And there — the cloudlets’ haven, and the membranes of a god’s dreams,
S i l e n
and our silence… Gennady Aygi I. When the protagonist has shuffled off this mortal coil, “enter Pause.” In theater, nothing splits one’s ears like silence. To hearken to it, Beethoven went deaf, and so did the poet Sosnora. The absence of quiet is perhaps the greatest flaw of silent film. Here is a kōan: can a tree falling on a deserted island be overheard? More important, does silence exist when not listened to? This we cannot tell, but every poet knows that it is of silence that the word is born. Is it perhaps that God is not the word but silence? It was Tyutchev’s perfect pitch that let him catch silence: forestall the word and live in its wake. Pushkin’s strongest lines are the ones omitted; Rus’ is the loudest when it gives no answer. Silence answers when questioned, and petty are the attempts of those like Cage to speak on her behalf. We write in the name of silence. Augustine said that we are mortal because a phrase cannot live if one word does not die giving way to another. Linguists have found out that the most frequent sign is space. It is in the interval, Tynianov says, that new vision is born. The interval between paragraphs, Shklovsky demonstrates. The closest friend is the one you can be silent with. That is why the churches unforsaken by God are so quiet. In their silence, the voices of our beloved are calling us. Let us commemorate them with a moment of silence.
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