I. SILENCE AS ACTIVE PERFORMANCE

Silence occurs and is encountered only as somehow linked to some active, as opposed to spontaneous, human performances. Silence occurs most obviously in conjuction with those human performances which engender sounds, for example, cries, speech, and music. But, as even cursory reflection shows, silence also occurs in conjunction with human performances in which no sounds are engendered. It occurs in many of the performing arts which employ gestures and disciplined movements rather than sounds, such as mime. Likewise, silence is in volved in private reading. And it occurs even in the nonperforming arts, such as painting and sculpture. A well-known example of the latter is to be found in much Oriental painting.¹

That silence can occur without sound is shown by two facts. First, the totally deaf can and do encounter silence. The very possibility of sign language depends upon this capacity. Second, in activities like private reading or viewing paintings or sculpture, just as in hearing sounds, one can be so distracted or so preoccupied that the work in question does not convey what it could convey. Silence in such cases is experienced as absent.

The occurrence of silence in conjunction with other phenomena besides sounds points to a further fact about silence. Silence is not merely linked with some active human performance. It itself is an active performance. That is, silence is neither muteness nor mere absence of audible sound. The difference between muteness and silence is comparable to the difference between being without sight and having one’s eyes closed. Muteness is simply the inarticulateness of that which is incapable of any sort of signifying performances. A man cannot be absolutely and permanently mute unless he can be completely and permanently unconscious. Unlike muteness, silence necessarily involves conscious activity. But precisely because silence does involve conscious activity, the occurrence or nonoccurrence of passively or spontaneously encountered noise, of itself, can neither prevent nor produce silence.²

Even though silence can occur in conjunction with phenomena other than sounds, it is nonetheless essentially linked to one or more types of active human performances which I will hereafter call, for brevity’s sake, utterances. An utterance is any performance employing systematically related signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having recognizable meanings to express thoughts, feelings, states of affairs, etc. In short, every self-initiated deployment of any sort of language is counted here as an utterance. Each particular utterance is a moment of what I will call discourse.

Without utterance there can be no silence. In Susan Sontag’s words: “‘Silence’ never ceases to imply its opposite and to depend on its presence: just as there can’t be ‘up’ without ‘down’ . . . so one must acknowledge a surrounding environment of sound or language in order to recognize silence.”³ Because silence appears in its more obvious occurrences as either the foil to or a component of verbal utterances, this initial description of the phenomenon of silence focuses upon its connection with the use of spoken words.

It is for precisely the same reason that silence can be mistakenly regarded as fundamentally either a negative or a derivative phenomenon. Sometimes it is taken to be a mere gap between or within a string of spoken words, a gap which has no positive significance of its own. At other times it is taken to be merely a derivative phenomenon. That is, silence is regarded as an utterance of a peculiar kind, a way of “saying” something determinate. No doubt there is the phenomenon of “keeping silent” which is a sort of utterance. For example, we might say that someone’s refusal to answer questions eloquently expressed his loyalty to his comrades. Phenomena of this sort are indeed derivative upon verbal utterances.

On the other hand, initial evidence of the positive character of silence can be found in numerous plays. Harold Pinter, for example, explicitly distinguishes between pauses and silences. They do different kinds of work. The former punctuate or pace a theme but the latter serve to shift from one theme to another. Sartre, too, includes directions in his scripts calling for performances of silence. In another vein, silence can be seen at work in the interaction between Oedipus and Teiresias in Oedipus Rex. Much of the tension within and between these characters hinges on the issue of what is to be said and what is not to be said. And in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, silence is a pervading atmosphere.

I will argue that there is a nonderivative silence which is both positive and complex. In fact, this book rests upon the thesis that silence is a phenomenon which is at least equiprimordial with utterance.

The thesis that silence is a positive phenomenon involves two claims. First, silence is a necessary condition for utterance and is somehow coordinate with utterance. The specification of this “somehow” can be provided only through the intentional analysis of silence which will be presented in Chapter Three. The second claim is that silence has a describable temporality of its own and thus its temporality is not radically derived from the temporality of the utterance with which it is conjoined.

At least two of the ways in which silence appears as linked to utterances are readily detected. I will call them intervening silence and fore-and-after silence.⁴ My description of them here provides a most useful approximation of what the intentional analysis in Chapter Three uncovers as more fundamental. A third aspect of silence, which I will call deep silence, though not as obvious as the aspects of intervening silence and fore-and-after silence, has often been recognized by thoughtful people. When this aspect is noticed it is, with some exceptions,⁵ not mistaken as a merely negative or derivative phenomenon. But, like the other aspects, deep silence is recognized as being necessarily bound up with utterance. An account of some of the modes of deep silence will round out the initial description of silence. These descriptions provide the first approximations to a thorough account of silence and its significance.

II. INTERVENING SILENCE

Intervening silence is that occurrence or sequence of occurrences of silence which punctuates both the words and phrases of a spoken sentence and the string of sentences which fit together in discourse. When one tells a story or a joke, his use of intervening silence is especially noticeable. But it is at play throughout all sorts of discourse. With intervening silences a cry can be “expanded” into a more or less determinate utterance and words can be kept from running into an incomprehensible jumble. The importance of this aspect of silence shows up with stark clarity when the listener or reader cannot detect the intervening silences. For example, if I hear a speech in a language I do not understand and cannot detect the intervening silences, I hear something which approximates mere babble. Similarly, old Latin or Greek manuscripts are practically illegible to anyone unskilled in paleography even if he knows the language. Intervening silences are also at work in the pacing of a literary work. They likewise punctuate musical phrases and are involved in the pacing of musical works. In brief, intervening silences punctuate those components–word phrases, musical notes, gestures, painted or sculpted shapes, etc.–which belong to an utterance taken as a whole. However, for convenience, I will use “sound phrases” for the components of any sort of utterance.

The punctuating effected by intervening silence functions both “melodically” and “rhythmically.” In its melodic function, intervening silence involves an apparent closing-opening operation. An occurrence of intervening silence terminates one sound phrase and, in some fashion, clears the way for the next sound phrase. But the claim that one finds here a bipolarity between the sound phrase and the intervening silence is excessive. The sense of the first sound phrase is oriented to that of the second and the sense of the second harks back to that of the first. The conjoined sense of sound phrases A and В spans the intervening silence A’ in a way that intervening silences A’ and B’ do not span sound phrase B. The overarching sense of all the sound phrases taken as a whole spans all the intervening occurrences of silence. But the converse is not the case. It is rather easy to find the unitary totality of an utterance, the constituents of which are its sound phrases. But one would be hard pressed to descry a unitary totality of the occurrences of silence which are found within it. Intervening silence, in its melodic function, appears then to be in the service of the sound phrases it punctuates.

Attention to the rhythmic function of intervening silence, however, refines the view of this way in which silence appears. When a story or a musical composition or a painting is taken as a totality, one finds that the occurrences of silence do not merely punctuate the sound phrases. These occurrences of silence are just as essential to the rhythm of the totality as are any of the sound phrases which make up the utterance. The appropriate number, placement, and duration of intervening silences are just as important to the dramatic, if not to the lexical, sense of a story as the appropriately proportioned length, internal balance, etc., of the sound phrases. This fact is especially evident when one considers a piece of music. But it holds good for discourse of all sorts.

In its melodic function, then, intervening silence appears as subordinated to the sound phrases of an utterance. But in its rhythmic function intervening silence is just as weighty as sound phrases are in constituting the concrete utterance. There is no obvious reason for according the melodic function a primacy over the rhythmic function, or vice versa.

Another feature of intervening silence should not be overlooked. As the aspect of silence which is involved in timing and pacing, intervening silence has its own temporal structure in addition to the temporal structure which it has by reason of its being a constituent of a concrete utterance. That is, intervening silence A’, occurring between sound phrases A and B, has its own distinctive time structure. Each intervening silence, like each sound phrase, is temporally complex. Clues provided by Husserl’s The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness⁶ are useful in describing this complexity.

The first moment of intervening silence A’ is heavily freighted, but not exhaustively filled, with the retained sense of sound phrase A. As A’ perdures, a “running off” of the retained sense of A “empties” A’ of some but not all of the retained sense of A. A’ could not be totally emptied of A without destroying the unity of the utterance. Correlated to the emptying, there is the filling up of A’ with the protended sense of sound phrase B. But again, A’ is never exhaustively filled with the sense of B. Thus there is always in A’ something of the senses of both A and B. In truth, in each particular intervening silence there is something of the sense of every sound phrase belonging to the utterance, and not merely something of the sense of only the two sound phrases which immediately frame it. Otherwise, the utterance would have no unity except in retrospect. Thus thinking of either the sound phrases or the intervening silences as isolated blocks from which utterances are fashioned makes no sense.

There is what can be called an ordinary pattern to the duration of both sound phrases and the intervening silences which punctuate them. If one uses the ordinary pattern, the “habitual way of discoursing,” he somehow yields to a rather strong determination by sound phrase A of what sound phrase В is going to be and do. If, however, one modifies the ordinary duration of the intervening silence, he in some measure resists the determination of В by A. Thus at least part of the sense of intervening silence seems to be that it is one of the ways in which an utterance or a sequence of sound phrases can be stamped as “peculiarly mine,” “anyone’s,” “yours and mine,” etc. The intentional analysis in Chapter Three will clarify the status of those stampings.⁷

The consideration of the question of the time structure of intervening silence thus shows (1) that intervening silence is complex and perdures for more than one moment or “now”; (2) that in varying ways it bears the senses of both of its surrounding sound phrases; and (3) that it bears a sense of its own inasmuch as it can play a distinctive role in marking a sequence of sound phrases as “mine,” “anyone’s,” etc.

Moreover, since each occurrence of intervening silence bears the senses of its surrounding sound phrases in such a way that the weight shifts from the retained to the protended, as well as bearing a sense of its own, each “now” of the occurrence of intervening silence itself has retentional and protentional aspects of its own. With the last “now” of sound phrase A, intervening silence A’ is fully protended. With the first “now” of sound phrase B, it is fully retained. The time structure of intervening silence, therefore, is in many respects like the time structure of a tone as Husserl describes it. Unlike a tone, however, intervening silence necessarily points beyond itself to some sound phrase B, which in turn refers back to some prior sound phrase A. If the intervening silence were to lose that reference, a reference which of course need not be fulfilled, it would cease to be intervening silence. Thus intervening silence cannot, in principle, be either the first or the last component of an utterance.

A further consequence revealed by this description is that the duration of the intervening silence is, within limits, at the discretion of the author of the utterance. Intervening silence appears to have the objective characteristic of stamping utterances as “mine,” “anyone’s,” etc. But apparently it must mark them somehow. The interpretation by the audience of the duration of the intervening silence employed by the author and of the consequent stamping of the utterance involves no fewer difficulties than does the interpretation of any other component of utterances. But neither is there anything peculiarly mysterious or subjective about it.

Silence, however, does not appear only within utterances or discourse. Particular utterances and discourses both start and stop. A different aspect of silence is associated with this starting and stopping.

III. FORE-AND-AFTER SILENCE

If one focuscs on an utterance as a whole, instead of concentrating on the distinguishable sound phrases and intervening silences which are its parts, he notices that the utterance is surrounded by a fringe of silence. This silence is fore-and-after silence. This aspect of the phenomenon of silence is constituted by the occurrence of silence which immediately precedes the first sound phrase of an utterance and the occurrence of silence which immediately follows its last sound phrase. These two occurrences of silence bear some resemblance to intervening silence but are also strikingly different from it. On the one hand, the two occurrences in question here do have a function similar to the melodic function of intervening silence. The first of the occurrences, fore-silence, does perform an opening operation. But it does not perform any immediately obvious closing operation. The second of these occurrences, after-silence, performs a closing operation, but no obvious opening one. This obscurity is made fully explicit and dissipated in the intentional analysis. On the other hand, unlike intervening silences, neither of these two occurrences appears as rhythmically significant.

Now what is the connection between fore-silence and after-silence, neither of which behaves completely like intervening silence? Are they two fundamentally distinct ways in which silence appears? Is each of them relatively independent of the other, but at the same time basically dependent for its specification as fore-silence or after-silence upon the utterance which separates them? Or are these two occurrences moments of one and the same fringe which appears as the background against which some figure, for example, a story or a song, stands out? And further, over and above the question of the connection between fore- and after-silence, what is the connection between the occurrences of these fringing silences and those of intervening silence?

After-silence is the more striking of the fringing silences. It is the silence which terminates an utterance. Its positivity as a phenomenon appears when one realizes that had it not occurred when it did, had the utterance continued, the utterance would have lost rather than gained in expressive force. This realization is more likely to come about when one is considering a novel, poem, or musical composition. But in principle it can come about in conjunction with any utterance. The size of a canvas is not irrelevant to the picture painted on it. They need to fit each other. And too long a tale of one’s arthritic aches benumbs rather than moves the audience.

This after-silence is quite different from an intervening silence which is left unspanned by a protended sound phrase. In the latter case, an unresolved chord, for example, the utterance is unfinished. It is quite the contrary with after-silence. If the after-silence is tampered with or transgressed by some additional sound phrase or utterance, then the utterance which had come to completion in the after-silence is at least partially undone. The claim that every utterance or set of utterances has some unique ideal final terminus or even a well-defined class of possible final termini which can be confidently specified in advance has, of course, no evident justification. But one can recognize the distinctive character of after-silence by assuming, for example, that Eliot’s Waste Land is a well-crafted unity and then asking him-self: What would happen to The Waste Land had Eliot not ended it where he did? To see the difference between an unspanned intervening silence and an after-silence, one has then only to consider what would have happened had Eliot never written the last few lines.

The discrimination and description of fore-silence is complicated by the fact that, unlike after-silence, it is ordinarily not directly attended to. Rather, it is usually attended to only because it is missed or because of a transfer of sense, to use a Husserlian expression, from after-silence.

Fore-silence is sometimes attended to by being missed when one experiences that an utterance has been begun without sufficient “open space” for it. A certain wrenching is experienced if an utterance is forcibly introduced, even by oneself, into an already crowded expressive space. One experiences that either the time or the place in which the utterance occurs is inappropriate. The wrenching occurs because the fore-silence is missed. On other occasions, fore-silence comes to attention when one notices that, just as an utterance has an appropriate point of termination, so it has an appropriate point of departure, a point of departure in an open space. Then fore-silence is attended to through a transfer of sense, because one determines, or even raises questions about, the appropriate fore-silence only from the vantage point of having already encountered after-silence precisely as after-silence.

Not all fore-silence, however, is encountered either indirectly or retrospectively. Some fore-silences are directly encountered. These fore-silences can be called occurrences of anticipatory alertness. In anticipatory alertness, fore-silence is experienced both as present, though horizonally so, and as either more or less intense. One readies himself to say or hear. What he readies himself to say or hear is somehow detected as novel or different, as not simply flowing in a fully predelineated way from what was said or heard before. In the course of anticipatory alertness one recognizes, at least unthematically, that his experience of discursive continuity has been cut. Even though he cannot mark the location of this cut with precision, he can recognize that a new saying or hearing is being readied in the anticipatory silence.

Corresponding to anticipatory alertness, which presents fore-silence horizonally, is savoring, which presents after-silence horizonally. Savoring, to be sure, involves both remembering and imagining. But it involves more than these. On the one hand, savoring integrates the several components of a just concluded utterance into a well-rounded synthesis. On the other hand, savoring integrates the just concluded utterance with previous utterances and with other possible utterances. That is, one fits this just concluded but still, in Husserl’s sense, retained concrete utterance with its constituent silences into a larger context of past and future, actual or possible utterance-silence complexes. This integration occurs in a way that can well be characterized by the metaphor of digesting. One incorporates or digests the just concluded utterance, in silence, into the complex web of his experience of previous and other possible utterances. For example, at the conclusion of hearing one of the Brandenberg concertos, one can digest that performance by drawing together its several moments into a unity, by incorporating it with remembered previous hearings of that particular concerto, with other possible performances of it, with other possible or actual performances of other Bach concertos or other compositions of either Bach or someone else, etc.

Now even though fore-silence is noticed sometimes by reason of its absence, sometimes by reason of a transfer of sense from after silence, and at still other times as a horizon around an anticipated saying or hearing, all these modes of occurrences are properly described as instances of one and the same aspect of silence, namely, fore-silence, because all the modes of its appearances are directly and immediately connected to the single consideration of the appropriateness of having an utterance start when and where one does start. This claim is strengthened by examining the time structure belonging specifîcally to fore-silence and after-silence.

Before this examination is undertaken, however, the relation between fore-silence and after-silence has to be clarified. First, fore-silence is not always as easily detected as after-silence is. More importantly, after-silence functions as the closing of an utterance, whereas fore-silence functions as an opening for it. Nonetheless, a strong reason exists for claiming that fore-silence and after-silence are two facets of one and the same way in which silence appears, namely, fore-and-after silence. Both fore-silence and after-silence primordially show themselves as constituting the framing for a determinate utterance. It makes no sense to say that after-silence is either thinkable or perceptible, precisely as after-silence, without recognizing its opposite face, fore-silence. Precisely what permits the distinguishing of these two faces, with their distinctive characteristics, is the utterance which is framed by them. This claim will be confirmed in the course of the intentional analysis of silence. But even now it can be seen that the utterance is the “figure” for which fore-and-after-silence taken as a unity is the “background.” Merleau-Ponty speaks of the end of a speech or text as the “lifting of a spell.”⁸ If after-silence lifts a spell, then fore-silence casts a spell. The casting and lifting belong together.

An examination of the time structure of fore-and-after-silence is facilitated by initially taking it in conjunction with the utterance it frames. The utterance precisely as utterance has its own intrinsic time structure. But all that has to be noticed here is that the utterance is a complex temporal unity. The first now-moment of after-silence retains the last now-moment of the utterance. But the successive moments of after-silence tend progressively to release the “tones” and sense of the individual sound phrases of the utterance and to retain only the sense of the utterance as a whole. This retention, of course, may be accompanied by, but is distinct from, the remembering or imagining of individual “tones” and component senses. The retained sense of the utterance as a whole, then, with a speed inversely related to its psychological weight for the one who says or hears it, slides from retention into the simply remembered past. When the utterance is first simply remembered, or first forgotten, its after-silence has come to an end.

Fore-silence, on the other hand, originates with a now-moment carrying a two-fold sense. First, there is the sense that some utterance with its after-silence is now past. (There is no such thing as an encountered first utterance.) Secondly, there is the sense that someone or other can and indeed might well begin a new utterance. Successive now-moments of fore-silence retain this first sense and progressively refine, in conjunction with various perceptual, cognitive, and emotional modifications of anticipation, the second sense in such a way that both those who can and might utter as well as something of what might well be uttered are made more and more specific. The culmination of fore-silence is reached in that now-moment which expects an imminent now-moment to carry the first “tone” of a new utterance. This last moment of fore-silence fully predelineates the occurrence, but not the complete concrete sense, of this first “tone.” If no new utterance occurs, fore-silence is directly terminated by after-silence which retains the “tone” pre-delineated in the last moment of fore-silence. In this case fore-and-after silence is an empty frame.

Fore-and-after silence as just described is fairly obvious in conjunction with literary and musical utterances. But it is not confined to the dramatic realm. It occurs in conjunction with all discourse. All discourse is at least in intention intersubjective. All discourse of itself, regardless of the plans and purposes of its author, tends to be heard. For discourse to be heard there must be room for it. That is, there must be a frame of silence into which it can fit.

An important question crops up in the wake of the claim that every utterance is framed by fore-and-after silence. All utterances take place in or enter into the constitution of a history. Further, if the foregoing description of the time structure of fore-and-after silence is correct, the sense of utterance A is retained in after-silence A’. Fore-silence B’ originates in the recognition that after-silence A’, whatever the content of utterance A, has now come to an end. But one of the senses that fore-silence B’ carries is the sense that some utterance is now past. Can one go further and claim that fore-silence B’ carries some content residue of utterance A? Perhaps such a residue is what is in question when Merleau-Ponty says:

If fore-silence B’ does contain content residue of utterance A, then does it not follow that in some relevant sense every utterance, regardless of its internal structural peculiarities (grammatical, lexical, etc.), originates as response and terminates as interrogation? At this level of description, the resources are not available for giving a reasoned answer to this question. But the question is not to be dismissed. It points to the need both for performing an intentional analysis of silence and for proffering an ontologicai interpretation of the sense of silence which is laid bare by that analysis.

Now, however, the connection between fore-and-after silence and intervening silence must be specified. More significant than the differences between these two ways in which silence appears is the radical similarity between them. Both have to do with opening and closing utterances or components of utterances.

Fore-and-after silence is involved in making a particular utterance distinct from every other utterance. Intervening silence is involved in making a particular sound phrase distinct from every other sound phrase. The sameness of their function points to a basic unity which embraces these two aspects of silence. This unity can be expressed thus: These two aspects of silence, namely, fore־and־after silence and intervening silence, constitute a positive unity within which some determinate utterance unfolds. These aspects constitute the unitary “back-ground” against which the always filigreed “figure” of some determinate utterance begins, runs its course, and comes to completion. Without the utterance, of course, the silence would not have a plurality of actual aspects. The utterance as figure brings texture to the silence as background and vice versa. The unity of the utterance, at least in part, depends upon the unity of the background silence just as the unity of the two aspects of silence in question here depends, at least in part, upon the unity of the utterance. It is worth noting in this connection that even if there is a fundamental discontinuity between word and sentence, as neo-Humboldtian reflection on language would have it, there is no fundamental discontinuity between sound phrase and utterance or between intervening silence and fore-and-after silence.¹⁰

In short, these two ways in which silence appears are not fundamentally distinguished from one another by some feature which is peculiar to either of them. Rather, they are basically distinguishable from each other only by virtue of the determinate utterance and its constituent sound phrases with which they are conjoined. Thus, just as the utterance itself is a positive complex unity, so is the background silence against which it unfolds.¹¹ This claim is buttressed by the fact that each moment of this silence, whether it be a moment of intervening silence or of fore-and-after silence, can exemplify the same range of emotional coloration as does any other moment of this unitary silence. Any moment of silence can be experienced as surprising or expected, as brusque or smooth, etc.¹²

Though these two aspects of silence can be distinguished only by virtue of the utterance which stands out against them, this fact does not give utterance any primacy over these two ways in which silence appears. But it does show that even if silence is a positive phenomenon, at least two readily detectable aspects of silence cannot come to light without some determinate utterance. At least two aspects of silence cannot enjoy a radical independence from or hegemony over utterance. If anything, they seem to be somehow subordinate to utterance. But the evidence uncovered thus far is too slight to establish any such subordination.

At this juncture, the description of a third widely recognized aspect of silence, an aspect I call deep silence, will bring to light new dimensions both of the link between silence and utterance and of the temporality of silence.

IV. DEEP SILENCE

Deep silence has been recognized and thematically treated by many artists, scholars, and other reflective people, often in the making and discussion of literary works, in the discussion of religious ritual, and in accounts of interpersonal intimacy, but particularly when the topic is either discourse or language itself. My claim here is that deep silence is at play in all utterances of whatever sort. Occurrences of this aspect of silence do not appear to be subordinate to utterance. In fact, at least sometimes they appear to enjoy a primacy over utterance. But questions of priority are not in order at this point. Rather, deep silence needs to be described.

Unlike the previously discussed ways in which silence appears, deep silence is not correlated with a specific utterance in a fashion which would permit reciprocal mapping. One cannot point to some determinate utterance which deep silence frames. Nor does silence play either a rhythmic or a melodic role in a specific utterance. But there is no reason, as will become plain shortly, to claim that deep silence can occur apart from any utterance whatsoever. On the contrary, deep silence, like the aspects already described, can occur only if some utterance is associated with it. What distinguishes deep silence from both intervening silence and fore-and-after silence is that numerically distinct occurrences of deep silence cannot be identified for all occurrences of utterances.

Deep silence can occur in many modes. It will suffice here to discuss three of them, namely, the silence of intimates, liturgical silence, and the silence of the to-be-said. This last mode is a kind of “normative” silence.

The Silence of Intimates

Among intimates—and there is the intimacy of hate, of lengthy bearing with one another in resignation, as well as the intimacy of love—an aura of silence pervades the utterances they exchange. The conversation among intimates has no specific achievement as its primary goal. It is not primarily an exchange of information, though probably some information must be exchanged. Nor is the conversation well defined in the sense of having clearly demarcated beginnings and ends. Intimates take up their conversation where they left off. But they take up their conversation not as though it were an unfinished but finishable set of utterances. Rather, intimates stand in an abiding, settled-though-unsettleable silence which is interwoven or interspersed with utterance.

No specific utterance is necessary for the occurrence or maintenance of the silence in which intimates abide. But utterance is not irrelevant to the silence of intimates. The silence of intimates is in some fashion, certainly not causally, engendered by some utterance or set of utterances. Further, once it has begun, the silence of intimates is somehow maintained through utterances. But the number and frequency of these sustaining utterances in principle cannot be specified. This description is obviously vague. But the phenomenon which it describes is itself opaque. Full transparency will not be achieved even by an intentional analysis of silence; an ontological interpretation will be needed.

What deserves notice here is, not only the absence of a necessary conjunction between deep silence and any particular determinate utterance, but also the preeminence of silence over any particular utterance that serves either to engender or maintain the silence of intimates. The utterance engaged in among intimates is oriented to and finds its place in the silence in which the intimates abide. The utterances which came before the occurrence of the silence of intimates, if indeed they did contribute to the engendering of the silence, are seen differently once that silence occurs. For example, the utterances exchanged between two people before they came to love or hate each other can be recognized only later as having contributed to the occurrence of this intimacy and as having a sense which could not have been detected prior to the engendering of that silence. Thus the most profound sense of an utterance occurring in the nexus of the silence of intimates lies in the contribution it makes to that silence. Nevertheless, apparently an abiding, imperturbable, pure silence of intimates, a silence unnourished by utterance, is a fiction.

Liturgical Silence

A second mode of deep silence is that which I call liturgical silence. Whether liturgical silence is to be found in all ritual worship is not the question here, though it will be touched upon later. At this point, I wish simply to take note of a mode of deep silence that occurs in at least some instances of ritual worship. Therefore, discussion of only two instances of liturgical silence, namely, silence in Roman Catholic worship and in Quaker worship is sufficient for my purposes.

Anton Baumstark, a major historian of Catholic liturgy, has shown that the evolution in Catholic liturgy tends to move from ritual austerity to richness, “from simplicity and brevity towards ever greater richness and prolixity.”¹³ Specifically, the tendency in liturgical development is to add gestures to verbal formulas and vice versa, as well as to fill in pauses in the liturgical act with complications of the formulas and gestures already used. On the other hand, liturgical reforms tend to simplify formulas and gestures and to reintroduce silent spaces into the flow of the liturgical act. And at a more profound level, liturgical reform movements have emphasized that liturgical action taken as a whole does not constitute a full life of piety but collapses into sterile ritualism unless it is sustained by private, silent prayer.

However necessary silence is to the Catholic liturgy, it does not reach there the obvious and explicit level that it has attained in Quaker worship. For the Quaker, worship itself is fundamentally hush or silence. And within worship, silence is the ground of both action and speech. The hush of worship overflows the actual Quaker meeting and, now manifest as restraint, influences a Quaker’s participation in business and the arts. Indeed it becomes ingredient in all important decision making.¹⁴ As Rudolph Otto makes clear, the Quaker does not understand silence to be an undifferentiated void. Silence is seen as both a positive and a differentiated phenomenon which is given an ontological interpretation in Quaker theology.¹⁵

What is common to these two examples of silence in ritual worship is the expectation that God will work within the space of silence the worshipers hold open. On the one hand, the space of silence is not provided by an individual worshiper acting alone. On the other hand, the space of silence is not provided so that one, some, or all of the worshipers can do something further. It is opened for God’s activity.

But the silent space is not opened so that God will do some X specified in advance by the worshipers. Rather it is opened for Him to do there what He wills, even if He wills to do nothing which the worshipers can recognize as a doing. Here, in a fashion comparable to the silence among intimates, silence is not intrinsically coordinated with some specific utterance or deed that is awaited. And, as in the silence among intimates, silence has a certain preeminence, but an abiding pure silence unnourished by some utterances or deeds, here the worshipers giving voice to the fact or the expectation of God’s doing or revealing something, makes no sense.

This mode of deep silence, liturgical silence, shares with the silence of intimates the characteristic of being explicitly intersubjective in its origin and maintenance. It shares with a third mode of deep silence, which I call silence of the to-be-said, a reference to something which in principle lies beyond what human agents can achieve by their own endeavors.

The Silence of the To-Be-Said

A third mode of deep silence, the silence of the to-be-said, is that silence beyond all saying, the silence of the what-ought-to-be-said in which what-is-said is embedded.¹⁶ Or perhaps better, the silence of the to-be-said tests all that is said. This mode of silence might thus be said to be a normative or philosophical silence. But if so, then it appears to be likewise closely akin to what should be called mystic silence. Thinkers from widely differing traditions have pointed to it and have found themselves constrained to deal with it. Here, however, sketching a description of it is enough to show both that it is a mode of deep silence and how it is connected to the other modes of deep silence described above.

At bottom, in all utterance there is an appeal beyond the utterance for an authentication of the utterance. No utterance is ultimately and definitively authenticated by another utterance or set of utterances. The coherence and consistency of utterances provides final warrant neither for a particular utterance nor for the entire set. Authentication must be awaited in silence. Whatever is uttered is either validated or invalidated by the silent to-be-said which the encountered world presents to man for his originary response.¹⁷

From another standpoint, the silent to-be-said can be recognized in the phenomenon of tact, the phenomenon in which the not-to-besaid is acknowledged. Tact is a particular sensitiveness to situations. The tactful person knows how to behave in these situations, but this knowledge is not derived from general principles. Thus, as Gadamer says, “an essential part of tact is inexplicitness and inexpressibility.”¹⁸

Tact is closely linked with good sense, le bon sens, which is the task of governing our relationships with others by adapting general principles to reality so that justice and practical truth can be concretely achieved. To behave with tact and good sense is not to hide something and leave it unsaid. But, to cite Gadamer again:

As in the silence of initmates and liturgical silence, so in the silence of the to-be-said, the silence is not intrinsically correlated with any specifiable utterance. And, again, the silence is somehow preeminent over and primordial to any determinate utterance whatsoever. Nonetheless, the silence of the to-be-said is not isomorphic to the other modes of deep silence discussed here. In both the silence of intimates and liturgical silence, there is someone for whom silence leaves room to engage in utterance. But in the silence of the to-be-said there is no evident someone or something to whom an appeal is made with the hope or expectation of a response. Yet something comparable to an appeal is present there. Utterance appeals to the to-be-said for its authentication. But the “response,” of course, is not an utterance.

It should be noted that the appeal to the to-be-said can be interpreted theologically or metaphysically as an appeal to God. On such an interpretation the distinction between the second and third modes of deep silence is attenuated. Further, a theological or metaphysical interpretation could be developed which would include this God as a necessary member of any circle of intimacy. Then the distinction between the first and the other two modes of deep silence discussed here would likewise be foreshortened if not entirely collapsed.

But at this level of description either to propose or to reject such interpretations would be premature. What should be noticed here, rather, is that the description of these modes of deep silence, like the description of intervening silence and fore-and-after silence, reveals the need for some sort of ontological interpretation of the significance of the phenomenon of silence.

Liturgical silence, for example, has been understood by worshipers to be not only an appeal for a divine response but also a response to a divine call. That is, the “gesture” of assembling the worshipers, the liturgical utterances, and the liturgical silence can be taken as a response to that to-be-said which is beneath all verbalized commands, creeds, etc., namely, the silent call issued by the divine. Similarly, all utterance can plausibly be regarded not only as appealing to the to-be-said for authentication, but also as originating in response to a claim which the to-be-said makes to be said, and to be said well.

In short, this level of description provides no foundation for granting preeminence either to the aspect of appeal or to the aspect of response in the phenomena of liturgical silence and the silence of the to-be-said. One is entitled to claim only that in these two modes of deep silence, as in the case of the silence of intimates, there is a certain reciprocity between appeal and response. Prior to the intentional analysis of silence as a whole, this reciprocity cannot be unambiguously specified. In like manner, until ambiguities such as this are resolved, there can be no well-founded ontological interpretation either of the sense of deep silence in any of its modes or of the entire phenomenon of silence.

Also, this level of description leaves the time structure of deep silence in utter darkness. Deep silence is encountered as the silence which pervades utterance. It runs through utterance, intervening silence, and fore-and-after silence. At least in the modes examined above, it appears not to flow but to abide. Unlike intervening silence and fore-and-after silence, deep silence is not intrinsically correlated to some determinate utterance. Occurrences of deep silence are thus not measured against anything other than the persons participating in deep silence. Further, deep silence refers somehow not simply to persons but to persons relating themselves to that which does not have the determinateness of an object. There is, therefore, no reason to assume that the time structure of deep silence is fundamentally analogous to that of intervening silence or fore־and־after silence. Rather, its time structure seems to be quite different. But what the precise difference is will appear only by virtue of the intentional analysis of silence.

Similarly, at the present level of analysis very little can be said concerning the connection between deep silence on the one hand and intervening silence and fore־and־after silence on the other hand. Obviously they are linked together by the utterances which fertilize and maintain deep silence and which are both framed by and interspersed with the other two aspects of silence. But since deep silence is not necessarily connected to any specific utterance, and since both intervening silence and fore-and-after silence are so conjoined, there is no basis for claiming a causal connection among these ways in which silence appears. Nor is there justification for claiming that deep silence simply belongs to the background whence utterances as figures stand out. For deep silence shows itself as more prominent than the utterances which serve to maintain it. Beyond these negative conclusions, at this level not much else can be said concerning how these three aspects of silence are connected.

However, one further common characteristic of these three aspects of silence should be noticed. They are all polyvalent in their emotional impact. Silence and its aspects have thus far been described for the most part in benign terms. But silence can be malign as well. This appears most clearly in the silence of intimates.

Recall, for example, the silence with which Shakespeare’s Richard III responds to his victims who ask to speak with him before their execution. Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, calls this silence demoniacal.²⁰ Castle, in Graham Greene’s The Human Factor, experiences both the benign and the malign dimensions of silence with his wife, Sarah. Greene writes:

But silence can occur as malign in any of the ways in which it appears. Each aspect of silence can be as distressing and misery-laden as it can be consoling and peace-bearing or familiar and untroubling. To see this, one has only to recall the fearful intervening silence which intersperses the small boy’s nervous and hesitant public recitation of a poem. Suppose he cannot span the intervening silence with the right word! Or recall the sorrow-laden after-silence in which the funeral service for one’s beloved ends? What a well of misery is the silence of a ruptured friendship, or the hole whence the agonized cry “Where is my God?” emanates, or the gnawing silence within which one doubts the worth of his life’s work or indeed of his life itself.

Silence can also appear as odd, as curious or strange. An example is found in Walker Percy’s The Last Gentleman:

This evidence shows that silence does not always appear as either untroubling or comforting. But is there an order among these possible emotional impacts? That is, can one say some emotional impacts of silence are more appropriate or more fundamental than others? An ontologicai interpretation of the phenomenon of silence should provide some clue to the resolution of this question. At this level of description, however, one has no warrant for proposing an answer.

This first approximation of a proper account of silence, its quandries and zones of obscurity notwithstanding, has been fruitful. It has revealed that the phenomenon of silence is encountered in every segment of human experience in which utterance takes place. That is, the phenomenon of silence is neither a rare phenomenon nor one belonging to only a more or less narrowly circumscribed portion of life. Further, this description has yielded abundant evidence in favor of my claim that silence is a positive, complex, nonderivative phenomenon. It has also provided support for my claim that silence is a necessary condition for, and somehow coordinate with, discourse. But more than buttressing these relatively formal claims, this description makes possible at least a preliminary formulation of some important material characteristics which belong to all of the aspects of silence discussed thus far.

V. SOME FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SILENCE

Intervening silence, fore-and-after silence, and deep silence have at least four important characteristics in common. In all three of these ways of appearing, (1) silence is an active human performance which always appears in connection with an utterance, (2) silence is never an act of unmitigated autonomy. Rather, (3) silence involves a yielding following upon an awareness of finitude and awe. The yielding involved in silence is peculiar inasmuch as (4) it is a yielding which binds and joins. These four characteristics are not all logically independent of one another. But for expository purposes it is useful to take explicit notice of each of them.

The first characteristic need not be explained at length. Even when a man performs silence out of habit or routine, just as when he utters something habitually or routinely, he is still performing it in a culturally rather than a biologically established way. The silence he performs is not reducible to reflex behavior. Nor is silence simply a phase of passive receptivity. However habitual the performance is, all performances of silence are in some measure active.

But silence cannot be a radically automonous act. This second characteristic is not an ontological claim. What is at stake here is not the question concerning the foundation of the possibility of performances of silence. On the logical plane, this claim simply makes explicit what is implied by the claim that silence is somehow coordinate with utterance. Utterance of course, is public. But something more than a formal implication is being expressed here. If an individual man thought that no one or nothing else was in any way his equal or superior, then the phenomenon of silence would contain a core of nonsense. The phenomenon of silence is polyvalent in the emotional impact it can have. If the performance of silence were purely autonomous, then its author should be able to determine the impact it would have on him. But obviously he cannot do this. Phenomenally, then, silence shows itself as an act that cannot be performed in radical independence. Someone must indeed act for there to be silence. But he must act in concert with someone or something which is fundamentally distinct from him.²³

In attributing to silence its third characteristic, namely, that silence involves a yielding, I am simply spelling out what is implicit in the acknowledgment that the performer of silence is not radically autonomous. This yielding is a yielding before some power which is beyond one’s control. It is a yielding which is experienced as motivated by finitude and awe. In performing silence one acknowledges some center of significance of which he is not the source, a center to be wondered at, to be in awe of. The very doing of silence is the acknowledgment of the agent’s finitude and of the awesomeness of that of which he is not the source. But correlatively, the agent is aware that the doing of silence opens him to meet that which lies beyond his control. This other reaches the agent only through the agent’s yielding. Thus there is the awe-filled realization that he who engages in active performances has a responsibility for letting this other appear. The silence of the agent acknowledges this awesome responsibility.

Finally, silence’s fourth characteristic is its appearance as a yielding which binds and joins. Intervening silence in its closing-opening function binds the already said to the predelineated sayable. Within an utterance, when a said word is closed off, an opening for the predelineated yet-to-be-said takes place. Fore-and-after silence binds the utterance into a unity. Perhaps the unity is fragile, but it is final. And deep silence binds him who performs it to that which is otherand not inferior to him, however this other is interpreted.