THE AESTHETICS OF SILENCE / SUSAN SONTAG

I
Every era has to reinvent the project of "spirituality" for itself. (Spirituality = plans, terminologies,
ideas of deportment aimed at the resolution of painful structural contradictions inherent in the human
situation, at the completion of human consciousness, at transcendence.)
In the modern era, one of the most active metaphors for the spiritual project is "art." The activities of
the painter, the musician, the poet, the dancer et al, once they ere grouped together under that
generic name (a relatively recent move), have proved to !e a peculiarly adapta!le site on hich to stage
the formal dramas !esetting consciousness, each individual or" of art !eing a more or less astute
paradigm for regulating or reconciling these contradictions. #f course, the site needs continual
refur!ishing. $hatever goal is set for art eventually proves restrictive, matched against the idest goals
of consciousness. %rt, itself a form of mystification, endures a succession of crises of demystification&
older artistic goals are assailed and, ostensi!ly, replaced& outgron maps of consciousness are redran.
'ut hat supplies all these crises ith their energy ( an energy held in common, so to spea" ( is the
very unification of numerous, )uite disparate activities into a single genus. %t the moment at hich "art"
comes into !eing, the modern period of art !egins. *rom then forard, any of the activities therein
su!sumed !ecomes a profoundly pro!lematic activity, each of hose procedures and, ultimately, hose
very right to e+ist, can !e called into )uestion.
*olloing on the promotion of the arts into "art" comes the leading myth a!out art, that of the
"a!soluteness" of the artist,s activity. In its first, more unreflective version, this myth considered art as
an e+pression of human consciousness, consciousness see"ing to "no itself. (The critical principles
generated !y this myth ere fairly easily arrived at- some e+pressions ere more complete, more
enno!ling, more informative, richer than others.) The later version of the myth posits a more comple+,
tragic relation of art to consciousness. .enying that art is mere e+pression, the neer myth, ours, rather
relates art to the mind,s need or capacity for self/estrangement. %rt is no longer understood as
consciousness e+pressing and therefore, implicitly, affirming itself. %rt is not consciousness per se, !ut
rather its antidote ( evolved from ithin consciousness itself. (The critical principles generated !y this
myth ere much harder to get at.)
The neer myth, derived from a post/psychological conception of consciousness, installs ithin the
activity of art many of the parado+es involved in attaining an a!solute state of !eing descri!ed !y the
great religious mystics. %s the activity of the mystic must end in a via negative, a theology of 0od,s
a!sence, a craving for the cloud of un"noingness !eyond "noledge and for the silence !eyond
speech, so art must tend toard anti/art, the elimination of the "su!ject" (the "o!ject," the "image"),
the su!stitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence.
In the early, linear version of art,s relation to consciousness, a struggle as held to e+ist !eteen the
"spiritual" integrity of the creative impulses and the distracting "materiality" of ordinary life, hich
thros up so many o!stacles in the path of authentic su!limation. 'ut the neer version, in hich art is
part of a dialectical transaction ith consciousness, poses a deeper, more frustrating conflict- The "spirit"
see"ing em!odiment in art clashes ith the "material" character of art itself. %rt is unmas"ed as
gratuitous, and the very concreteness of the artist,s tools (and, particularly in the case of language, their
historicity) appears as a trap. 1racticed in a orld furnished ith second/hand perceptions, and
specifically confounded !y the treachery of ords, the activity of the artist is cursed ith mediacy. %rt
!ecomes the enemy of the artist, for it denies him the reali2ation, the transcendence, he desires.
Therefore, art comes to !e estimated as something to !e overthron. % ne element enters the art/
or" and !ecomes constitutive of it- the appeal (tacit or overt) for its on a!olition ( and, ultimately,
for the a!olition of art itself.
II
The scene changes to an empty room.
3im!aud has gone to %!yssinia to ma"e his fortune in the slave trade. $ittgenstein has first chosen
schoolteaching, then menial or" as a hospital orderly. .uchamp has turned to chess. %nd,
accompanying these e+emplary renunciations of a vocation, each man has declared that he considers his
previous achievements in poetry. philosophy, or art as trifling, of no importance.
'ut the choice of permanent silence doesn,t negate their or". #n the contrary, it imparts
retroactively an added poer and authority to hat as !ro"en off& disavoal of the or" !ecoming a
ne source of its validity, a certificate of unchallengea!le seriousness. That seriousness consists in not
regarding art (or philosophy practiced as an art form- $ittgenstein) as something hose seriousness
lasts forever, an "end," a permanent vehicle for spiritual am!ition. The truly serious attitude is one that
regards art as a "means" to something that can perhaps !e achieved only !y a!andoning art& judged
more impatiently, art is a false ay or (the ord of the .ada artist 4ac)ues 5ach6) a stupidity.
Though no longer a confession, art is more than ever a deliverance, an e+ercise in asceticism.
Through it, the artist !ecomes purified ( of himself and, eventually, of his art, The artist (if not art
itself) is still engaged in a progress toard "the good." 'ut formerly, the artist,s good as mastery of
and fulfillment in his art. 7o it,s suggested that the highest good for the artist is to reach that point
here those goals of e+cellence !ecome insignificant to him, emotionally and ethically, and he is more
satisfied !y !eing silent than !y finding a voice in art. Silence in this sense, as termination, proposes a
mood of ultimacy antithetical to the mood informing the self/conscious artist,s traditional serious use of
silence- as a 2one of meditation, preparation for spiritual ripening, an ordeal hich ends in gaining the
right to spea". (8f. 5alery, 3il"e)
9
So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has ith an
audience. Silence is the furthest e+tension of that reluctance to communicate, that am!ivalence a!out
ma"ing contact ith the audience hich is a leading motif of modern art, ith its tireless commitment to
the "ne" and:or the "esoteric" Silence is the artist,s ultimate other/orldly gesture& !y silence, he frees
himself from servile !ondage to the orld, hich appears as patron, client, audience, antagonist, ar!iter,
and distorter of his or".
Still, in this renunciation of "society," one cannot fail to perceive a highly social gesture. Some of the
cues for the artist,s eventual li!eration from the need to practice his vocation come from o!serving his
fello artists and measuring himself against them. %n e+emplary decision of this sort can !e made only
after the artist has demonstrated that he possesses genius and e+ercised that genius authoritatively.
;aving already surpassed his peers, !y the standards hich he ac"noledges, pride has only one place
left to go. *or, to !e a victim of the craving for silence is to !e, in still a further sense, superior to
everyone else. It suggests that the artist has had the it to as" more )uestions than other people, as
ell as that he possesses stronger nerves and higher standards of e+cellence. (That the artist can
persevere in the interrogation of his art until he or it is e+hausted isn,t in dou!t. %s 3en6 8har has
ritten, "7o !ird has the heart to sing in a thic"et of )uestions")
III
The e+emplary modern artist,s choice of silence isn,t often carried to this point of final simplification,
so that he !ecomes literally silent. <ore typically, he continues spea"ing, !ut in a manner that his
audience can,t hear. <ost valua!le art in our time has !een e+perienced !y audiences as a move into
silence (or unintelligi!ility or invisi!ility or inaudi!ility)& a dismantling of the artist,s competence, his
responsi!le sense of vocation ( and therefore as an aggression against them.
<odern art,s chronic ha!it of displeasing, provo"ing, or frustrating its audience can !e regarded as a
limited, vicarious participation in the ideal of silence hich has !een elevated as a prime standard of
seriousness in the contemporary scene.
'ut it is also a contradictory form of participation in the ideal of silence. It,s contradictory not only
!ecause the artist still continues ma"ing or"s of art, !ut also !ecause the isolation of the or" from its
audience never lasts. $ith the passage of time and the intervention of neer, more difficult or"s, the
artist,s transgression !ecomes ingratiating, eventually legitimate. 0oethe accused =leist of having
ritten his plays for an "invisi!le theatre." 'ut in time the invisi!le theatre !ecomes "visi!le" The ugly
and discordant and senseless !ecome "!eautiful." The history of art is a se)uence of successful
transgressions.
The characteristic aim of modern art, to !e unaccepta!le to its audience, can !e regarded as the
inverse statement of the unaccepta!ility to the artist of the very presence of an audience ( in the
familiar sense, an assem!ly of voyeuristic spectators. %t least since 7iet2sche o!served in The Birth of
Tragedy that an audience of spectators as e "no it, those present hom the actors ignore, as
un"non to the 0ree"s, a good deal of contemporary art seems moved !y the desire to eliminate the
audience from art, an enterprise that often presents itself as an attempt to eliminate "art" altogether. (In
favor of "life">)
8ommitted to the idea that the poer of art is located in its poer to negate, the ultimate eapon in
the artist,s inconsistent ar ith his audience is to verge closer and closer to silence. The sensory or
conceptual gap !eteen the artist and his audience, the space of the missing or ruptured dialogue, can
also constitute the grounds for an ascetic affirmation. Samuel 'ec"ett spea"s of "my dream of an art
unresentful of its insupera!le indigence and too proud for the farce of giving and receiving." 'ut there is
no a!olishing a minimal transaction, a minimal e+change of gifts, just as there is no talented and
rigorous asceticism that doesn,t produce a gain (rather than a loss) in the capacity for pleasure.
%nd none of the aggressions committed intentionally or inadvertently !y modern artists have
succeeded in either a!olishing the audience or transforming it into something else. (% community
engaged in a common activity>) They cannot. %s long as art is understood and valued as an "a!solute"
activity, it ill !e a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the !est art defines itself !y
essentially "priestly" aims, it presupposes and confirms the e+istence of a relatively passive, never fully
initiated, voyeuristic laity hich is regularly convo"ed to atch, listen, read, or hear ( and then sent
aay.
The most that the artist can do is to play ith the different terms in this situation vis/a/vis the
audience and himself. To analyse the idea of silence is to analyse his various alternatives ithin this
essentially unaltera!le situation.
I5
;o literally can the notion of silence !e used ith respect to art>
Silence e+ists as a decision ( in the e+emplary suicide of the artist (=leist, ?autreamont), ho
there!y testifies that he has gone "too far"& and in such model renunciations !y the artist of his vocation
already cited.
Silence also e+ists as a punishment ( self/punishment, in the e+emplary madness of artists
(;olderlin, %rtaud) ho demonstrate that one,s very sanity may !e the price of trespassing the accepted
frontiers of consciousness& and, of course, in penalties (ranging from censorship and physical destruction
of art/or"s to fines, e+ile, prison for the artist) meted out !y "society" for the artist,s spiritual
nonconformity or for su!version of the group sensi!ility.
'ut silence can,t e+ist in a literal sense as the e+perience of an audience. It ould mean that the
spectator as aare of no stimulus or that he as una!le to ma"e a response. 'ut this can,t happen or
!e induced programmatically. The non/aareness of any stimulus, the ina!ility to ma"e a response, can
@
result only from a defective presentness on the part of the spectator, or a misunderstanding of his on
reactions (misled !y restrictive ideas a!out hat ould !e a "relevant" response). 'ut so far as any
audience consists of sentient !eings in a situation, there can !e no such thing as having no response at
all.
7or can silence, in its literal state, e+ist as the property of an art or" ( even of or"s li"e
.uchamp,s readymades or 8age,s 4'33", in hich the artist has ostentatiously done no more to satisfy
any esta!lished criteria of art than set the o!ject in a gallery or situate the performance on a concert
stage. There is no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form. Something is
neutral only ith respect to something else. (%n intention> %n e+pectation>) %s a property of the or" of
art itself, silence can e+ist only in a coo"ed or nonliteral sense. (1ut otherise- if a or" e+ists at all, its
silence is only one element in it.) Instead of ra or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the
direction of an ever/receding hori2on of silence ( moves hich, !y definition, can,t ever !e fully
consummated. #ne result is a type of art hich many people characteri2e pejoratively as dum!,
depressed, ac)uiescent, cold. 'ut these privative )ualities e+ist in a conte+t of the artist,s o!jective
intention, hich is alays discerni!le. To cultivate the metaphoric silence that,s suggested !y
conventionally lifeless su!jects (as in much of 1op %rt) and to construct "minimal" forms hich seem to
lac" emotional resonance are in themselves vigorous, often tonic choices.
%nd, finally, even ithout imputing o!jective intentions to the art/or", there remains the
inescapa!le truth a!out perception- the positivity of all e+perience at every moment of it. %s 4ohn 8age
has insisted, "there is no such thing as silence. Something is alays happening that ma"es a sound."
(8age has descri!ed ho, even in a soundless cham!er, he still heard at least to things- his heart!eat
and the coursing of the !lood in his head). Similarly, there is no such thing as empty space. %s long as a
human eye is loo"ing there is alays something to see. To loo" at something that,s "empty" is still to !e
loo"ing, still to !e seeing something ( if only the ghosts of one,s on e+pectations. In order to perceive
fullness, one must retain an acute sense of the emptiness hich mar"s it off& conversely, in order to
perceive emptiness, one must apprehend other 2ones of the orld as full. (In Through the Looking
Glass,%lice comes upon a shop "that seemed to !e full of all manner of curious things ( !ut the oddest
part of it all as that henever she loo"ed hard at any shelf, to ma"e out e+actly hat it had on it, that
particular shelf as alays )uite empty, though the others round it ere croded full as they could
hold.")
"Silence" never ceases to imply its opposite and to demand on its presence. 4ust as there can,t !e
"up" ithout "don" or "left" ithout "right," so one must ac"noledge a surrounding environment of
sound or language in order to recogni2e silence. 7ot only does silence e+ist in a orld full of speech and
other sounds, !ut any given silence ta"es its identity as a stretch of time !eing perforated !y sound.
(Thus, much of the !eauty of ;arpo <ar+,s muteness derives from his !eing surrounded !y manic
tal"ers.)
% genuine emptiness, a pure silence, are not feasi!le ( either conceptually or in fact. If only !ecause
the art/or" e+ists in a orld furnished ith many other things, the artist ho creates silence or
emptiness must produce something dialectical- a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or
elo)uent silence. Silence remains, inescapa!ly, a form of speech (in many instances, of complaint or
indictment) and an element in a dialogue.
5
%esthetic programs for a radical reduction of means and effects in art ( including the ultimate
demand, for the renunciation of art itself ( can,t !e ta"en at face value, undialectically. These are
neither consistent policies for artists nor merely hostile gestures aimed at audiences. Silence and allied
ideas (li"e emptiness, reduction, the "2ero degree") are !oundary notions ith a comple+ set of uses&
leading terms of a particular spiritual and cultural rhetoric.
To descri!e silence as a rhetorical term is, of course. far from condemning this rhetoric as fraudulent
or in !ad faith. The truth of myths is never a literal truth. The myths of contemporary art can !e
evaluated only in terms of the diversity and fruitfulness of their application.
In my opinion, the myths of silence and emptiness are a!out as nourishing and via!le as one could
hope to see devised in an "unholesome" time ( hich is, of necessity, a time in hich "unholesome"
psychic states furnish the energies for most superior or" in the arts today. %t the same time, one can,t
deny the pathos of these myths.
This pathos arises from the fact that the idea of silence allos, essentially, only to types of valua!le
development. Either it is ta"en to the point of utter self/negation (as art) or else practiced in a form that
is heroically, ingeniously inconsistent.
5I
The art of our time is noisy ith appeals for silence.
% co)uettish, even cheerful nihilism. #ne recogni2es the imperative of silence, !ut goes on spea"ing
anyay. .iscovering that one has nothing to say, one see"s a ay to say that
'ec"ett has announced the ish that art ould renounce all further projects for distur!ing matters on
"the plane of the feasi!le," that art ould retire, "eary of puny e+ploits. eary of pretending to !e a!le,
of !eing a!le, of doing a little !etter the same old thing, of going further along a dreary road." The
alternative is an art consisting of "the e+pression that there is nothing to e+press, nothing ith hich to
e+press, nothing from hich to e+press, no poer to e+press, no desire to e+press, together ith the
o!ligation to e+press." *rom here does this o!ligation derive> The very aesthetics of the death ish
seems to ma"e of that ish something incorrigi!ly lively.
%pollinaire says, "4,ai fait des gestes !lancs parmi les solitudes." 'ut he is ma"ing gestures.
A
Since the artist can,t em!race silence literally and remain an artist, hat the rhetoric of silence
indicates is a determination to pursue his activity more deviously than ever !efore. #ne ay is indicated
!y 'reton,s notion of the "full margin." The artist is enjoined to devote himself to filling up the periphery
of the art/space, leaving the central area of usage !lan". %rt !ecomes privative, anemic ( as suggested
!y the title of .uchamp,s only effort at film ma"ing, "%nemic 8inema," a or" from the period 9B@C/@D.
'ec"ett descri!es the idea of an "impoverished painting." painting hich is "authentically fruitless,
incapa!le of any image hatsoever." #ne of 4er2y 0rotos"i,s manifestoes for his Theatre ?a!oratory in
1oland is called "1lea for a 1oor Theatre." 'ut these programs for art,s impoverishment must not !e
understood simply as terroristic admonitions to audiences, !ut as strategies for improving the audience,s
e+perience. The notions of silence, emptiness, reduction, s"etch out ne prescriptions for loo"ing,
hearing, etc. ( specifically, either for having a more immediate, sensuous e+perience of art or for
confronting the art or" in a more conscious, conceptual ay.
5II
8onsider the connection !eteen the mandate for a reduction of means and effects in art, hose
hori2on is silence, and the faculty of attention. *or, in one of its aspects, art is a techni)ue for focusing
attention, for teaching s"ills of attention. ($hile this aspect of art is not peculiar to it ( the hole of the
human environment might !e descri!ed in this ay, as a pedagogic instrument ( it,s surely a particular.
intensive aspect of or"s of art.) The history of the arts is the discovery and formulation of a repertory
of o!jects on hich to lavish attention& one could trace e+actly and in order ho the eye of art has
panned over our environment, "naming," ma"ing its limited selection of things hich people then
!ecome aare of as significant, pleasura!le, comple+ entities. (%s #scar $ilde pointed out, people didn,t
see fogs !efore certain 9Bth century poets and painters taught them ho to& surely, no one sa as
much of the variety and su!tlety of the human face !efore the era of the movies.)
#nce, the artist,s tas" seemed to !e simply that of opening up ne areas and o!jects of attention.
That tas" is still ac"noledged, !ut it has !ecome pro!lematic. The very faculty of attention has come
into )uestion, and !een su!jected to more rigorous standards. %s 4asper 4ohns has said, "%lready it,s a
great deal to see anything clearly, for e don,t see anything clearly."
1erhaps the )uality of the attention e !ring to !ear on something ill !e !etter (less contaminated,
less distracted) the less e are offered. *urnished ith impoverished art, purged !y silence, one might
then !e a!le to !egin to transcend the frustrating selectivity of attention, ith its inevita!le distortions of
e+perience. Ideally, one should !e a!le to pay attention to everything.
The motion is toard less and less. 'ut never has "less" so ostentatiously advanced itself as "more."
In the light of the current myth, in hich art aims to !ecome a "total e+perience," soliciting total
attention. the strategies of impoverishment and reduction indicate the most e+alted am!ition, art could
adopt. Enderneath hat loo"s li"e a strenuous modesty, if not actual de!ility, one may discern an
energetic secular !lasphemy- the ish to attain the unfettered, unselective, total consciousness of
"0od."
5III
?anguage seems a privileged metaphor for e+pressing the mediated character of art/ma"ing and the
art/or". #n the one hand, speech is !oth an immaterial medium (compared ith, say, images) and a
human activity ith an apparently essential sta"e in the project of transcendence, of moving !eyond the
singular and contingent (all ords !eing a!stractions, only roughly !ased on or ma"ing reference to
concrete particulars). 'ut, on the other hand, language is the most impure, the most contaminated, the
most e+hausted of all the materials out of hich art is made.
This dual character of language ( its, a!stractness, and its "fallenness" in history ( can serve as a
microcosm of the unhappy character of the arts today. %rt is so far along the la!yrinthine pathays of
the project of transcendence that it,s hard to conceive of it turning !ac", short of the most drastic and
punitive "cultural revolution." Fet at the same time, art is foundering in the de!ilitating tide of hat once
seemed the croning achievement of European thought- secular historical consciousness. In little more
than to centuries, the consciousness of history has transformed itself from a li!eration, an opening of
doors, !lessed enlightenment, into an almost insupporta!le !urden of self/consciousness. It,s impossi!le
for the artist to rite a ord (or render an image or ma"e a gesture) that doesn,t remind him of
something. Ep to a point, the community and historicity of the artist,s means are implicit in the very fact
of intersu!jectivity- each person is a !eing/in/a/orld. 'ut this normal state of affairs is felt today
(particularly in the arts using language) as an e+traordinary, earying pro!lem.
%s 7iet2sche said- "#ur pre/eminence- e live in the age of comparison, e can verify as has never
!een verified !efore." Therefore, "e enjoy differently, e suffer differently- our instinctive activity is to
compare an unheard num!er of things."
?anguage is e+perienced not merely as something shared !ut something corrupted, eighed don !y
historical accumulation. Thus, for each conscious artist, the creation of a or" means dealing ith to
potentially antagonistic domains of meaning and their relationships. #ne is his on meaning (or lac" of
it)& the other is the set of second/order meanings hich !oth e+tend his on language and also
encum!er, compromise, and adulterate it. The artist ends !y choosing !eteen to inherently limiting
alternatives. ;e is forced to ta"e a position that,s either servile or insolent- either he flatters or appeases
his audience, giving them hat they already "no, or he commits an aggression against his audience,
giving them hat they don,t ant.
<odern art thus transmits in full the alienation produced !y historical consciousness. $hatever the
artist does is in (usually conscious) alignment ith something else already done, producing a compulsion
to !e continually rechec"ing his situation. ;is on stance ith those of his predecessors and
C
contemporaries. 8ompensating for this ignominious enslavement to history, the artist e+alts himself ith
the dream of a holly ahistorical, and therefore unalienated, art.
IG
%rt that is "silent" constitutes one approach to this visionary, ahistorical condition.
8onsider the difference !eteen "loo"ing" and "staring." % loo" is (at least, in part) voluntary& it is
also mo!ile, rising and falling in intensity as its foci of interest are ta"en up and then e+hausted. % stare
has, essentially, the character of a compulsion& it is steady, unmodulated, "fi+ed."
Traditional art invites a loo". %rt that,s silent engenders a stare. In silent art, there is (at least in
principle) no release from attention, !ecause there has never, in principle, !een any soliciting of it. %
stare is perhaps as far from history, as close to eternity, as contemporary art can get.
G
Silence is a metaphor for a cleansed, noninterfering vision, in hich one might envisage the ma"ing
of art/or"s that are unresponsive !efore !eing seen, unviola!le in their essential integrity !y human
scrutiny. The spectator ould approach art as he does a landscape. % landscape doesn,t demand from
the spectator his "understanding," his imputations of significance, his an+ieties and sympathies& it
demands, rather, his a!sence, that he not add anything to it. 8ontemplation, strictly spea"ing, entails
self/forgetfulness on the part of the spectator- an o!ject orthy of contemplation is one hich, in effect,
annihilates the perceiving su!ject.
It is to such an ideal plenitude to hich the audience can add nothing, analogous to the aesthetic
relation to "nature," that a great deal of contemporary art aspires ( through. various strategies of
!landness, of reduction, of deindividuation, of alogicality. In principle, the audience may not even add its
thought. %ll o!jects, so conceived, are truly full. This is hat 8age must mean hen, right after
e+plaining that there is no such thing as silence !ecause something is alays happening that ma"es a
sound, he says "7o one can have an idea once he starts really listening."
1lenitude ( e+periencing all the space as filled, so that ideas cannot enter ( means impenetra!ility,
opa)ueness. *or a person to !ecome silent is to !ecome opa)ue for the other& some!ody,s silence opens
up an array of possi!ilities for interpreting that silence, for imputing speech to it.
The ays in hich this opa)ueness induces an+iety, spiritual vertigo, is the theme of 'ergman,s
Persona. The theme is reinforced !y the to principal attri!utions one is invited to ma"e of the actress,
deli!erate silence. 8onsidered as a decision relating to herself, it is apparently the ay she has chosen to
give form to the ish for ethical purity& !ut it is also, as !ehavior, a means of poer, a species of
sadism, a virtually inviola!le position of strength from hich to manipulate and confound her nurse/
companion, ho is charged ith the !urden of tal"ing.
'ut it,s possi!le to conceive of the opa)ueness of silence more positively, free from an+iety. *or
=eats, the silence of the 0recian urn is a locus for spiritual nourishment- "unheard" melodies endure,
hereas those that pipe to "the sensual ear" decay. Silence is e)uated ith arresting time ("slo time").
#ne can stare endlessly at the 0recian urn. Eternity, in the argument of =eats, poem, is the only
interesting stimulus to thought and also presents us ith the sole occasion for coming to the end of
mental activity, hich means endless, unansered )uestions ("Thou, silent form, cost tease us out of
thought:%s cloth eternity"), so that one can arrive at a final e)uation of ideas ("'eauty is truth, truth
!eauty") hich is !oth a!solutely vacuous and completely full. =eats, poem )uite logically ends in a
statement that ill seem, if one hasn,t folloed his argument, li"e empty isdom, li"e !anality. Time, or
history, !ecomes the medium of definite, determinate thought. The silence of eternity prepares for a
thought !eyond thought, hich must appear from the perspective of traditional thin"ing and the familiar
uses of the mind as no thought at all ( though it may rather !e an em!lem of ne, "difficult" thin"ing.
GI
'ehind the appeals for silence lies the ish for a perceptual and cultural clean slate. %nd, in its most
hortatory and am!itious version, the advocacy of silence e+presses a mythic project of total li!eration.
$hat,s envisaged is nothing less than the li!eration of the artist from himself, of art from the particular
art or", of art from history, of spirit from matter, of the mind from its perceptual and intellectual
limitations.
$hat a fe people "no no is that there are ays of thin"ing that e don,t yet "no a!out. 7othing
could !e more important or precious than that "noledge, hoever un!orn. The sense of urgency, the
spiritual restlessness it engenders cannot !e appeased. Surely, it,s some of that energy hich has spilled
over into the radical art of this century. Through its advocacy of silence, reduction, etc., art commits an
act of violence upon itself, turning art into a species of auto/manipulation, of conjuring ( trying to help
!ring these ne ays of thin"ing to !irth.
Silence is a strategy for the transvaluation of art, art itself !eing the herald of an anticipated radical
transvaluation of human values. 'ut the success of this strategy must mean its eventual a!andonment,
or at least its significant modification.
Silence is a prophecy, one hich the artist,s actions can !e understood as attempting to fulfill and to
reverse.
%s language alays points to its on transcendence in silence, silence alays points to its on
transcendence ( to a speech !eyond silence.
'ut can the hole enterprise !ecome an act of !ad faith if the artist "nos this, too>
GII
% famous )uotation- "Everything that can !e thought at all can !e thought clearly. Everything that
can !e said at all can !e said clearly. 'ut not everything that can !e thought can !e said."
H
7otice that $ittgenstein, ith his scrupulous avoidance of the psychological issue, doesn,t as" hy,
hen, and in hat circumstances someone ould ant to put into ords "everything that can !e
thought" (even if he could), or even to utter (hether clearly or not) "everything that could !e said."
GIII
#f everything that,s said, one can as"- hy> (Including- hy should I say that> %nd- hy should I
say anything at all>)
To this I ould add the thesis that, strictly spea"ing, nothing that,s said is true. (Though one can !e
the truth, one can,t ever say it.)
Still, things that are said can sometimes !e helpful ( hich is hat people ordinarily mean hen
they consider something said to !e true. %mong its many uses, speech can enlighten, relieve, confuse,
e+alt, infect, antagoni2e, gratify, grieve, stun, animate. $hile language is regularly used to inspire to
action, some ver!al statements, either ritten or oral, of a highly styli2ed "ind are themselves used as
the performing of an action (as in promising, searing, !e)ueathing). %nother use of speech, if anything
more common than that of provo"ing actions- speech provo"es further speech. 'ut speech can silence,
too. This indeed is ho it must !e& ithout the polarity of silence, the hole system of language ould
fail. %nd !eyond its generic function as the dialectical opposite of speech, silence ( li"e speech ( has its
more specific, less inevita!le uses, too.
#ne use for silence- certifying the a!sence or renunciation of thought. This use of silence is often
employed as a magical or mimetic procedure in repressive social relationships. as in the regulations
a!out spea"ing to superiors in the 4esuit order and in the disciplining of children. (It should not !e
confused ith the practice of certain monastic disciplines, such as the Trappist order, in hich silence is
!oth an ascetic act and a !earing itness to the condition of !eing perfectly "full.")
%nother, apparently opposed, use for silence- certifying the completion of thought. (=arl 4aspers- ";e
ho has the final ansers can no longer spea" to the other, as he !rea"s off genuine communication for
the sa"e of hat he !elieves in.")
Still another use for silence- providing time for the continuing or e+ploring of thought. 7ota!ly,
speech closes off thought. (8f., the enterprise of criticism, in hich there seems no ay for a critic not to
assert that a given artist is this, he,s that, etc.) 'ut if one decides an issue isn,t closed, it,s not. This is
presuma!ly the rationale !ehind the voluntary e+periments in silence that some contemporary spiritual
athletes, lI"e 'uc"minister *uller, have underta"en, and the element of isdom in the otherise mainly
authoritarian, philistine silence of the orthodo+ *reudian psychoanalyst. Silence "eeps things "open."
Still another use for silence- furnishing or aiding speech to attain its ma+imum integrity or
seriousness. Everyone has e+perienced ho, hen punctuated !y long silences, ords eigh more& they
!ecome almost palpa!le. #r ho, hen one tal"s less, one starts feeling more fully one,s physical
presence in a given space. Silence undermines "!ad speech," !y hich I mean dissociated speech (
speech dissociated from the !ody (and, therefore, from feeling), speech not organically informed !y the
sensuous presence and concrete particularity of the spea"er and of the individual occasion for using
language. Enmoored from the !ody, speech deteriorates. It !ecomes false, inane, igno!le, eightless.
Silence can inhi!it or counteract this tendency, providing a "ind of !allast, monitoring and even
correcting language hen it !ecomes inauthentic.
0iven these perils to the authenticity of language (hich doesn,t depend on the character of any
isolated statement or even group of statements, !ut on the relation of spea"er, speech, and situation),
the hypothetical project of saying clearly "everything that can !e said" suggested !y $ittgenstein,s
remar"s loo"s fearfully complicated. (;o much time ould one have> $ould one have to spea"
)uic"ly>) The philosopher,s hypothetical universe of clear speech (hich assigns to silence only "that
hereof one cannot spea"") ould seem to !e a moralists, or a psychiatrist,s, nightmare ( at the least,
a place no one should lightheartedly enter. Is there anyone ho ants to say "everything that could !e
said"> The psychologically plausi!le anser ould seem to !e no. 'ut yes is plausi!le, too ( as a rising
ideal of modern culture. Isn,t that hat many people do ant today ( to say everything that can !e
said> 'ut this aim cannot !e maintained ithout inner conflict, in part inspired !y the spread of the
ideals of psychotherapy, people are yearning to say "everything" (there!y, among other results, further
undermining the crum!ling distinction !eteen pu!lic and private endeavors, !eteen information and
secrets). 'ut, in an overpopulated orld !eing connected !y glo!al electronic communication and jet
travel at a pace too rapid and violent for an organically sound person to assimilate ithout shoc", people
are also suffering from a revulsion at any further proliferation of speech and images. Such different
factors as the unlimited "technological reproduction" and near/universal diffusion of !oth printed
language and speech as ell as images (from "nes" to "art o!jects"), and the degenerations of pu!lic
language ithin the realms of politics and advertising and entertainment, have produced, especially
among the !etter educated inha!itants of hat sociologists call "modern mass society," a devaluation of
language. (I should argue, contrary to <c?uhan, that a devaluation of the poer and credi!ility of
images has ta"en place that,s no less profound than. and essentially similar to, that afflicting language.)
%nd, as the prestige of language falls, that of silence rises.
I am alluding, at this point, to the sociological conte+t of the contemporary am!ivalence toard
language. The matter, of course, goes much deeper than this. In addition to the specific sociological
determinants that must !e counted in, one must recogni2e the operation of something li"e a perennial
discontent ith language that has !een formulated in each of the major civili2ations of the #rient and
#ccident, henever thought reaches a certain high, e+cruciating order of comple+ity and spiritual
seriousness.
D
Traditionally, it has !een through the religious voca!ulary. ith its meta/a!solutes of "sacred" and
"profane," "human" and "divine," that the disaffection ith language itself has !een charted. In
particular, the antecedents of art,s dilemmas and strategies %re to !e found in the radical ing of the
mystical tradition. (8f., among 8hristian te+ts, the <ystica Theologica of .ionysius the %reopagite, the
anonymous 8loud of En"noing. the ritings of 4aco! 'oehme and <eister Ec"hart& and parallels in Ien
and Taoist te+ts and in the ritings of the Sufi mystics.) The mystical tradition has alays recogni2ed, in
7orman 'ron,s phrase, "the neurotic character of language. ('oehme says the language that %dam
spo"e as different from all "non languages. ;e calls it "sensual speech," the unmediated e+pressive
instrument of the senses, proper to !eings integrally part of sensuous nature ( that is, still employed !y
all the animals e+cept that sic" animal, man. This, hich 'oehme calls the only "natural language," the
sole language free from distortion and illusion, is hat man ill spea" again hen he recovers paradise.)
'ut in our time, the most stri"ing developments of such ideas have !een made !y artists (along ith
certain psychotherapists) rather than !y the timid legatees of the religious traditions.
E+plicitly in revolt against hat is deemed to !e the dessicated, categori2ed life of the ordinary mind,
the artist issues his on call for a revision of language. % good deal of contemporary art is moved !y this
)uest for a consciousness purified of contaminated language and, in some versions, of the distortions
produced !y conceiving the orld e+clusively in conventional ver!al (in their de!ased sense, "rational" or
"logical") terms. %rt itself !ecomes a "ind of counter/violence, see"ing to loosen the grip upon
consciousness of the ha!its of lifeless, static ver!ali2ation, presenting models of "sensual speech."
If anything, the volume of discontent has !een turned up since the arts inherited the pro!lem of
language from religious discourse. It,s not just that ords, ultimately, on,t do for the highest aims of
consciousness& or even that they get in the ay. %rt e+presses a dou!le discontent. $e lac" ords, and
e have too many of them. It reflects a dou!le complaint. $ords are crude, and they,re also too !usy (
inviting a hyperactivity of consciousness hich is not only dysfunctional, in terms of human capacities of
feeling and acting, !ut hich actively deadens the mind and !lunts the senses.
?anguage is demoted to the status of an event. Something ta"es place in time, a voice spea"ing
hich points to the "!efore" and to hat comes "after" an utterance- silence. Silence, then, is !oth the
precondition of speech, and the result or aim of properly directed speech. #n this model, the artist,s
activity is the creating or esta!lishing of silence& the efficacious art or" leaves silence in its a"e.
Silence, administered !y the artist, is part of a program of perceptual and cultural therapy, often on the
model of shoc" therapy rather than persuasion. Even if the artist,s medium is ords, he can share in this
tas"- language can !e employed to chec" language, to e+press muteness. <allarm6 thought it as
precisely the jo! of poetry. using ords, to clean up our ord/clogged reality ( !y creating silences
around things. %rt must mount a full/scale attac" on language itself, !y means of language and its
surrogates, on !ehalf of the standard of silence.
GI5
In the end, the radical criti)ue of consciousness (first delineated !y the mystical tradition, no
administered !y unorthodo+ psychotherapy and high modernist art) alays lays the !lame on language.
8onsciousness, e+perienced as a !urden, is conceived of as the memory of all the ords that have ever
!een said.
=rishnamurti claims that e must give up psychological, as distinct from factual, memory. #therise,
e "eep filling up the ne ith the old, closing off e+perience !y hoo"ing each e+perience into the last.
$e must destroy continuity (hich is insured !y psychological memory), !y going to the end of each
emotion or thought.
%nd after the end, hat supervenes (for a hile) is silence.
G5
In his Cth .uino Elegy, 3il"e gives a metaphoric statement of the pro!lem of language and
recommends a procedure for approaching as far toard the hori2on of silence as he considers feasi!le. %
prere)uisite of "emptying out" is to !e a!le to perceive hat one is "full of," hat ords and mechanical
gestures one is stuffed ith. li"e a doll& only then, in polar confrontation ith the doll, does the "angel"
appear, a figure representing an e)ually inhuman though "higher" possi!ility, that of an entirely
unmediated, trans/linguistic apprehension. 7either doll nor angel, human !eings remain situated ithin
the "ingdom of language. 'ut for nature, then things, then other people, then the te+tures of ordinary
life to !e e+perienced from a stance other than the crippled one of mere spectatorship, language must
regain its chastity. %s 3il"e descri!es it in the Bth Elegy, the redemption of language (hich is to say, the
redemption of the orld through its interiori2ation in consciousness) is a long, infinitely arduous tas".
;uman !eings are so "fallen" that they must start simply, ith the simplest linguistic act- the naming of
things. 1erhaps no more than this minimal function can !e preserved from the general corruption of
language. 3il"e suggests that language may very ell have to remain ithin a permanent state of
reduction. Though perhaps. hen this spiritual e+ercise of confining language to naming is perfected, it
may !e possi!le to pass on to other, more am!itious uses of language, no more must !e attempted than
ill allo consciousness to !e unestranged from itself.
*or 3il"e the overcoming of the alienation of consciousness is conceiva!le& and its means are not, as
in the radical myths of the mystics, through transcending language altogether. It is enough. according to
3il"e, to cut !ac" drastically the scope and use of language. % tremendous spiritual preparation (the
contrary of "alienation") is re)uired for this deceptively simple act of naming- nothing less than the
scouring and harmonious sharpening of the senses (the very opposite of such violent projects, ith
roughly the same end and informed !y the same hostility to ver!al/rational culture, as "systematically
deranging the senses").
J
3il"e,s remedy lies halfay !eteen e+ploiting the num!ness of language as a gross, fully/installed
cultural institution and yielding to the suicidal vertigo of pure silence. 'ut this middle ground of reducing
language to naming can !e claimed in )uite another ay than his. 8ontrast the !enign nominalism
proposed !y 3il"e (and proposed and practiced !y *rancis 1onge) ith the !rutal nominalism adopted !y
many other artists. The more familiar recourse of modern art to the aesthetics of the catalogue, the
inventory, is not made ( as in 3il"e ( ith an eye to "humani2ing" things, !ut rather to confirming their
inhumanity, their impersonality, their indifference to and separateness from human concerns. (E+amples
of the "inhumane" preoccupation ith naming- 3oussel,s Impressions of Africa- the sil"/screen paintings
and early films of %ndy $arhol& the early novels of %lain 3o!!e/0rillet, hich attempt to confine
language to the function of !are physical description and location.)
3il"e and 1onge assume that there are priorities- rich as opposed to vacuous o!jects, events ith a
certain allure. (This is the incentive for trying to peel !ac" language, alloing the "things" themselves to
spea".) <ore decisively, they assume that if there are states of false (language/clogged) consciousness,
there are also authentic states of consciousness ( hich it,s the function of art to promote. The
alternative vie denies the traditional hierarchies of interest and meaning, in hich some things have
more "significance" than others. The distinction !eteen true and false e+perience, true and false
consciousness is also denied- in principle, one should desire to pay attention to everything. It,s this vie,
most elegantly formulated !y 8age though one finds its practice everyhere, that leads to the art of the
inventory, the catalogue, surfaces& also "chance." The function of art isn,t to promote any specific
e+perience, e+cept the state of !eing open to the multiplicity of e+perience, hich ends in practice !y a
decided stress on things usually considered trivial or unimportant.
The attachment of contemporary art to the "minimal" narrative principle of the catalogue or inventory
seems almost a parody of the capitalist orld/vie, in hich the environment is atomi2ed into "items" (a
category em!racing things and persons. or"s of art and natural organisms), and in hich every item is
a commodity ( that is. a discrete, porta!le o!ject. There is a general leveling of value promoted in the
art of inventory, hich is itself only one of the possi!le approaches to an ideally uninflected discourse.
Traditionally, the effects of an art/or" have !een unevenly distri!uted, in order to induce in the
audience a certain se)uence of e+perience- first arousing, then manipulating, and eventually fulfilling
emotional e+pectations. $hat is proposed no is a discourse ithout emphases in this traditional sense.
(%gain, the principle of the stare as opposed to the loo".)
Such art could also !e descri!ed as esta!lishing great "distance" (!eteen spectator and art o!ject,
!eteen the spectator and his emotions). 'ut, psychologically, distance often is involved ith the most
intense state of feeling, in hich the distance or coolness or impersonality ith hich something is
treated measures the insatia!le interest that thing has for us. The distance that a great deal of "anti/
humanist" art proposes is actually e)uivalent to o!session ( an aspect of the involvement in "things" of
hich the "humanist" nominalism of 3il"e has no intimation.
G5I
"There is something strange in the acts of riting and spea"ing," 7ovalis rote in 9JBB. "The
ridiculous and ama2ing mista"e people ma"e is to !elieve they use ords in relation to things. They are
unaare of the nature of language ( hich is to !e its on and only concern, ma"ing it so fertile and
splendid a mystery. $hen someone tal"s just for the sa"e of tal"ing he is saying the most original and
truthful thing he can say."
7ovalis, statement may help e+plain something that at first seems parado+ical- that the age of the
idespread advocacy of art,s silence should also contain an increasing num!er of or"s of art that
!a!!le. 5er!osity and repetitiveness is a particularly noticea!le tendency in the temporal arts of prose,
fiction, music, film, and dance, many of hich appear to cultivate a "ind of ontological stammer (
facilitated !y their refusal to heed the incentives for a clean, anti/redundant discourse supplied !y linear,
!eginning/middle/and/end construction. 'ut actually, there,s no contradiction. *or the contemporary
appeal for silence has never indicated merely a hostile dismissal of language. It also signifies a very high
estimate of language ( of its poers, of its past health, and of the current dangers it poses to a free
consciousness. *rom this intense and am!ivalent valuation proceeds the impulse for a discourse that
appears !oth irrespressi!le (and, in principle. intermina!le) and strangely inarticulate, painfully reduced.
#ne even senses the outlines of a su!liminal rationale ( discerni!le in the fictions of Stein, 'urroughs,
and 'ec"ett ( that it might !e possi!le to out/tal" language, or to tal" oneself into silence.
This is an odd and not very promising strategy, one might thin", in the light of hat results might
reasona!ly !e anticipated from it. 'ut perhaps not so odd. after all, hen one o!serves ho often the
aesthetic of silence appears hand in hand ith a !arely controlled a!horrence of the void.
%ccommodating these to contrary impulses may produce the need to fill up all the spaces ith
o!jects of slight emotional eight or ith even, large areas of !arely modulated color or evenly/detailed
o!jects, or to spin a discourse ith as fe possi!le inflections, emotive variations. and risings and
failings of emphasis. These procedures seem analogous to the !ehavior of an o!sessional neurotic
arding off a danger. The acts of such a person must !e repeated in the identical form, !ecause the
danger remains the same& and they must !e repeated endlessly, !ecause the danger never seems to go
aay. 'ut the emotional fires feeding the art discourse analogous to o!sessionalism may !e turned don
so lo one can almost forget they,re there. Then all that,s left to the ear is a "ind of steady hum or
drone. $hat,s left to the eye is the neat filling of a space ith things, or, more accurately, the patient
transcripttion of the surface detail of things.
#n this vie, the "silence" of things, images, and ords is a prere)uisite for their proliferation. $ere
they endoed ith a more potent. individual charge, each of the various elements of the artor" ould
claim more psychic space and then their total num!er might have to !e reduced.
K
G5II
Sometimes the accusation against language is not directed against all of language !ut only against
the ritten ord. Thus Tristan T2ara urged the !urning of all !oo"s and li!raries to !ring a!out a ne era
of oral legends. %nd <c?uhan, as everyone "nos, ma"es the sharpest distinction !eteen ritten
language (hich e+ists in "visual space") and oral speech (hich e+ists in "auditory space"), praising the
psychic and cultural advantages of the latter as the !asis for sensi!ility.
If ritten language is singled out as the culprit, hat ill !e sought is not so much the reduction as
the metamorphosis of language into something looser, more intuitive, less organi2ed and inflected,
nonlinear (in <c?uhan,s terminology) and ( noticea!ly ( more ver!ose. 'ut of course, it is just these
)ualities that characteri2e many of the great prose narratives ritten in our time. 4oyce, Stein, 0adda,
?aura 3iding, 'ec"ett, and 'urroughs employ a language hose norms and energies come from oral
speech, ith its circular repetitive movements and essentially first person voice.
"Spea"ing for the sa"e of spea"ing is the formula of deliverance," 7ovalis said. (.eliverance from
hat> *rom spea"ing> *rom art>)
I should argue that 7ovalis has succinctly descri!ed the proper approach of the riter to language,
and offered the !asic criterion for literature as an art. 'ut hether oral speech is the privileged model
for the speech of literature as an art is a )uestion that remains undecided.
G5III
% corollary of the groth of this conception of art,s language as autonomous and self/sufficient (and,
in the end, self/reflective) is a decline in "meaning," as traditionally sought in or"s of art. "Spea"ing for
the sa"e of spea"ing" forces us to relocate the meaning of linguistic or para/linguistic statements. $e
are led to a!andon meaning (in the sense of references to entities outside the art or") as the criterion
for the language of art in favor of "use." ($ittgenstein,s famous thesis, "the meaning is the use," can !e,
should !e, rigorously applied to art.)
"<eaning" partially or totally converted into "use" is the secret !ehind the idespread strategy of
literalness, a major development of the aesthetics of silence. % variant on this- hidden literality,
e+emplified !y such different riters as =af"a and 'ec"ett. The narratives of =af"a and 'ec"ett seem
pu22ling !ecause they appear to invite the reader to ascri!e high/poered sym!olic and allegorical
meanings to them and, at the same time, repel such ascriptions. The truth is that their language, hen
it is e+amined, discloses no more than hat it literally means. The poer of their language derives
precisely from the fact that the meaning is so !are.
The effect of such !areness is often a "ind of an+iety ( li"e the an+iety one feels hen familiar things
aren,t in their place or playing their accustomed role. #ne may !e made as an+ious !y une+pected
literalness as !y the Surrealists, "distur!ing" o!jects and une+pected scale and condition of o!jects
conjoined in an imaginary landscape. $hatever is holly mysterious is at once !oth psychically relieving
and an+iety provo"ing. (% perfect machine for agitating this pair of contrary emotions- the 'osch
draing in a .utch museum that shos trees furnished ith to ears at the sides of their trun"s, as if
they ere listening to the forest, hile the forest floor is stren ith eyes.) 'efore a fully conscious
or" of art, one feels something li"e the mi+ture of an+iety, detachment, pruriency, and relief a
physically sound person feels hen he glimpses an amputee. 'ec"ett spea"s favora!ly of a or" of art
hich ould !e a "Total o!ject, complete ith missing parts, instead of partial o!ject. Luestion of
degree."
E+actly hat a totality is, hat constitutes completeness in art (or anything else) is precisely the
pro!lem. That pro!lem is, in principle, an unresolva!le one. The fact is, that hatever ay a or" of art
is, it could have !een ( could !e ( different. The necessity of these parts in this order is never a given
state& it is conferred. The refusal to admit this essential contingency (or openness) is hat inspires the
audience,s ill to confirm the closedness of a or" of art !y interpreting it, and hat creates the feeling
common among reflective artists and critics that the artor" is alays someho in arrears of or
inade)uate to its "su!ject."
'ut unless one is committed to the idea that art "e+presses" something, these procedures and
attitudes are far from inevita!le.
GIG
This tenacious concept of art as "e+pression" is hat gives rise to one common, !ut du!ious, version
of the notion of silence, hich invo"es the idea of "the ineffa!le." The theory supposes that the province
of art is "the !eautiful," hich implies effects of unspea"a!leness, indescri!a!ility, ineffa!ility. Indeed,
the search to e+press the ine+pressi!le is ta"en as the very criterion of art& and sometimes, for instance,
in several essays of 5alery, !ecomes the occasion for a strict ( and to my mind untena!le ( distinction
!eteen prose literature and poetry. It is from this !asis that 5alery advanced his famous argument
(repeated in a )uite different conte+t !y Sartre) that the novel is not, strictly spea"ing, an art form at
all. ;is reason is that since the aim of prose is to communicate, the use of language in prose is perfectly
straightforard. 1oetry, !eing an art, should have )uite different aims- to e+press an e+perience hich is
essentially ineffa!le& using language to e+press muteness. In contrast to prose riters, poets are
engaged in su!verting their on instrument- and see"ing to pass !eyond it.
Insofar as this theory assumes that art is concerned ith 'eauty, it isn,t very interesting. (<odern
aesthetics is crippled !y its dependence upon this essentially vacant concept. %s if art ere "a!out"
!eauty, as science is "a!out" truthM) 'ut even if the theory dispenses ith the notion of 'eauty, there is
still a more serious o!jection to !e made. The vie that the e+pression of the ineffa!le is an eternal
function of poetry (considered as a paradigm of all the arts) is naively unhistorical. $hile surely a
perennial category of consciousness, the ineffa!le has certainly not alays made its home in the arts. Its
B
traditional shelter as in religious discourse and, secondarily (cf. the Jth Epistle of 1lato), in philosophy.
The fact that contemporary artists are concerned ith silence ( and, therefore, in one e+tension, ith
the ineffa!le ( must !e understood historically, as a conse)uence of the prevailing myth of the
"a!soluteness" of art to hich I,ve referred throughout the present argument. The value placed on
silence doesn,t arise !y virtue of the nature of art, !ut is derived from the contemporary ascription of
certain "a!solute" )ualities to the art o!ject and to the activity of the artist.
The e+tent to hich art is involved ith the ineffa!le is something more specific, as ell as
contemporary- art, in the modern conception, is alays connected ith systematic transgressions of a
formal sort. The systematic violation of older formal conventions practiced !y modern artists gives their
or" a certain aura of the unspea"a!le ( for instance, as the audience uneasily senses the negative
presence of hat else could !e, !ut isn,t !eing, said& and as any "statement" made in an aggressively
ne or difficult form tends to seem e)uivocal or merely vacant. 'ut these features of ineffa!ility must
not !e ac"noledged at the e+pense of one,s aareness of the positivity of the or" of art.
8ontemporary art, no matter ho much it,s defined itself !y a taste for negation, can still !e analy2ed as
a set of assertions, of a formal "ind.
*or instance, each or" of art gives us a form or paradigm or model of "noing something, an
epistemology. 'ut vieed as a spiritual project, a vehicle of aspirations toard an a!solute, hat any
or" of art supplies is a specific model for meta/social or meta/ethical tact, a standard of decorum. Each
art/or" indicates the unity of certain preferences a!out hat can and cannot !e said (or represented).
%t the same time that it may ma"e a tacit proposal for upsetting previously consecrated rulings on hat
can !e said (or represented), it issues its on set of limits.
GG
To styles in hich silence is advocated- loud and soft.
The loud style is a function of the unsta!le antithesis of "plenum" and "void." 7otoriously, the
sensuous, ecstatic, translinguistic apprehension of the plenum can collapse in a terri!le. almost
instantaneous plunge into the void of negative silence. $ith all its aareness of ris"/ta"ing (the ha2ards
of spiritual nausea, even of madness), this advocacy of silence tends to !e frenetic, and
overgenerali2ing. It is also fre)uently apocalyptic, and must endure the indignity of all apocalyptic
thin"ing- namely, to prophecy the end, to see the day come, to outlive it, and then to set a ne date for
the incineration of consciousness and the definitive pollution of language and e+haustion of the
possi!ilities of art/discourse.
The other ay of tal"ing a!out silence is more cautious. 'asically, it presents itself as an e+tension of
a main feature of traditional classicism- the concern ith modes of propriety, ith standards of
seemliness. Silence is only "reticence" stepped up to the nth degree. #f course, in the translation of this
concern from the matri+ of traditional classical art, the tone has changed ( from didactic seriousness to
ironic open/mindedness. 'ut hile the clamorous style of proclaiming the rhetoric of silence may seem
more passionate, more su!dued advocates (li"e 8age, 4ohns) are saying something e)ually drastic. They
are reacting to the same idea of art,s a!solute aspirations (!y programmatic disavoals of art)& they
share the same disdain for the "meanings" esta!lished !y !ourgeois rationalist culture, indeed for
culture itself in the familiar sense. 'ut hat is voiced !y the *uturists, some of the .ada artists, and
'urroughs as a harsh despair and perverse vision of apocalypse, is no less serious for !eing proclaimed
in a polite voice and as a se)uence of playful affirmation. Indeed, it could !e argued that silence is li"ely
to remain a via!le notion for modern art and consciousness only so far as it,s deployed ith a
considera!le, near systematic irony.
It is in the nature of all spiritual projects to tend to consume themselves ( e+hausting their on
sense, the very meaning of the terms in hich they are couched. ($hich is hy "spirituality" must !e
continually reinvented.) %ll genuinely ultimate projects of consciousness eventually !ecome projects for
the unravelling of thought itself.
8ertainly, art conceived as a spiritual project is no e+ception. %s an a!stracted and fragmented replica
of the positive nihilism e+pounded !y the radical religious myths, the serious art of our time has moved
increasingly toard the most e+cruciating inflections of consciousness. 8onceiva!ly, irony is the only
feasi!le countereight to this grave use of art, as the arena for the ordeal of consciousness. The present
prospect is that artists ill go on a!olishing art, only to resurrect it in a more retracted version. %s long
as art !ears up under the pressure of chronic interrogation, it ould seem a good thing that some of the
)uestions have a certain playful )uality.
'ut this prospect depends, perhaps, on the via!ility of irony itself.
*rom Socrates forard, there are countless itnesses to the value of irony for the private individual-
as a comple+, serious method of see"ing and holding one,s truth, and as a method of saving one,s
sanity. 'ut as irony !ecomes the good taste of hat is, after all, an essentially collective activity ( the
ma"ing of art ( it may prove less servicea!le.
#ne need not spea" as categorically as 7iet2sche, ho thought the spread of irony throughout a culture alays signified the floodtide of decadence
and the approaching end of that culture,s vitality and poers. In the post/political, electronically connected cosmopolis in hich all serious modern
artists have ta"en out premature citi2enship, certain organic connections !eteen culture and "thin"ing" (and art is certainly no, mainly, a form of
thin"ing) may have !een !ro"en, so that 7iet2sche,s diagnosis no longer applies. Still, there remains a )uestion as to ho far the resources of irony can
!e stretched. It seems unli"ely that the possi!ilities of continually undermining one,s assumptions can go on unfolding indefinitely into the future,
ithout !eing eventually chec"ed !y despair or !y a laugh that leaves one ithout any !reath at all.
9N