mysticism, Death and Dying337 Christopher Nugent writes about prayer:
The forms of our prayer life…freely correspond to the forms of the heart’s life. That is, the
evolution of prayer would seem kindred to the human condition in what is likely to be its
personal evolution of love… The first stage, with its conventional if heightened use of lan-
guage, can correspond to discursive prayer; the second, more to systematic meditation—
unconventional if not incantatory repetition of language; and third, to contemplation—
||
333 Complete Works Of St. Teresa Of Jesus, Volume I, Translated And Edited By E. Allison
Peers, from The Critical Edition of P. Silverio De Santa Teresa, C.D. (London: Sheed And Ward,
1973.
334 Ibid., p. 83.
335 Ibid., p. 105 top. Italics in original.
336 Ibid.
337 Christopher Nugent, Mysticism, Death and Dying ([n.p.]: State University Of New York
Press, 1994).
Christian Monastic Orders & Silence | 177
more translinguistic, mysterious and diffused. Here nothing need be prayer for everything
is prayer.
About “the centering prayer”:
Advocates of the centering prayer would distance us, in our practice, from the traditional
‘visual aids,’… and the exercise of the imagination because of the experience of God ex-
ceeds the imagination… They [the advocates of the centering prayer] would take us be-
yond every image or reflection for, as Fr. Keating says, reflection is not a reality but a pho-
tograph of a reality. They can take us to, as the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas, characterized
prayer, ‘the simple enjoyment of the truth—in silence. And as Eckhart tells us, ‘In all the
world there is nothing so much like God as stillness’.”338And, “Our very breath can be
prayer, a most accessible way of praying ceaselessly… Prayer can be practice for death,
and in death, as we exhale our last, we may be inhaled by God. That is, we may experi-
ence a species of “absorption”.
With this, the counterpoint of prayer is harmonized into our song of St. Augustine. If all
were silent, what would we hear? ‘Enter into Thy Master’s joy’.339
12.5 Christian Monastic Orders & Silence

In an article by Michael Schulman in the April 17, 2007 New Yorker entitled SUR-
PRISE HIT we find the following interesting description relevant to our topic:
It can be hard to find a quiet spot to think in this town [New York], and movie theatres
generally don’t top the list. Lately, however, Film Forum has emerged as an oasis of si-
lence, owing to the runaway success of a nearly three-hour long documentary, by the
German Filmmaker Philip Groening, about Carthusian monks, titled “Into Great Silence.”
Groening spent five months at the Grande Chartreuse, a Monastery in the French Alps. Be-
cause Carthusians obey a rule against Speaking (apart from chants, meetings with superi-
ors, a few hours of casual convention every Monday, and emergencies), interviews were
out of the question. Most of the film consists of wordless shots of monks being monks—
watering their gardens, preparing meals, praying in solitude, praying in groups.340
||
338 Ibid., pp. 64-65.
339 Ibid., p. 65.
340 Ibid., p. 52.
12.6 The Silence of Death

On The Last Long Road
When I Fall And
Fail To Rise
I’ll Bed With Flowers341
(sora)
It They Ask For Me

Say: He Had Some
Business
In Another World342
(sokan)
The silence of death is probably the most tantalizing and agonizing form of
silence in human existence, because of the ambiguity of its meaning or mean-
ings for those who are left behind. For the silence of the deceased means either
that death is “the be and end of life” or that it is not: that the deceased continue
to exist in some unknown and perhaps unknowable form or fashion but cannot
communicate with the living.
In The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy provides a marvelous description of
Ivan’s body enveloped by the inscrutable silence of death. He writes:
The body lay, as the dead invariably do, in a peculiarly heavy manner, with its rigid limbs
sunk into the bedding of the coffin and its head eternally bowed on the pillow, exhibiting,
as do all dead bodies, a yellow waxen forehead (with bald patches gleaming on the sunk-
en temples), the protruding nose beneath seeming to press down against the upper lip.
…as with all dead men, his face had acquired an expression of greater beauty—above all,
of greater significance—than it had in life.343
Its expression implied that what needed to be done had been done and done properly.
Moreover, there was in this expression a reproach or a reminder to the living.344
The “reminder to the living” that all human beings are, in Heidegger’s pregnant
phrase, “beings unto death.” Beings who despite that inescapable fact could
||
341 Cherry Blossoms, Japanese Haiku Series Three (Mount Vernon, New York: The Peter Pauper
Press), [n.d.].
342 The Four Seasons, Japanese Haiku Second Series (Mount Vernon, New York: The Peter
Pauper Press), [n.d.].
343 Translated by Lynn Solotaroff, Introduction by Ronald Blythe (New York, London: A
Bantam Classic), pp. 39-40.
344 Ibid., p. 40.
The Silence of Death | 179
never definitely know whether anything lies beyond the silence of their death. In
that sense the silence of death is an endless, eternal silence. True, stories—and
putative evidence—for the existence of ghosts or disembodied spirits abound;
and these putative occult beings from beyond the veil are reputed not only to
occasionally appear to the living but also sometimes to break their usual si-
lence. But their reality is just as much a mystery as the mystery of death –and of
its silence—itself. Even when ghosts utter various sorts of noises or sounds, they
certainly fail to tell us “where” they are or “where” they are supposed to be
“coming from.” They do not seem to throw any light on death’s mystery. Popu-
lar opinion has it, I think, that they are the spirits of those who in this life had
met violent or tragic deaths, and so are unable to free themselves form this
world and find eternal rest. Note, for instance, the famous scene between Ham-
let and the ghost of his murdered father in Act I of Hamlet. But whether that
belief is true is also a mystery.
Near-death experiences are not, strictly, experiences of individuals who
have actually died but somehow “returned” from the dead; though those who
have had near-death experiences appear to believe that they had a glimpse of a
life beyond this, at the end of a “dark tunnel” they traverse.
Hamlet’s immortal “To be or not to be” soliloquy, cited in an earlier Chapter
magnificently sums up the eternal mystery of death.
Concerning one’s own death Ronald Blythe writes In the Introduction to The
Death of Ivan Ilych:
We too [“like during the century when Tolstoy was writing”] are anxious to play the whole
subject down and discourage morbidity. It’s all best left unsaid, unfelt now for as long as
possible, and, with the help of our last-minute drugs, forever, if we are lucky. Don’t look,
it is death, is what we are told now. Call in the people who deal with that kind of thing;
there will be terminal and disposal problems. Best leave it to the experts.345
Further, “Religious people will talk glibly of their belief in resurrection to ex-
cuse this disregard [mourning customs in the West have been reduced to the
minimum in order that ‘life may go on’], but as Paul Tournier, a real Christian
observes: ‘Resurrection does not do away with death. It follows it. I cannot min-
imize death because I believe in resurrection.’”346
||
345 Introduction, p. 14.
346 Ibid.
12.7 Silence in Grief & Mourning

In “The Grieving Process Examined,” Reader letter, Newsweek, June 11, 2007,
pp. 17-18, Rabbi Julie Hilton Danan, Chico, California, wrote in relation to “My
Turn” article in the May 28, 2007 issue of Newsweek:
I was once again filled with gratitude for the ancient wisdom
of the Jewish tradition, which provides a structured framework
for grief. Mourners stay at home for a week, while members of
the community come to comfort them. Comforters are instructed
to remain silent until the mourner speaks and to follow his or her
emotional cues. A full array of customs and traditions supports
the mourner from the death and through the stages of grief, and
makes remembrance a part of nearly every holiday season.
13 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the
Spiritual/Religious Life – I
So far in this book we have been concerned with the uses of silence in the literal
sense of the word, as the absence of sound or of speech. However, as I observed
in the Introduction, the word ‘silence,’ like other general names, is sometimes
used—particularly in religious contexts, especially in relation to the Divine—
metaphorically or symbolically, and perhaps allegorically or analogically.
13.1 “The Silence of God”

The expression ‘Silence/Hiddenness of God’ is used by religious scholars to
refer, for the theist, to God’s “silence” or “hiddenness” in the sense of His being
absent from the modern world, His not “manifesting” Himself to his creatures.
Here ‘silence’ is used metaphorically, as opposed to the literal use of the word in
the rest of this book except chapter 14. Another way of looking at the matter is
that the concept of silence symbolizes either the absence of all forms of His
revelation of Himself or communication with the world; in sharp contrast to
e.g., His revelation of himself to the pious: as in the case of Moses, performing
miracles such as the miracle of the virgin Spring in Bergman’s The Virgin Spring,
or Crist’s raising of Lazarus from the dead; or punishing evil-doers as for exam-
ple in the case of Sodom and Gomorra.
For the atheist, in contrast to the foregoing, the “silence” is tantamount to,
and evidence for, God’s nonexistence—not His putative “hiddenness” from the
world.
In the Introduction to Divine Hiddenness, New Essays,347 the editors, Daniel
Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser write that
Many people are perplexed, even troubled, by the fact that God (if such there be) has not
made His existence sufficiently clear. This fact—the fact of divine hiddenness—is a source
of existential concern for many people. That is, it raises problems about their very exist-
ence, particularly its value and purpose. The fact of divine hiddenness is also, according
to some people, a source of good evidence against the existence of God.348
||
348 Ibid., p. 1.
182 | Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – I
I shall now consider the concept of the “silence” or “hiddenness” of God in (1)
St. John of the Cross’ mystical poetry, which we met earlier in Chapter 7; (2) in
Buddhism; (3) in a series of Ingmar Bergman films; and finally (4) the silence of
Christ in “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The
Brothers Karamazov, and in Walter de La Mare’s “The Listeners.” These exam-
ples will illustrate different ways in which the word ‘silence’ is used metaphori-
cally or the concept of silence is used symbolically.
13.2 St. John of the Cross & the hiddenness of God

The passage below ties in with our earlier quotations in Chapter 7 from St. John
of the Cross’ mystical poetry, and the role of silence in St. John’s quest for and
ascent to God: John’s [St. John’s] perspective on the relationship between faith
and divine is relevant to our overall discussion of the symbolic use of silence in
mysticism. According to the editors349 the discussion of his “perspective on the
relationship between faith and divine hiddenness,” by Laura L. Garcia in chap-
ter 4, entitled “St. John of the Cross and the Necessity of Divine Hidden-
ness, ...”350 is, in the main, [that] faith is a volitional surrender of one’s will to
God’s will, in which union with God primarily consists. Because of original sin
and our own sins, however, the union of our wills with God’s will is also a pro-
cess of purification, of renunciation and self-denial. Purification is not a matter
simply of giving up what is seriously sinful and obviously bad. Rather, one must
give up created goods, thus coming to prefer God and His will to any created
good. This process takes place in three, sometimes overlapping stages. The first
stage—‘the dark night of the senses’—involves the voluntary, active mortifica-
tion of one’s natural appetites, which tend to interfere with the goal of detach-
ing oneself from created goods. The second stage—‘the dark night of the soul’ –
involves the voluntary, active detachment from our cognitive faculties, which
tends to supplant full submission to God with an attempt to understand His
nature and ways. So it is that one must give us one’s desire not only for sensory
goods but for spiritual goods as well. … The third and final stage, of concentra-
tion, is wrought by God in the willing soul. … Divine hiddenness figures in the
||
349 Laura L. Garcia in Chapter 4, entitled “St. John of the Cross and the Necessity of Divine
Hiddenness,…”, pp. 83-97.
350 Chapter 4, pp. 83-97.
Buddhism and the Silence of God | 183
process as a way in which one must humbly accept God’s will without being
able to understand it.351
13.3 Buddhism and the Silence of God

In The Silence of God, The Answer of the Buddha,352 Raimundo Panikkar devotes
the last chapter of the book to the silence of the Buddha. I quote just a few pas-
sages which highlight the role of silence in the Buddha’s teachings. For in-
stance, the author writes:
The Buddha counsels silence. Tradition recounts that on a certain occasion the Blessed
One chanced to pass a group of monks who were distracting themselves by chattering
about this, that, and the other thing. He paused, and said to them: When the mendicant
monks (bhikku) come together, they should do one of two things: either talk about the
Dharma or maintain a noble silence.353
He comments:
Physical silence is the first step toward an understanding of cosmic silence. It was not for
nothing that Candrakirti, as a good disciple of the Enlightened One, was able to say: “The
most noble of the truths is silence.”354 Silence is the ground of the Buddha’s entire mes-
sage, from the silence of meditation to the silence of nirvāṇa. This does not mean silence is
easy to bear, or that human nature does not seek to fill with words the awful void pro-
duced by Silence.355
He then again quotes Chadrakirti, “who refers us to a passage of the

Aeryatathagataguhya”:
On the night, O Santamati, when the Buddha attained the supreme enlightenment, the
night when he was about to pass into the final nirvana, on that occasion the Buddha did
not utter a single syllable; he did not speak, he does not speak, he shall not speak. But be-
cause there are living beings who, given the intensity of their fervor, appear with different
characters, with different ends, they imagine that the Buddha preferred a great variety of
discourses on a variety of occasions.356
||
351 Ibid., p. 15.
352 Translated from the Italian by Robert R. Barr. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989.
353 I bid., p. 167.
354 Ibid.
355 Ibid.
356 Ibid.
13.4 Ingmar Bergman and the Silence/Hiddenness of God

I now turn to Ingmar Bergman’s masterly symbolic use of silence as an over-
arching device, in a series of seven masterly films, for his religious conception
of the nature of God and His relationship to man, starting with The Seventh Seal
and ending with Persona. Because of limitations of space, I shall focus in this
chapter most on The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly,
and Persona.
Disembarking fresh from the Crusades, The Knight in The Seventh Seal is
immediately confronted by the figure of Death, who challenges the Knight to a
game of chess and gives him a reprieve as long as he is not checkmated. The
reprieve allows him a spell to pursue his quest for God, in contrast to his atheist
Squire’s conviction of the quest’s futility. God maintains His hiddenness and
total silence continues as the Black Death rages and decimates the populace; an
innocent girl is burned at the stake as a witch; the defenseless Jongleur is bru-
tally beaten and humiliated at an inn. All these and other evils or calamities
seem only to strengthen the Squire’s atheism and the futility of the Knight’s
quest for God. But like the “Hero of Faith,” Abraham and Job in the Old Testa-
ment (and in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling), the Knight’s faith in the exist-
ence and goodness of God never pales.
In The Seventh Seal, as well as in Wild Strawberries and Through a Glass
Darkly the absence of God is counterpoised and highlighted by the pervasive
presence of Death. (It is also clearly present in The Communicants (Winter Light).
In Through a Glass Darkly the mentally ill Karin’s conviction that God is going to
reveal Himself to her turns instead into the revelation of a hideous six legged
spider that crawls all over her body from a closet on the dilapidated second floor
of her parents’ house.
The search for the silent, hidden God is the central theme of The Seventh
Seal and Winter Light, and a central theme in Through a Glass Darkly. And
though the search for the hidden God is also an important theme in Wild Straw-
berries, it is not, I believe, that film’s central theme. As in The Seventh Seal that
theme is (1) intertwined with the theme of personal love: its presence in the lives
of some of the central characters and its absence in the lives of others; together
with (2) its counterpart theme of the search for God, together with (3) the experi-
ence—or in Through a Glass Darkly—the novelist David’s hollow assertion, at the
end of the film in one of the very few serious conversations he has with his
son—that human love is God; though, ironically, he hardly shows any interest in
or concern for anything except the novel he is vainly struggling to finish, and
hardly any real love for Karin or his son in sharp contrast to Karin’s husband,
Ingmar Bergman and the Silence/Hiddenness of God | 185
Martin’s selfless husbandly love for Karin and devotion to her, and his deep
worry about her mental ill-health, both as a doctor and as her spouse. A similar
important thread of familial love runs through The Seventh Seal, in the Jon-
gleur’s and his wife’s love for each other and for their baby.
A main thread in the entire film series under discussion consists in the idea
that God is absent, silent, hidden whenever there is little or no love; while pre-
sent in one way or another to those who love; as in the case of the Jongleur’s
and his wife’s love for each other and for their baby. Indeed, he has visions of
the supernatural world. For, as David tells his son, Minus in Through a Glass
Darkly, “It’s written: God is love.” A little later he adds: “I only want to give you
an indication of where my own hopes lie.” Minus responds: “And that’s in God’s
love?” Whereupon David comments: “In the knowledge that love exists as
something real in the world of men.” To which David adds: “Every sort of love,
Minus! The highest and the lowest, the poorest and the richest, the most ridicu-
lous and the most sublime. The obsessive and the banal. All sorts of love.”
Minus (silent): “Longing for love.

David: “Longing and denial. Disbelieving and being consoled?
Minus: “So love’s the proof?
David: “We can’t know whether love proves God’s existence or whether love is itself God.
After all, it doesn’t make very much difference.
Minus: “For you God and love are one and the same phenomenon.
But if so, God is not hidden at all for those who love.”357
The irony throughout is that despite what he says about God and love, David
shows little love for his ill daughter or for his son. Nor do we see any affection
for his son-in-law or gratitude for the latter’s love and caring for Karin. All David
appears to care for is his mediocre career as a novelist.
Those who, like David in The Seventh Seal and like Professor Borg in Wild
Strawberries, are lacking in love for their fellow humans, just like the Knight in
The Seventh Seal who returns from the Crusades where we can imagine him as
having killed “infidels” for the Glory of the Church and of God; or for the self-
centered Professor Isak Borg in Wild Strawberries who has no love either for his
son or daughter-in-law, and has little gratitude for his housekeeper of forty
years, find not God but death-in-life. Death stares them in the face—literally, in
the Knight’s case, and in a macabre dream early in Borg’s in Wild Strawberries.
In that dream, for example, among various bizarre incidents, including such as
Borg seeing clocks without hands (clearly signifying the eternity lying beyond
||
357 Ibid., p. 612.
death, his own death) followed by seeing someone at the street corner with his
back turned towards him. He is horrified to see that “the man had no face under
his soft felt hat.”358 The faceless man then completely collapses—“as if he were
made of dust or frail splinters.”359 The macabre dream culminates in Borg’s see-
ing himself being pulled down toward, and into a coffin by a hand that “stuck
out” of the coffin and, in Borg’s words, “clutched my arm and pulled me down
toward the casket with enormous force. I struggled helplessly against it as the
corpse slowly rose form the coffin. It was a man dressed in a frock coat.” 360 “To
my horror, I saw that the corpse was myself. I tried to free my arm, but he held it
in a powerful grip. All this time he stared at me without emotion and seemed to
be smiling scornfully.”361
After he wakes up, he closes his eyes and mutters “words of reality against
my dream—against all the evil and frightening dreams which have haunted me
these last few years.”362
In the film Borg is a cold, almost heartless old man, a man who lacks love
for his son and daughter-in-law, and only begins to warm up to her during their
car drive to Lund, where he is scheduled to receive a Jubilee Medal for his long
service as a physician. He shows no warmth towards or gratitude for his house-
keeper, who had spent forty years of her life taking care of him. And though he
says that they were in love, he cruelly denigrates his wife when she is raped and
comes to him for understanding and support. His son’s Evald’s and daughter-in-
law’s marriage is on the rocks, despite their love for each other, because they
disagree about keeping the baby with which she is pregnant. His son does not
want to bring another human being into the world, having himself suffered in
his early life from his parents’ constant conflicts.363 His wife on the other hand
insists on having the baby.
We are told that Borg is a good doctor. But besides his horrible dreams I
mentioned, he has disturbing dreams that he was a failure as a medical student,
humiliated and reprimanded by the examiner during his medical exam. Implic-
||
358 In Four Screenplays Of Ingmar Bergman (New York: Simon And Schuster, Inc., 1960),
translated from the Swedish by Lars Malmstrom and David Kushner, p. 171. The faceless man is
clearly Borg himself in his old age.
359 Ibid., pp. 171-2.
360 Ibid., p. 173.
361 Ibid.
362 Ibid.
363 Evald: “[He] was an unwelcome child in a marriage which was a nice imitation of hell. Is
the old man really sure that I’m his son? Indifference, fear, infidelity and guilt feelings—those
were my nurses.” Ibid., p. 226
itly, the unspoken reason for his sense of failure as a doctor is his lack of empa-
thy with his patients, like his lack of empathy for his wife’s ordeal after she is
raped.
The young woman Sara, who accompanies him and his daughter-in-law on
part of the drive, with her two young companions, surmises that he is religious,
but he neither confirms nor disconfirms it; and in any case it plays no part at all
in his life, given that he has no love (“charity” in the New Testament sense). No
wonder that God is “hidden” from him and it is his demise that keeps haunting
him in his recurrent dreams.
Unlike the Knight in The Seventh Seal Borg does not ever search for God. As
I said, what pursues and haunts him in his dreams is the ever present specter of
death, counterbalanced only by his recurrent sweet and painful memories of his
young days with his family, and his youthful love for his cousin Sara, who did
not return his love and instead married his brother.
On the theodicy that appears to be implicit in the Bergman film series being
considered, God is hidden insofar as, at present, humanity has been repeating
its past orgy (cf. the Crusades, etc.) of hate, destruction and war, antipathy or
hate for fellow humans. It does not prevent natural evil such as Karin’s mental
illness, or human evil—for instance, the black death and the burning of the
innocent young woman at the stake in The Seventh Seal—not because He does
not exist, as the atheist believes, or because He does not care, even though He
does exist—but because humankind wallows in hatred rather than love. He is
silent because of the continued existence of that evil—and man’s own responsi-
bility for that evil (assuming that the idea of man’s free will is at least implicit in
the film series). If so, He would reveal Himself if and when the world is full of
love and goodness.
But what about Karin, who is a good, loving person and firmly believes in
and yet waits for Him in vain? For her illness is a “natural,” not a human, moral
evil” brought about by any member or members of her family. For instance, the
film does not tell us whether her mother’s death and/or her father’s repeated
absences and lack of caring and concern for her and her brother caused her
illness. Why then is she afflicted with that evil, and why does He not reveal
Himself to her, thus perhaps curing her of her illness. Certainly such a revela-
tion would vindicate her belief that she will see God is not a hallucination? If so,
why does Karin—who loves her father, her husband, and her brother, and who
believes in God and longs to see Him—see a horrible six-legged spider instead?
A probable answer is that God is hidden from her because of her mental illness.
Her belief in God is perverted by that illness.364 Compare and contrast the “fool
of God” in Russian lore, who is nearer to God than the mentally “normal” per-
son. Indeed, the Jongleur in “The Seventh Seal” is not unlike the “fool of God,”
and like him, is closer to the supernatural world, though his visions are signifi-
cantly not a vision of God.
It may be replied that even if, instead of the six-legged spider, God had re-
vealed Himself to Karin, no evidence is found in the film that she would have
been thereby cured of her illness; though His revelation would have proven to
her family that she was not hallucinating, therefore (perhaps) has been cured of
her illness.
One can think of at least two reasons why Karin sees the monstrous spider
rather than God, as she believed she would see. First, if human love if God, as
her father, David, states, Karin, had she heeded these words, would not have
thought of God as some kind of being who would reveal Himself bodily, would
be visible her or to any other human being. Second—perhaps more important-
ly—Karin commits incest with her brother, or seduces him so that he commits
incest with her, violating the fundamental religious/moral injunction against
that horrific sin; though in her case an important extenuating circumstance is
the fact that that she is mentally ill, and that, in addition, she appears to be
unconscious of what was happening during the episode, since we are told that
when it is over she “slowly comes back to consciousness,” thereby implying
that during the brief moments of their intercourse she was unaware of what was
happening.
Like The Seventh Seal, the title of the film Through a Glass Darkly is especial-
ly apt in relation to the overall theme of Bergman’s present film series, given
that it is derived from the famous passage in the New Testament: namely, Apos-
tle Peter’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, where in Verses 11 on, we
read: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; …” And: “When I
was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child
[exactly what Karin did, albeit a grownup woman]; when I became a man, I gave
||
364 In Through a Glass Darkly, Karin, the mentally ill daughter of the novelist David, the wife
of the doctor Martin, sees God or believes she sees God, through only “through a glass darkly”:
through her mentally disturbed hallucinations or visions. However, at the end, to her chagrin
and horror, she discovers that what she thought was God was only a horrible six-legged Spider.
Through her and her husband Martin’s love for each other, for her father and brother Minus,’
David belatedly “discovers” his love for his daughter and son: though he hollowly also asserts
that he loved his dead wife, and that God is love. He says, he believes in God’s existence, alt-
hough the God he says he believes in is human love.
up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly,365 but then face of face. Now I
know in part; then [i.e., in the life hereafter] I shall understand fully, even as I
have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the
greatest of these is love.”366 Though Karin dearly loves her family, as a grown up
woman she “thought like a child, reasoned like a child”—and then overstepped
the limits of love. Hence what she saw was a horrible spider instead of God—
even before the commission of incest.
During the past, 20th century, “The Death of God philosophers” argued that God
is dead because he did not prevent the horrors of the Second World War, the
Holocaust, and other horrors. In Winter Light Jonas Persson commits suicide
because he is terrified that God would not or is unable to prevent the Chinese
from building atom bombs and destroying Europe (the world?); and only later—
with great difficulty—he is able to say so. The Rev. Tomas Eriksson is unable to
reassure him. Instead, Tomas adds doubt to Jonas’ tortured soul by revealing
that he himself doubts God’s existence. The result is that soon after Jonas leaves
the vicar, he commits suicide by shooting himself through the head with his
shotgun.
Not unlike Borg or David, Rev. Thomas Eriksson is devoid of any love for
anyone in his parish—not excepting the schoolteacher Marta, the one person
close to him and with whom he has had a longtime affair, and who keeps badg-
ering him about their getting married since he is a widower. So if God is love, on
that ground too God does not exist for him. Indeed, when in Scene I he and she
are alone in the Church, he admits, that according to him, God does not exist.
Marta (irritated): “Sometimes I think you’re the limit! God’s silence, God
doesn’t speak. God hasn’t ever spoken, because he doesn’t exist. It’s all so unu-
sually, horribly simple.”367 A little later she adds:
Marta: “Oh, Tomas, what a lot you’ve still to learn.

Thomas (sarcastically): Is that what you teach your pupils?
Marta (same tone of voice): You must learn to love.
Tomas: (same tone of voice): And I suppose it’s you who’s going to teach me?
Marta looks at him a long while, then shakes her head and gives a wry smile.
Marta: It’s beyond me. I haven’t the strength.
She leaves him, goes out through the church. He hears the doors slam behind her.”368
||
365 My italics.
366 The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Second Edition (New York: Thomas Nelson,
Inc., 1971).
367 A Film Trilogy, p. 78
So if God is love, then on that ground God does not exist for Thomas. Indeed, on
pp. 84ff. he tells Jonas how he became disillusioned with his traditional view of
“[a]n improbable, entirely private, fatherly god. Who loved mankind … most of
all me.” And a little later:
Tomas: ”A god who guaranteed me every imaginable security…. A god I’d borrowed from
various quarters, fabricated with my own hands.” And, again,
Tomas: “Every time I confronted God with the reality, he became ugly, revolting, a spider
god—a monster.”369
Speaking to Jonas in a self-revealing confession in the Scene, Tomas explains to

Jonas why he chose his calling, and what he thought then about God. For in-
stance he says:
I chose my calling because my mother and father were religious, pious, in a deep and nat-
ural way. Maybe I didn’t love them, but I wanted to please them. So I became a clergyman
and believed in God. (Gives a short laugh) An improbable, entirely private, fatherly god.
Who loved mankind, of course, but most of all me.” 370And: “A god who guaranteed me
every imaginable security. Against fear of death. Against fear of life. A god I’d suggested
myself into believing in, a god I’d borrowed from various quarters, fabricated with my
own hands. D’you understand, Jonas? What a monstrous mistake I’d made? Can you real-
ize what a bad priest must come of such a spoilt, shut-in, anxious wretch as me?371
(Contrast David: “Love is God,” in Though a Glass Darkly.)
In The Seventh Seal natural and human evils—the Black Death, the burning of
an innocent girl at the stake, the senseless beatings and humiliation (human
evil) of the jongleur in the tavern, and so on go on and on—God is silent, is no-
where to stop these evils. Compare Jonas’ terror in Winter Night that the Chi-
nese, being poor, will invent the atom bomb and possibly, destroy the world,
having nothing to lose.
The Silence372 is an extremely depressing film—if possible, even more de-
pressing than Wild Strawberries”—though The Seventh Seal and “Through a
Glass Darkly” are not paradigms of cheerfulness either. The depressiveness,
even utter hopelessness, depicted in the last three films is, as far as I can see,
||
368 Ibid. Compare the spider Karin sees in Through a Glass Darkly when she expected to see
God.
369 Ibid., p. 85.
370 Ibid., pp. 84-85.
371 Ibid., pp. 84-85.
372 Ibid., pp. 107-143.
symptomatic of the existential plight of humankind, according to Bergman, in

the absence of God. Again, in The Silence, with the exception of mutual mother-
son love, the film is utterly loveless. Existential angst permeates all these films.
The setting of The Silence is unusual, strange. The play is set in an unnamed
country, with sand and stifling heat, probably some place in Africa. The native
language is utterly incomprehensible to the three main Swedish characters:
Anna, her son Johan and her sister Ester. They are traveling by train at night,
going home to Sweden. Ester is seriously ill. Apparently a war is going on in the
country. At one point a siren briefly breaks the silence. After the train stops and
they move into a hotel across the train station, “the stillness is even more com-
pact and tangible.”373
The siren “howls” again the next morning. Johan carries a toy revolver, is
afraid of the old floor waiter. People talk to Johan but what they say is incom-
prehensible to him, just as to his mother and aunt. Even the newspaper and the
signs on the street are in an incomprehensible language.
Anna is utterly indifferent to her sister and her illness, and spends little
time with her. Her character is well revealed—for one thing—by the way she
gazes at the mirror in the morning: “Deep down inside her fair eyes one catches
a glimpse of wrath and scorn.”374 As the film unfolds, we see that the wrath and
scorn are directed towards Ester, who feels humiliated and forsaken. When
alone—since her sister goes to a bar, then to a movie, and ends up having causal
sex in the cool of a nearby church, with a man she happens to meet—Ester
moans: “…oh God, help me, let me die at home at least…”375 She is nostalgic for
home, for the “Swedish archipelago,…” A car with a loudspeaker passes by.
“Once again the stifling airless silence closes in on the swarming crowds, puls-
ing along densely packed pavements.”376
In the bar, no communication takes place between Anna and anyone there.
Her communication with the bartender is by body language, gestures... Going
out of the bar, Anna “makes her way among the tables, feeling this silence like a
lid over her ears; silence as a dull, thumping fear.” What she is afraid of is un-
clear at this point. The movie too she finds incomprehensible. In the cinema
||
373 Ibid., p. 113.
374 Ibid, p. 117.
375 Ibid., p. 118.
376 Ibid.
Anna sees a man having sex with a woman.377 A clown in the movie house keeps
talking: “the clown’s gibberish [For her] goes on and on.”378
Ester expresses tenderness and fear for Johan in Anna’s absence, by putting
her hand on her nephew’s check and ear, “mostly as a caress.” Later Anna tells
Ester that she too had sex with a man from the bar, but in a church. She and her
son express their love for each other. Bur Ester’s is angry at her sister because
Anna had neglected her by her outing. When Ester drops Anna’s dress on the
floor, “Anna gives a scornful snort… Ester’s hand… begins to tremble. Speech-
less, beside herself with rage, she leaves her sister.”379 Anna is scornful and
cruel towards Ester, and thinks she spies on her. Ester answers: “May be…” “But
cruelty rises within Anna, goes to her head. Anna is scared of Ester, but does not
understand why.380 There is palpable antagonism between the two sisters. When
Anna leaves her room and closes the door, “a mortal fear of death sweeps over
Ester... ”381. “In the shadow of annihilation her awareness quivers.”382
When Anna switches off the radio music, “A horrible silence” follows.383
Anna is frightened at Ester’s silence when she talks.
The audience gradually discovers that a fundamental reason for Anna’s an-
imosity towards her sister is that Anna thinks Ester thinks she can make Anna’s
decisions for her, “just like Father did. But you can’t.” Later she says: “When
Father was alive he decided things. And we obeyed him. Because we had to.
When Father died you [Ester] thought you could carry on in the same way…”384
And: “When she’s ill [Ester] she’s always ill. When she’s ill, she wants to decide
everything. [Not true] Then I’m a half-wit.”385
At one point Ester says: “Why’ve we got to torment each other?” Anna an-
swers: “You aren’t tormenting me”—but she does not understand that she is
tormenting Ester!386 Ester tries to kiss her sister’s neck. “Anna frees herself.”
Ester feels humiliated, not jealous, because Anna prefers the company of a
stranger to her sister. Indeed, Anna wishes Ester was dead.
||
377 Ibid., pp. 121-2.
378 Ibid., p. 122.
379 Ibid., p. 124.
380 Ibid., p. 125.
381 Ibid. Compare Borg’s fear of death.
382 Ibid., p. 136-136.
383 Ibid., p. 127.
384 Ibid., pp. 134.
385 Ibid., p. 135.
386 Ibid., p. 129.
At the end of the film Anna and Johan leave for home in the morning, leav-
ing Ester alone, ill and almost dead. The doctor does not come; and we can im-
agine her dead at the very end.
I now turn to Persona.
…Persona, … like much of Bergman’s recent work, bears an almost defiling charge of per-
sonal agony. This is particularly true of The Silence—most accomplished, by far, of the
films Bergman has made before this one. And Persona draws liberally on the themes and
schematic cast established in The Silence. (The principal characters in both films are two
women bound together in a passionate agonized relationship, one of whom has a pitia-
bly neglected small son. Both films take up the themes of the scandal of the erotic; the po-
larities of violence and powerlessness, reason and unreason, language and silence, the in-
telligible and the unintelligible.) But Bergman’s new film ventures at least as much
beyond The Silence as that film is an advance, in its emotional power and subtlety, over
all his previous work.387
In Persona as in The Silence, silence—the silence of Mrs. Vogler in the former

film and the silence of the town and, in the latter film, the incomprehensibility
of the local language to the three main characters—is literal as well as symbolic.
Consequently in both works the concept of silence straddles the discussion of
silence and the religious/spiritual life both in Chapter 12 and in this Chapter. I
refer to the fact that silence in The Silence and in Persona is symbolic, respec-
tively, of Anna’s and of Mrs.Vogler’s utter coldness of heart—utter lack of sister-
ly love in the first case and maternal and spousal love in the second, which we
also find in Wild Strawberries, especially in Borg’s case; in Through a Glass
Darkly in relation to David, and Rev. Thomas’ in Night Light. No wonder that in
Persona Bergman sums up in the following passage the essential reasons for God’s
hiddenness from all these characters in all these films. In Episode 13, Alma, talk-
ing to Mrs. Vogler, asks: “May I read you something from a book? Or am I dis-
turbing you? Then she says:
It says here: ‘All this anxiety we bear with us, our disappointed dreams. The inexplicable
cruelty, our terror at the thought of extinction, the painful insight we have into the condi-
tions of life on earth, have slowly crystallized out our hope of heavenly salvation. The
great silence is the most terrifying evidence of our forlornness, our terrified unexpressed
knowledge.’388
||
387 Susan Sontag, “Bergman’s Persona”. In: Lloyd Michaels (ed.) Ingmar Bergman’s Persona
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 63.
388 Persona and Shame, The Screen Plays of Ingmar Bergman, Translated by Keith Bradfield,
Episode 14 (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972), p.43.
Unlike the other “hiddenness of God” films we discussed so far, where silence is
purely symbolic, silence in Persona and in The Silence is particularly noteworthy
because the concept of silence in the literal meaning of the word ‘silence’—the
subject of Chapter 12—is a central theme in them. But like the other films we
discussed, silence there is also symbolic silence; In other words, the literal si-
lence is also symbolically employed to bring in the symbolic theme of God’s “hid-
denness” from the world; His “silence,” for example, in relation to “the inexpli-
cable cruelty, our terror at the thought of extinction, the painful insight we have
into the conditions of life on earth, [which] have crystallized out our hope of
heavenly salvation. The great shout of our faith and doubt against the darkness
and silence is the most terrifying evidence of our forlornness, our terrified un-
expressed knowledge.”389 Thus the literal silence of the actress, Elizabeth Vogler
in the greater part of Persona, as well as in The Silence: In the latter film the
utter strangeness of the country through which the three main characters are
traveling as well as the incomprehensibility to its language to them. Additional-
ly The Silence is symbolic of the theme of God’s “silence”/“hiddenness:” His
“silence” in Ester’s last days when, at the end of the film, her sister abandons
her as she herself lies at death’s door.
To quote Bergman himself, the filmmaker writes at the end of “Written for
the presentation of the Erasmus Prize in Amsterdam, 1965: “Taken together, we
[artists] are probably a fairly large brotherhood who exist… in selfish fellowship
on the warm, dirty earth, under a cold and empty sky.”390 We can ourselves add
that all the main characters in the film series we have discussed “exist under a
cold and empty sky.”
So far we have looked at some length at Bergman’s filmic presentations of the

theme of God’s silence/hiddenness, in various guises or forms. The question in
this section is what, for Bergman, would constitute God’s “presence” in the
world. Would God be “present” for those “who love their neighbor as them-
selves,” as the New Testament enjoins? Does or would God do so by forgiving
their sins and/or by, say, performing miracles—as in The Virgin Spring—a quite
different kind of film from those we have considered, and which we have not
discussed? For in that film we see the miraculous gushing of the virgin spring at
the very spot where the grief-stricken parents find the innocent girl’s dead body;
and her father’s promise to God to build a church at that spot to atone for his
||
389 Ibid., p. 47.
390 Persona and Shame op cit., written for the presentation of the Erasmus Prize in Amster-
dam, 1965, p. 15.
murder of the two herder men who raped and murdered her, as well as their
little brother? As we saw earlier in this book, the supreme way in which, accord-
ing to tradition, God reveals Himself to the righteous in this life is in the mysti-
cal experience itself. It is noteworthy here that in the entire Bergman film series
we discussed, God never reveals Himself to any of the very few righteous char-
acters—not only the girl in The Virgin Spring but also to the Jongleur in The Sev-
enth Seal, and to Karin in Through a Glass Darkly. (But then Karen in the latter
film is not sinless.)
In The Silence of God: Creative Responses to the Films of Ingmar Bergman, Arthur
Gibson discusses the films in which God is silent.391
Gibson argues that “Bergman begins [in The Seventh Seal] with the soul of
modern man, with the doubt, torment, fragile hope, excruciating anguish, of
that soul [in the character of The Knight]… As the film series proceeds, the
shadows become ever darker and more menacing. The final film of the series I
examine [Persona] has been called a film utterly without hope, a perfect proc-
lamation of hopeless atheism. Such a progressively more somber interpretation
seems to me entirely to disregard certain definite hints in these films. It is these
hints I shall endeavor to collate and interpret into a quite different culminating
picture.”392
At the end of the book, in the Chapter “Of God,” Gibson contends that “…in
one sense this film odyssey may indeed reveal a “new God”; it may highlight the
baneful and even blasphemous inadequacy of the time-honored articulations of
God in theology.”393
Again, “The thrust of the film series… is the clarification of an initial silence
apparently indicative of absence into a terminal silence terribly indicative of
presence. What seemed at the outset to be a silence proclaiming God’s irrele-
vance to the human cosmos emerges at the end as a silence proclaiming God’s
supreme relevance to the human cosmos (and even exposure) to human free-
dom. God is silent not because he is not but because he is God, the supreme
lover of freedom and thus the supremely silent victim of man’s misuse of free-
dom.”394
||
391 Gibson, ibid.
392 Ibid., p. 12.
393 Ibid., p. 158.
394 Ibid., p. 159.
Further, “God is luminously present throughout the entire cycle, but the na-
ture of his presence in each film is substantially conditioned by the state of the
human protagonists.” 395
And, “The silence of God is a problem at the outset and a tragedy at the end.
Initially that silence is a challenge to man and terminally it is the result of man’s
deliberate rejection.”396
And, “A simple scriptural text spans the interval between The Seventh Seal
and The Silence. When the seventh seal of God’s reality and purpose is broken,
there is silence in heaven for the space of about half an hour. It is the silence of
God determined in respect to the freedom of man. And not “determined” (as by
some supervenient Fate) but personally willing because of his great glory.”397
My own overall view is that the central theme implicit in all the Bergman
films we considered, is that God is Silent, Hidden insofar as the world profound-
ly lacks love, compassion and caring for others, and, instead, is full of indiffer-
ence, hatred, and cruelty. In The Seventh Seal and in Winter Light we also see a
good deal of undeserved suffering by the innocent, caused by religious fanati-
cism and bigotry, and wanton human cruelty. 398
Nurse Alma’s statements to Elizabeth Vogler in Persona, Episode 13, called
“Another Episode,”399succinctly sum up—and in my view provide the essence of
Bergman’s theme of God’s “Hiddenness.” In each film we find some or all of the
disturbing existential situations I have detailed, whether in The Seventh Seal,
Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, or The Silence—or in
Persona.
||
395 Ibid, p. 162.
396 Ibid., p. 165.
397 Ibid., p. 167.
398 In fact, some of these elements are also found for example in The Virgin Spring, mentioned
earlier, and in Autumn Sonata. In the former film. in relation to the silence of God at the “inex-
plicable cruelty” of the shepherds in raping and murdering the innocent girl. Although these
two films are primarily concerned with other fundamental existential issues, they too highlight
some aspects of the “human condition”.
399 Ibid., p. 47.
14 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the
Spiritual/Religious Life – II
In this final chapter I turn to certain other sorts of symbolic uses of silence than
those considered in Chapter 13; starting with the silence of Jesus in Fyodor Dos-
toevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor”400 in The Brothers Karamazov. 401 I refer to Ivan
Karamazov’s depiction of Jesus’ complete silence in the face of the Inquisitor’s
attack on Him; accompanied, at the end, by the silent kiss on the Inquisitor’s
lips. The question before us is the meaning—its signification as well as its signif-
icance—of Jesus’ total silence: whether it symbolizes His agreement with the
devastating criticism leveled at Him by the Inquisitor, or whether it signifies
something different, perhaps the very opposite of the accusations themselves.
That is, whether it is indeed Jesus’ total rejection of them—just as, as the Gos-
pels tell us, Jesus’ silence before Pontius Pilate was a symbolic rejection of the
latter’s accusations against him—until He responded to Pontius Pilate’s ques-
tion whether He claimed to be the King of the Jews. The evidence in The Brothers
Karamazov (leaving aside the possible evidence pro or con in relation to Dosto-
evsky himself) is that the answer is the latter of the two. For Ivan, the unbeliever
himself, who, at one point in the novel, says that “he respectfully returns his
ticket” to God—indeed, is “visited” by the Devil, the Inquisitor’s accusations are
perfectly true. Consequently, that the silence dramatizes His inability to re-
spond to them. As summarized by D. H. Lawrence, the Inquisitor’s-Ivan’s over-
all charge is that “Man can but be true to his own nature. No inspiration what-
soever will ever get him permanently beyond his limits. And what are these
limits? It is Dostoevsky’s [here read “Ivan’s”] first profound question, what are
the limits to the nature, not of Man in the abstract, but of men, mere men, eve-
ryday men?” 402
||
400 Book V, v. pp. 292-314.
401 New York, N.Y: Vintage Books, 1955.
402 As far as Lawrence is concerned, the Inquisitor’s accusations are (also) those of Dostoev-
sky himself. (“Preface to Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquitor, “Dostoevsky, Twentieth Century
Views, ed., Rene’ Wellek, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962, p. 91.) He states that
according to the Inquisitor, man demands the following three things: “1. He demands bread,
and not merely as foodstuff, but as a miracle, given from the hand of God. 2. He demands
mystery, the sense of the miraculous in life. 3.He demands somebody to bow down to, and
before whom all men shall bow down.” (Ibid.)
198 | Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – II
The limits, the Inquisitor says, are three.403 “Mankind in the bulk can never
be ‘free,’ because man on the whole makes three grand demands on life, and
cannot endure unless these demands are satisfied.”404
The Inquisitor’s summing up of “the nature of mankind,” Lawrence adds, is
the following:
The inadequacy of Jesus lies in the fact that Christianity is too difficult for men, the vast
mass of men. It could only be realized by the few “saints” or heroes. For the rest, man is
like a horse harnessed to a load he cannot possibly pull. ‘Hadst Thou respected him less,
Thou wouldst have demanded less of him, and that would be nearer to love, for the bur-
den would be lighter’405
Christianity, then, is the ideal, but it is impossible. It is impossible because it makes de-
mands greater than the nature of man can bear.406
Ivan says that his “story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of
the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God, and, ‘in
the splendid auto da fe the wicked heretics were burnt’.”407 And it is clear that
Ivan accuses Jesus of “visiting His children [who were being burned at the
stake?] only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling round the
heretics.” And, “He came down to the ‘hot pavement’ of the southern town in
which on the day before almost a hundred heretics had, ad majorem gloriam dei,
been burnt by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, in a magnificent auto da fe, in
the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinal, the most charming
ladies of the court, and the whole population of Seville.”408
In the story Jesus raises a little dead girl on the steps of the Seville Cathe-
dral. The Inquisitor, passing by the cathedral, “stops at the sight of the crowds
and watches it from a distance. He sees everything; … sees the child rise up, ...
He holds out his finger and bids the guards take Him. And in the midst of death-
like silence they [the guards] lay hands on Him and lead Him away…The guards
lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison… and shut Him in it.”
The following night the Inquisitor goes to see Jesus, and speaks: “‛Is it Thou?ʼ
but receiving no answer he adds at once, ‘Don’t answer, be silent. What canst
Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou wouldst say, indeed? And Thou
||
403 Loc. cit.
404 Ibid.
405 Garnett, pp. 294-295.
406 Ibid. p. 295.
407 Ibid.
408 Ibid., pp. 296-297.
The Theme of Isolation and the “Hiddenness” Of God | 199
hast no right to anything to what Thou hadst said of old.”409 Thus Ivan, in the
form of the Inquisitor, decrees that Jesus be silent; and since the Inquisitor’s
accusations are Ivan’s own against Christianity—indeed, religion in general—
Jesus is and remains silent throughout. In other words, Jesus’ silence symboli-
cally signifies His inability to answer the accusations. On page 293 Ivan adds:
“He [Christ] comes on the scene in my poem, but he says nothing, only appears
and passes on.”410 And on the next page he recites:
No signs of Heaven come to-day

To add to what the heart doth say.
Then he adds: “There was nothing but faith in what the heart doth say.”411
At some point Alyosha interjects: “What does it mean?” “Is it simply a wild
fantasy, or a mistake on the part of the old man…?” Ivan explains that “one may
say that ir is the most fundamental feature of Roman Catholicism that Jesus
‘doesn’t have the right to add anything to what He has said of old… All has been
given to by Thee to the Pope,’ they say, ‘and all, therefore, is still in the Pope’s
hands, and there is no need for Thee to come now at all. Thou must not meddle
for the time, at least’.”412 A little later the “old man” adds that “Thou mayest not
take from men the freedom [of faith] which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on
earth.” 413 A little earlier, when Alyosha asks Ivan: “And the Prisoner too [like the
Inquisitor, who had “thought in silence for ninety years]? Does He look at him and
not say a word?” Ivan replies: “That’s inevitable in any case,… The old man has
told Him He hasn’t the right to add anything to what He had said of old.”414
At the end of the chapter Ivan says that he meant to end his poem “like this:
When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he waited… for hid Prisoner to answer
him. His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened
intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to
reply. The old man longed for Him to say something, however bitter and terri-
ble. But he suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him
on his bloodless aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His
lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to Him: ‘Go and come no
||
409 Ibid., p. 293.
410 Ibid., p. 294. Italics in original.
411 Ibid., p. 297.
412 Ibid., p. 298.
413 Ibid., p. 298.
414 Ibid., p. 297.
more … come not at all, never, never! And he let Him out into the dark alleys of
the town. The Prisoner went away.”415
It is clear I think the old man realizes that Jesus has triumphed first by his
silence and then, by the symbolic “coup de grace” of the soft kiss on the lips. He
sees that he had failed, that Jesus had triumphed; that the old man’s “triumph”
was nothing but a Pyrrhic victory. For as I see it, the kiss, the climax of the
whole encounter, showed the Inquisitor that He forgave him for his words and
action in imprisoning Him. The kiss—as well as the silence—symbolically
demonstrated to him that Jesus had triumphed. For he forgave him for his vani-
ty and arrogance, for his belief in his superiority to Jesus, as He had done with
respect to Judas’s kiss of betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane; since Judas, as
Jesus himself had said, it was written that he would be betrayed, since that was
a necessary part of the divinely ordained process that would, as decreed, inevi-
tably lead finally to the cross, His resurrection from the dead on the third day,
and his ascent to heaven.
It is noteworthy that although Ivan is an atheist, he does not attack or reject
God but only what he considers to be Roman Catholicism’s conception of Je-
sus—and who, significantly, does not call “Christ.” But is the “story” not also
Dostoevsky’s own rejection of the Catholic Church’s dogma as he makes Ivan
represent it, especially as represented or symbolized by the Inquisition—and his
agreement with the teachings of the silent Christ416? Is not Dostoevsky’s revul-
sion at the horrors of the Inquisition precisely why he portrays Ivan the atheist
as (seemingly) agreeing with the Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s-Ivan’s portrayal,
epitomizing the Catholic Church by the Inquisition? For as we know, Dostoev-
sky, in The Brothers Karamazov as well as in Crime and Punishment, clearly
shows his abiding compassion for the innocent “insulted and injured”—in the
latter novel, children and innocent older persons, such as Sonia and Dounia,
who undeservedly suffer cruelly; as well as in cruelty to animals epitomized by
the nag beaten to death by its drunken master in the latter novel. As I have en-
deavored to show in “The Theme of Isolation in The Brothers Karamazov,” in
Dostoevsky’s preceding two novels the price of evil-doing, for the author, is
separation or isolation from God and His creation, hence God’s silence or hid-
denness from the evil-doer; as we prominently see in Ivan’s own case and, to a
lesser extent, in his brother Dmitri’s case because of the evil he commits. God is
||
415 Ibid., p. 311.
416 Quest, A Quarterly of Inquiry, Criticism and Ideas, Abu Sayeed and Amlan Datta, eds., No.
31, October/December 1961 (Bombay, India), pp. 9-16.
not “hidden” from Dostoevsky himself or from his characters, Alyosha and es-
pecially Father Zossima.
It is instructive at this point to compare Christ’s imagined silence in Dosto-
evsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” with what the Gospels tell us about Jesus’ re-
sponse—or lack of response—to Pontius Pilate’s question whether Jesus believes
or thinks that he is the King of the Jews.
According to the Gospel According to Luke, Chapter 22, after a night of vigil
and prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, in Chapter 23 is brought before
Pilate. In verses 22-63 we are told that “the assembly of the elders of the peo-
ple,” who gathered together..,” “led him away to their council,… And they all
said, ‘Are you the Son of God, …?’And he replied: ‘You say that I am.’ And they
said: ‘What farther testimony do we need?’ ‘We have heard it ourselves from his
own lips.’” But what a strange response, since Jesus does not answer the ques-
tion—he is silent about it—and does not say: “Yes,” or “No” to the question
asked!
The same situation is essentially repeated in verse 23: “Then the whole
company of them arose, and brought him before Pilate. And they began to ac-
cuse him, saying, “…this man … [is] saying that he himself is Christ a king.”
“And Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jesus?’ And Jesus answered
him, “You have said so”—once again, not answering the question but keeping
silent about whether or not it is true. But understanding that Jesus’ reply was
essentially “No,” “Pilate said to the chief priests and the multitudes, ‘I find no
crime in this man.’” Later, in verse 6, Jesus is sent to Herod, who questioned
him, “but he [Jesus] made no answer.” Herod then sent him back to Pilate. In
verse 13, Pilate reiterates his judgment that he found in Jesus “no crime…” Even-
tually, he gives in to the demands of “the chief priests” to have him put to
death.
In the Gospel According to John, Chapter 18, verse 28, Pilate, as in Luke’s
version, interprets Jesus’ response to his question: “Are you the king of the
Jews,” namely, his not answering the question but replying instead with: “Do
you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Once
again, a little later, he does not answer Pilate’s question: “So you are a king
[king of the Jews],” but instead says: “You say that I am a king.” But this time
continues with: “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to
bear witness to the truth….”—which is clearly different from saying that he
thinks he is the king of the Jews. That question remains unanswered, with
Christ’s unbroken silence about it.
In “The Theme of Isolation in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov,” I
considered two opposed, pervasive themes in that novel as well as in Crime and
Punishment; namely, theme of isolation from God and His creation, and the
opposite theme of communion with God and His creation. The link between the
theme of the hiddenness of God we considered in the previous chapter in rela-
tion to Bergman’s film cycle and in some relevant philosophical-theological
writings, and the theme of isolation being considered here, is that isolation from
God and his creation is the consequence of rebellion against God and His com-
mandments, either by murder (Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment) or by His
rejection (Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov). Hence in the metaphori-
cal language of the “hiddenness of God”, isolation from Him means that God is,
symbolically, “hidden” from the murderer, the rebel, the sinner. The latter can-
not, metaphorically speaking, “see” God, have communion with God: God is
“hidden” from him. Only those who believe in God and follow His command-
ments have “communion” with Him, and He “reveals” Himself to them: in The
Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha and, especially, Father Zossima. These two char-
acters are Ivan’s and his brother Mitya’s antithesis in the novel; and in Crime
and Punishment, Raskolnikov is isolated from God and nature and the woman
he loves, Sonia, and his sister Dounia, until he repents of his crimes and does
penance by finally serving time.
The themes of isolation and communion are also found, in a lesser or great-
er degree, in one form or another, in Dostoevsky’s other major novels; for exam-
ple, The Idiot. Indeed, despite its importance in The Brothers Karamazov, the
theme of isolation is more dominant in Crime and Punishment, “especially if one
thinks of the extremely vivid, complex and detailed manner in which Dostoev-
sky depicts this theme in Raskolnikov’s case. In The Brothers Karamazov a good
deal is said about isolation (by Father Zossima); in the… [former] novel the
theme is more concretely and vividly embodied in the characters and events.” 417
My analysis will be confined to the other two main novels I have so far dis-
cussed.
14.1 The Theme of Isolation and the “Hiddenness” Of God

The logical starting-point of the concept of human isolation is the belief primari-
ly expressed by Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov, in exhorting his
fellow monks and Alyosha, that there exists a perfectly good God, creator of the
universe and the moral order in it. The ideal of a benevolent God is the axis
||
417 “The Theme of Isolation…,” pp. 12-13.
round which the entire novel revolves, certainly with respect to the philosophi-
cal ideas in it. Every part of His creation is bound to every other part.
Every human being mirrors every other human being, and nature. Man was
created in God’s image, and that which is divine in man reveals itself in the
moral order. Without God and immortality there would be no rational reasons
not to overstep or violate morality: a view Miusov states well during the gather-
ing of the Karamazov family in Father Zossima’s cell, toward the novel’s begin-
ning, when he describes what he thinks are Ivan’s views. In effect, in Nie-
tzsche’s words, “If God is dead, all is permitted.”
“But God is not dead”—that is what Father Zossima believes and Alyosha
reiterates; and that to which the whole novel moves “as to its pole”418 ; so that at
the end, we see even Ivan inclined to believe it—ironically, through his encoun-
ters with the devil. Consequently, rebellion against society’s moral order, par-
ticularly crime, is a rebellion against God; against the bonds that bind human
beings to Him, “to Zossima’s ‘other world”; and so, “against the bonds that
unite all men. The evil-doer or sinner severs himself or herself from God and
men, resulting in his or her isolation. The isolation is existential and spiritual,
not ontological; hence the sinner is still redeemable, being still bound to God, to
others and to Nature. But the sinner experiences the suffering in which they
result. That is the punishment for sin. For even the sinner craves for the restora-
tion of the bond he has rebelled against… In Mitya’s words, “the sinner still
cherishes the ideal of the Madonna even though he lives in accordance with the
ideal of Sodom.”419
The characters this recalls are Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, to-
gether with Ivan and Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov. Raskolnikov refuses to
admit consciously that he has committed a crime by murdering the usurer and
her sister. To the very end (even perhaps in the Epilogue) he refuses to admit
consciously that he has committed a crime. Nevertheless, he is isolated even
from his mother, his sister Dounia, and Sonia, the persons closest to him. He
cannot share his dreadful secret with others, must hide it from everyone. But his
isolation from Sonia is less than his isolation from his mother and sister, since
Sonia, though a sinner too, is only involuntarily, so not willfully as in his case;
while his mother and sister are not sinners. That in addition to his love for
Sonia, makes it possible for him to confess his crime to her. Less graphically
depicted is Svidrigailov’s isolation, which is even more drastic than in
Raskolnikov’s case, not being mitigated by love, but by sheer animal passion.
||
418 Ibid., p. 10.
419 Ibid.
And because he fails to overcome his isolation, thanks to Dounia’s efforts, he

finally commits suicide.
To believe in God and accept the divine moral order includes believing that
“man, despite his evil ways, can and does harbor the ideal of the Madonna even
when he follows the ideal of Sodom”; and that the sufferings of the innocent 420
are not in vain. The divine benevolent order is hidden behind or beneath the
suffering, evil and ugliness that are so glaring, so apparent. Unlike these, it
cannot be seen with the body’s eyes or touched with the hands. Faith is the
soul’s eyes and hands, which can see the unseen, touch and feel the intangible.
Only through the “mystic sense” of faith about which Farther Zossima speaks,
would the unseen benevolent order, therefore God Himself, be apprehended.421
A fundamental relation exists between pride or rebellion, and reason, inti-
mated in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. 422 Ivan’s tragedy
is the result of his desire to discover rationally a benevolent order in the world
in the absence of which he cannot accept the world and must return his ticket to
immortality to God. He lacks faith, torn between doubt and the desire to believe.
But the desire never triumphs over his powerful intellect.423 Father Zossima
represents the dominance of faith over intellect and passion, while Mitya repre-
sents the dominance of passion, instinct and the weak, precipitous will over
intellect and over faith. He murders his father in his heart or mind. As a result
his consciousness of isolation becomes more intense while he is in prison before
being sent for hard labor in Siberia.424
Spiritual isolation resulting from intellectual crimes is not only greater—it is
also, being more conscious, more painful. Hence Raskolnikov’s and Ivan’s
heightened incisive self-analysis and self-consciousness haunt and torment
them with overwhelming consciousness of isolation.425
During his exhortations to the other monks Father Zossima asks: “‘What is
hell?’…, and answers: ‘I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to
love.’”426 “… That suffering is not external but within them.’”427 Those who, like
Fyodor Karamazov, the father of the Karamazov brothers, “look for the hooks
||
420 Cf. the suffering of the Marmeladov children, including the suffering of the child-like
Sonia, and of the children depicted by Ivan in “Pro and Contra.”
421 Ibid., p. 11.
422 Ibid.
423 Ibid. p. 12.
424 Ibid.
425 Ibid..
426 Ibid., p. 13, Garnett, p. 343.
427 Ibid., Garnett, p. 344.
with which the devils would drag the sinner down to hell, cannot find hell.”
That is the reason for Ivan’s desperate attempts to prove to himself that the
devil, who visits him, is only part of his own self, is an ironic failure. In trying to
prove that, he unwittingly tries to prove the reality of hell, which is within the
self. In trying to prove that, he unwittingly tries to prove that he himself is in
hell all the time! His inability to love is the result of his spiritual isolation.
Therefore hell is nothing but spiritual isolation. Isolation from God means the
ascendancy of hatred and love’s absence or death. It explains why for Ivan,
believing in God and immortality is a necessary condition for one’s loving oth-
ers. Thus Father Zossima says that “one who does not believe in God will not
believe in God’s people. He who believes in God’s people will see His holiness
too, even though he had not believed in it till then. ”428 “This shows Ivan’s in-
consistency when, in ‘Pro and Contra,’ he says that he believes in God’s exist-
ence and His goodness but cannot accept His world. He is more consistent later
on when he rejects God’s existence as well as the notion of the world’s good-
ness. Again, in Crime and Punishment we are told by Raskolnikov that he be-
lieves in God’s existence, but (leaving out the Epilogue, which is ambiguous)
God never becomes a reality to him. In this connection we are again reminded of
Raskolnikov’s inability to reciprocate his mother’s and sister’s love; his inability
of give himself fully to Sonia. We see the same inability in another form in
Svidrigailov. But Svidrigailov confuses material giving with the spiritual giving
of oneself, which is love. Other than Father Zossima only Alyosha can love fully,
disinterestedly, selflessly, without jealousy or possessiveness, joyfully. He is not
isolated spiritually from his fellow human beings, whether intellectual or non-
intellectual, old or young.”429
So far I have talked about isolation in relation to sin and crime in general.
But isolation is not limited to them. Crime and sin are a form of illegitimate
will’s assertion, one form of the individual’s rebelliousness. Other forms of ille-
gitimate assertion of individuality exist, and isolation is their penalty too. Isola-
tion is the penalty for all one’s attempts to realize one’s personal goals, to satis-
fy one’s own desires, without regard to the welfare of others. The “mysterious
visitor” who we see in Father Zossima’s early life tells him about his own cher-
ished dreams of universal brotherhood, maintaining that that will come after
men’s passage through the period of isolation. To Zossima’s question “What do
you mean by isolation?” he replies:
||
428 Ibid. Garnett, p. 310.
429 Ibid., pp. 13-14.
Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age…
For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible,
but meanwhile all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life
but self-destruction. For instead of self-realisation he ends by
arriving at complete solitude. ... Everywhere in these days men have,
in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be
found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.430
Isolation therefore means impoverished personality and spirit. By subordinating

himself to society the individual realizes himself or herself. It means subordina-
tion to the moral order, which is the condition for the existence and good of
society. It is the moral order that instructs us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
These things explain why Father Zossima is opposed to asceticism, insisting
that one serves religion only by living with the people, whether within or out-
side a monastery’s walls. “Raskolnikov believes that there are individuals who
are above morality and society, though he holds that in the case of such privi-
leged persons overstepping the bounds of morality is (only?) justified by the
desire to serve mankind. Here the end is the way it should be, but the means is
wrong. Ivan believes that if there is no God and immortality, everything is per-
mitted, and tries to act in accordance with it. But he soon discovers to his sor-
row that he cannot liberate himself from morality and from society. And the
point which appears to emerge from Crime and Punishment as a whole is that
that failure is the result of the impossibility of one’s freeing oneself from morali-
ty, society, from human love and responsibility. In Ivan’s case, that is also im-
possible not because he is too much a child of his particular society and its
Christian moral code, but because morality is stamped on his soul. It is part of
him as a human being.”431
If all human beings are bound to one another by the bond that unites them
to God, they will also be bound to Nature, which is also the handiwork of God.
Father Zossima speaks of everything in nature as praying to God. “Every blade
of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvelously know their path,
though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and
continually accomplish it themselves…”432
And again: “All creation and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word,
singing glory to God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by
||
430 Ibid., p. 14. Garnett, pp. 321-322.
431 Ibid. , p. 15.
432 Ibid. Garnett, p. 311.
the mystery of their sinless life.’” 433 If so we would expect that isolation from
nature would be part of isolation through sin or other forms of illegitimate as-
sertion of one’s will; that the solitary person would be incapable of loving na-
ture’s beauties and of having any communion with it. We also find the theme of
isolation from Nature in Crime and Punishment as well, but only in the back-
ground, insofar as for both Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov the grey, icy waters of
the Neva inspire only the thought of suicide, the complete rejection of life. In
sharp contrast, Father Zossima sees the universe as one vast ocean. He says:
“[All] is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up
movement at the other end of the earth.” 434 Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov on the
other hand see only their own isolation reflected in the river’s unresponsive
waters. What a contrast with Ippolit in The Idiot, the consumptive lad who has
only a few months to live! Far from thinking of committing suicide, he thinks
only of the welfare of others as he gazes at the river: that he could seek to do
some good on a small scale rather than on a large scale, given that he does not
have much time to live.435 In The Brothers Karamazov Mitya too appears to un-
derstand man’s bond with Nature. Also compare Father Zossima’s words about
the essential connection between believing in God and “every leaf … striving to
the Word, singing glory to God.”436
At one point in Section (d), entitled “The mysterious visitor,” the mysterious
visitor to Father Zossima says: “Heaven lies hidden within all of us…,” and,
“Unless you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brother-
hood will not come to pass. It will come to pass”—giving the reader the gist of
Dostoevsky’s conception of the hope of spiritual communion”—but the mysteri-
ous visitor adds: “first we have to go through the period of isolation.”437
To Father Zossima’s question: “What do you mean by isolation?” the visitor
replies: “Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it
has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to
keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possi-
ble fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining
fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends up
arriving at complete solitude.” 438 “… For he is accustomed to rely upon himself
||
433 Ibid. Garnett, ibid.
434 Ibid., Garnett, pp. 383-384.
435 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
436 Garnett, ibid., p. 351.
437 Ibid. p.363.
438 Ibid.
alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to be-
lieve in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear
he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. … The
true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual
effort. But this terrible solitariness must inevitably have an end, and all will
suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another.”439
Again: “What follows form this multiplication of desires? In the rich, isola-
tion and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been
given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants.”440
14.2 The Theme of Communion and the “Presence” Of God

I gave a little earlier the gist of Dostoevsky’s conception of the theme of com-
munion in the mysterious visitor’s statement that “Heaven lies within all of us.”
Elaborating that theme, the visitor continues: “And that we are all responsible
to all for all, apart from our own sins, … And in very truth, so soon as men un-
derstand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living
reality.” “When will that come to pass? and will it ever come to pass? Is it not
simply a dream of ours?” Father Zossima bitterly cries out. To which the visitor
replies: “What, then, you don’t believe it, … you preach it and don’t believe it
yourself?” To which the visitor replies: “[I]t will come to pass without doubt; it
will come but not now, … Until you have become really… a brother to every
one,441 brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind
of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with
equal consideration for all… It will come to pass, but first we have to go through
the period of isolation.” 442
Again, “Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man… If we
were brothers, there would be fraternity… We preserve the image of Christ, and
it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. So may it be, so
may it be!”443
||
439 Ibid.
440 Ibid., pp.206-207.
441 Shades of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in his Symphony # 9?
442 Garnett, ibid., pp. 362-363.
443 Ibid., p. 379.
The Theme of Communion and the “Presence” Of God | 209
In Section (g) Of prayer, of love, and of contact with other worlds, Father
Zossima essentially defines his conception of the theme of communion in terms
of love. For instance he says:
Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance

of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love
all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand
in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love
the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you
love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery
in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to
comprehend it better every day. And you will come
at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing
love. Love the animals: God has given them the
rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. “444
I shall conclude with Father Zossima’s in effect partial response to Ivan’s

“Grand Inquisitor.” In section (g) Of prayer, of love, and of contact with other
worlds, he, inter alia, says:
If after your kiss [referring to the criminal] he

goes away untouched, mocking
at you, do not let that be a stumbling block to you.
It shows his time has not yet come, but it will come
in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not
he then another in his place will understand and suffer,
and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be
fulfilled.445
||
444 Ibid., pp. 382-383.
445 Ibid., p.385.
Name and Subject index
Action 110–11, 125, 133–134, 137–142, 159, Garbo, Greta 109, 111
200, 211 Garcia, L., Laura 182–183
deliberate, intentional 30–62 Genocide 10, 143–150, 152–155, 157
unintentional 42 Gibson, Arthur 195
Aesthetic Force 69 Grice, H.P. 24–26, 29, 31, 35
Ansari, Abdullah 170–171 Grimaud, Helene 76
Ansel Adams 125–126 Gandhi, Mahatma 160
Armenian Genocide 143, 147,150, 154 Guggenheim Museum 87–98, 106
Austin, J. L. 11–15
Haiku 123–124, 178
Balakian, Peter 151, 153 Hiddenness of God 12, 181–182, 184,194,202
Bergman, Ingmar 11, 15, 27, 184–196 Himalayas 116, 126
Body language 10, 11, 13, 15, 19–24, 26, 28,
30–41, 44–45, 49, 51, 53, 110–112, 165, Illocutionary speech-act 14, 19, 21, 34, 44
191 Illocutionary forces 13, 47, 211
Brandt, Miles 44 Infelicity 33, 36, 45–46, 61
Buddhism 123, 174–175, 182–183
“By”–formula 12–13 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 143, 182, 197–209
Dr. Faustus 82, 86, 211
Cage, John 69
Cathedrals 103, 108 Japanese gardens 119
Chaplin, Charlie 109–110 Jewish holocaust 150–151
Child soldiers 143, 156 Ja’mi,’ Nur–addin ‘Abd–Alrahman 170–172,
Commitment 13, 15, 30–32 174
Communication 18–20, 22, 24–26, 30, 32, Kalupahana, David J. 174–175
50–51, 60, 147, 152, 165, 181, 191 Kant, Immanuel 97, 116
Kurosawa, Akira 111, 127
Dance 79, 96, 117, 119
Daniel Howard-Snyder 181 Landscape painting 125
Doing 15, 18, 23, 32–34, 36, 38, 40–42, 44– Last Year at Marienbad 112–113, 128
49, 53–55, 85, 161, 197, 112, 133–134 Louvre 95, 97, 106–107
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 143, 182, 197–209
Meaning 30, 32–37, 39, 42–43, 47– 51, 59,
Ethnic cleansing 143, 154–155, 157 55–70, 73–75, 81, 83–84, 86, 88–89,
Expressive uses of “By”– formula 37, 40, 66, 103–104, 134, 136, 151–152, 165–166,
94–95 168, 178, 194, 197
literal 194
Faust 82, 86–88 symbolic 34, 59, 68, 103–104
Force 13–15, 22, 32, 46–48, 72 signification 9, 7–8, 14, 34, 37, 48, 67,
Form 10, 12–16, 18–23. 30, 32–36, 38–47, 197
51–53, 56, 58–61, 64, 69, 73–74, 77, 79– significance 7–8, 10, 37, 42, 67, 70, 78,
81, 83, 85, 88, 92, 96, 98–99, 100 101, 103–105, 178
Formal gardens 115, 119–121
Forms of doing 7, 12, 18, 46–47, 53 Misfiring 33, 36, 45–46, 61
Name and Subject index | 211
Meister Eckhart 169 Stace, Walter 168–169

Movement 10–11, 15, 28, 32–35, 37, 40–43, Style 73–74, 80, 84, 106–107
68, 70, 72w–74, 78–79, 83, 96–97 Still Life Paintings 116, 125
Mysticism 165–169, 172, 174, 176, 182 St. John of the Cross 90 166–168, 170, 182
St. Teresa Of Jesus (of Avila) 176–178, 208
Panikkar, Raumondo 183 Strawson, P.F. 24–26
Perlocutionary (speech)-act 15, 17
Practice 31, 33, 38, 40 Taj Mahal 97, 101, 103
dispersed 38–40 Teleoaffecive Structures 40
Point 48–49, 61 Tempo 30, 38, 56, 65–72, 74, 76
Tharp, Twyla 79
Rashomon 111, 113, 127 The Sublime 97, 116–117, 146, 170, 202,
Refugees 143, 151, 156–158 208–209
Resnais, Alain 125 Timbre 75
Rhythm 8, 74, 78–85 Theme of Communion 208–209
Rijksmuseum 97–98, 107 Theme of Isolation 208–209
Rumi, Jalal–ad–Din 166, 176, 173 The Silent 10–11, 14, 16, 20–22, 24, 28, 30,
184, 197, 200–184, 197, 200
Searle, J.L. 13–14, 33–34, 133 The Silenced 146
Schatzki, Theodore R. 30–31 The Voiceless 143, 155
Signals 30, 134 Tolstoy, Leo 178–179
Silent music 71, 78 Tonal Color 74–75, 77
Social practices 30, 38–39 Turgenev, Ivan 128–130
Speech–act 3, 9, 12–16, 19, 21, 34–36, 40,
44–45, 135 Untouchables 143, 159–160
Sex Slaves 143,156–157
Signs 134, 173, 191, 199 Vanderveken, Daniel, Susumu Kubo 22, 47
Signals 30, 134 Van Gogh Museum 98, 197
Silent music 71, 78
Social practices 30, 38–39 Wajnryb, Ruth 144, 150
Speech-act 3, 9, 12–16, 21, 34–36, 40, 44– Wittgenstein, Ludwig 33, 38
45, 133

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Haig Khatchadourian

How to Do Things with Silence

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin

Semper amata eritis et memoria retenta

Haig Khatchadourian, Shadows of Time

Part I: Ways of “Doing”

1 Informal ‘Logic’ and Contextual Meanings of Silence | 7

2 The Logic of Silence cont’d.: “Pragmatics” of Silence | 18

3 Body Language as a Form of Silent Doing | 32

4 Physical Action as a Form of Silent Doing | 41

5 Silence and the Inner Life | 53

5.6 Expressive and Communicative uses of the “In”-/“By”-Formulae in

Part II: Aesthetics of Silence

6 Silence in the Temporal Arts I: Music | 65

7 Silence in the Temporal Arts II: The Literary Arts | 80

8 Silence in the Visual-Spatial Arts | 93

Part III: Ethics and Politics of Silence

10 The Ethics of Silence | 133

11 Ethical Political Social Dimensions of Silence | 143

Part IV: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life

12 Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life | 165

13 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – I | 181

14 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – II | 197

The preceding are all examples of meaningful silence—of silence possessing

certain concepts necessary for a clear understanding of silence in any area of

“Meanings” and Uses of Silence

In addition to meaning in sense (1), and by virtue of it, a silence-in-context

1.2 Speech-Acts And The ‘In’- And ‘By’-formulae

following chapters. Whether an analogue of Searle’s concept of illocutionary

1.3 Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Speech Acts

relation to illocutionary and perlocutionary speech-acts refers to speaker-

Conditions of Illocutionary acts

In “Conditions of Illocutionary Acts” I distinguished two types of conditions of

stance of informational communication, a response to or a counter-communi-

2.2 Silent Expression/Communication

Restatement of stages/levels 1–5 situations in terms of the In-phase of acts of

Stage 1 has no “By-phase” analogous to the corresponding to any illocutionary

As we can see, Strawson’s account of “full communication” with respect to

2.3 Non-Standard Situations in Silent

In addition to the standard sorts of situations of the use of In-acts of silence I

Silence & “Conversation”

In “An Approach for modeling and simulating conversations,”27 Bernard Moulin

responsibility (or the commitment) imposed on language users by the putative

Silence & Social Practices

Practices—and institutions—are conventional social constructions governed by

is not a practice or part of any human practice. Whether, nonetheless, any of

In this chapter I shall consider body language in relation to silence as well as to

certain actions, views or positions, relationships, and so on, as in the case of

mean different things to different members of the audience or may be interpret-

3.2 Nature of body language

(1) Body Language as a kind of Doing

effects on others can be described in “by”-sentences-in-use, the analogue of

3.3 Conditions of Successful Body Language

a) Conditions of “In”-body language; i.e., body language as expressive of vari-

3.4 Possible Meanings of Body Language

“The meaning of a glance in context C may mean:

3.5 Silences as “Dispersed” Practices

In Social Practices; A Wittengenteinian Approach to human activity and the So-

commemorations; etc. Similarly conventional silences as part of dispersed prac-

4.1 Movement & Physical Action

In Intending and Acting: Toward A Naturalized Action Theory,51 Myles Brand

Part I: Ways of “Doing” 

1 Informal ‘Logic’ and Contextual Meanings of Silence | 7

2 The Logic of Silence cont’d.: “Pragmatics” of Silence | 18

3 Body Language as a Form of Silent Doing | 32

4 Physical Action as a Form of Silent Doing | 41

5 Silence and the Inner Life | 53

Part II: Aesthetics of Silence 

6 Silence in the Temporal Arts I: Music | 65

7 Silence in the Temporal Arts II: The Literary Arts | 80

8 Silence in the Visual-Spatial Arts | 93

Part III: Ethics and Politics of Silence 

10 The Ethics of Silence | 133

11 Ethical Political Social Dimensions of Silence | 143

Part IV: Silence and the Spiritual/Religious Life 

12 Silence in the Spiritual-Religious Life | 165

13 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – I | 181

14 Symbolic Uses of Silence in the Spiritual/Religious Life – II | 197