The beauty of silence and darkness

In 1952, John Cage composed 4.33 . The score features a single word, Tacet (to remain silent), and the staff is blank. It was premiered on August 29 of that year in Woodstock, at a contemporary music festival, by David Tudor, who sat at the piano and, for the minutes and seconds stipulated in the title, remained motionless, without playing a single note.

The piece has given rise to various interpretations. For some, it's nothing more than an avant-garde boutade , a neo-Dadaist provocation. However, a more sober reading would connect it to the Zen Buddhism practiced by the composer. Cage declared: "There is no such thing as silence. What the audience thought was silence, because they didn't know how to listen, was filled with accidental sounds." I heard the work many years ago, one evening in the garden of a New York museum, and I've never forgotten that experience. Time stretched—the 4.33 minutes seemed eternal—and the everyday sounds that surrounded us suddenly took on a new meaning as they went from being heard to being listened to.

⁄ “Keeping silence becomes a springboard for creativity. Silence is not sterile, it is not a void.”

With 4:33 , John Cage taught us to listen to silence, similar to how Buddhist monks, hermits, or Carthusians listen to it. His piece, more than a provocation, is an invitation. In a contemporary world where we are constantly surrounded by noise, rediscovering silence means changing our perspective. It was the only good thing the pandemic lockdown brought us: we suddenly discovered the city through different eyes because there was no traffic or bustle in the streets. Now, several works are appearing in bookstores that champion silence and darkness in a world filled with noise and light.

The Forgotten Art of Silence , by British author Sarah Anderson, is an elegant essay, both intimate and erudite. The author traces several paths through silence. The journey begins with her personal experience of confinement due to the pandemic and reviews her own experiences with silence, mostly positive, although there are also some negative ones, such as the one she experienced during a meditation retreat in Spain, during which she was overcome by a feeling of uncontrollable anxiety. Sometimes, listening to oneself can be dizzying because the silence is deafening. However, silence almost always brings peace. And, as her friend Richard Philp wrote to her in a letter: “Silence is necessary for deep and careful thought. The condition of remaining silent becomes a springboard for creativity. Silence is not sterile, it is not a void.”

Anderson then explores silence in nature, with settings such as glaciers and the desert, and seeks out spaces of silence in large cities. She then connects silence with spirituality, religions—anchoritics, Carthusians, Quakers—and meditation. Regarding the virtues of silence as a path to transcendence, we could speak of a universal consensus, because, as the author points out, “both Eastern and Western monastic traditions consider silent meditation central.” Pascal put it this way: “In love, silence is more profitable than speech. There is an eloquence in silence that is more incisive than language.”

To complete the overview of the subject, he also devotes a chapter to those forms of silence that are not sought but imposed, such as that suffered by a prisoner in solitary confinement, or the terrifying silence after a battle. We could also add here, although it doesn't appear in the book, that "silence of God" explored by Bergman in The Communicants , also present in Silence —Shusaku Endo's novel and Scorsese's film—about the persecuted and tortured Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan.

One of the most evocative sections of the book is its overview of silence in literature, the visual arts, and music. It may seem paradoxical to talk about silence in music, but great composers and virtuoso performers know that the power of a score often lies in the pauses, in the space between the notes. The author aptly uses the example of Frederic Mompou's exquisite—and secretive—piano pieces, in which silences are an essential part of the composition.

In the literary realm, the solitary Thoreau sought it in his cabin in Walden, and the young Mircea Eliade, who lived for a time in a cave among the pine forests of the Himalayas. Pythagoras already said: “Learn to be silent. Let your still mind listen and absorb the silence.” And more recently, and in a tone more in tune with contemporary reality, Kierkegaard declared: “If I were a physician and could prescribe a single remedy to cure all the ills of the world, I would prescribe silence. For, even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could we hear it with so much noise? Cultivate silence!” Obviously, the noise the philosopher refers to is not just honking horns, but useless distractions that distract us from the essential, a kind of white noise or permanent background noise that prevents us from hearing what is important. He emphasizes the same advice as Emerson: “Let us keep silent; only then can we hear the whispers of the gods.” The provocative and uncomfortable silences of lack of communication, which are at the heart of the absurdist theatre of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, are very different.

There is also silence in painting, from the intimate recollection of Chardin to the spirituality of Rothko in the Houston chapel, passing through the contemplative stillness of the rückenfiguren (back-to-back figures) of Friedrich and Hammershøi. The former has a famous entry in his diary to explain the meaning of his paintings that reads: "Close your physical eyes to first see your painting in your spiritual eyes. And then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness." Several recently published books are dedicated specifically to darkness.

⁄ Always surrounded by noise, discovering silence changes your perspective; it was the only good thing that confinement brought.

Unlike silence, darkness has historically had a negative connotation. Humans have always fought against it: with bonfires, candles, oil lamps, and light bulbs. It is generally associated with negative and terrifying aspects: from black holes in the cosmos to a multitude of archaic and contemporary myths, such as the dark lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings . It is no coincidence that the period in which obscurantism was fought through reason was called the Age of Enlightenment.

However, just as the contemporary world is the age of noise—claimed by some, such as futurists and punks—it is also the age of excess light, in both a real and metaphorical sense. So much light has annihilated mystery, and so much light pollution alters nature. Swedish scientist Johan Eklöf focuses his attention on this second aspect in Manifesto for Darkness . The author points out a paradox: “Our desire to illuminate the world has allowed us to contemplate the fascinating image of the Earth shining in the darkness of space. At night, our cities become visible in the distant cosmos (…). And yet, those who live in those same cities are barely able to glimpse a single star in the firmament.”

His book addresses the dangers of light pollution: it disrupts the vital rhythms of animals, as happens to newly hatched sea turtles, which, under so much light, lose their bearings from the moon. The author proposes solutions and concludes with a manifesto for enjoying the virtues and pleasures of darkness. However, he does not limit himself to the scientific aspect; he also devotes an interesting chapter to Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows and the different appreciation of the tension between light and darkness in the West and the East.

Norwegian author Sigri Sandberg's approach to the subject in Ode to Darkness is more personal, as it stems from her fear of the dark. The volume is organized as a curious double diary, alternating the author's experiences and reflections with the story of Christiane Ritter, an Austrian painter and writer who traveled with her husband to the Arctic in 1934, lived in constant night, and recounted it in the book A Woman in the Polar Night (available in Spanish from Peninsula). Following in this woman's footsteps, Sandberg learns to overcome the fear that grips her and discovers the virtues of darkness.

⁄ Unlike silence, darkness has a negative connotation, and human beings have always fought against it.

There is another kind of darkness, more agonizing and total: that of blindness. Such as that temporarily suffered by the warrior aesthete Gabriele D'Annunzio during the First World War due to a plane crash. During his convalescence in Venice, blindfolded and cared for by his daughter, he wrote on papers she provided him the reflections and evocations compiled in Nocturne . The lack of his sense of sight empowers others, such as touch and smell, and propels him to evoke the past: “I trace my signs in the night that sits between one thigh and the other like a nailed axle. I am learning a new art. (…) And I tremble at the first line I will draw in the darkness.”

For his part, Vicente Monroy defends movie theaters over home streaming in A Brief History of Darkness . Because the convenience of a remote control and a sofa cannot replace the collective experience of a darkened room projecting images—stories, dreams—on a big screen. André Breton already said it in the Surrealist Manifesto : “Cinema? Bravo to dark rooms.” Without falling into mythomania or facile nostalgia, the author describes movie theaters as sanctuaries of the imagination and seeks their antecedents in the theater, especially Bayreuth and “the immersive ambitions of Wagner.” He also delves into some more questionable twists—even though in times of repression there was the so-called one-armed line in movie theaters—by connecting the darkness of cinema with cruising , something that may have some personal meaning for him, but is frankly absurd.

The author notes in the book that "the theaters aspired to their own universality: in Los Angeles or Kathmandu, anyone who sat in a seat abandoned their gray reality to become a citizen of a chimerical land of darkness." Indeed, we need darkness to dream and silence to think.

Interview with Sarah Anderson “In the past there was more silence”

M. Bach Sarah Anderson founded the travel literature specialist Travel Bookshop in 1979 in London's Notting Hill neighborhood. Film buffs will surely remember it: yes, it's the bookstore featured in the famous romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Anderson studied Chinese and the psychology of religion, has taught travel writing at City University, and spends as much time as she can traveling, seeking out silence on those world journeys. She recently published The Forgotten Art of Silence . Was the only good thing about lockdown during the pandemic that we rediscovered silence? Certainly, during the pandemic there was more silence in the outside world: fewer planes in the sky, less traffic on the roads... but people also spent more time at home and had to live with more silence than they were used to. When did humanity lose touch with silence? Was there really more silence in the past? Yes, there was more silence in the past, since, until relatively recently, if you were alone you couldn't break the silence. Now we can press a button on our phones, laptops, etc., and listen to all the music or talk all we want, probably more than we need to. Is there a relationship between silence, spirituality, and religion? I would say there is a connection between silence and spirituality... Words are inadequate when we want to connect with something outside of ourselves. Silence can provide us with this bond, harmony, and connection. Is the connection with silence different in Western and Eastern civilizations? I think silence is at the heart of all religions—both Western and Eastern; in that sense, silence is universal. Is silence a form of self-discovery, a way to reconnect with oneself? The silence of meditation can lead us to self-discovery, and if we can quiet and still our busy minds, that can lead to self-discovery. Is silence essentially related to nature? Even if nature isn't silent, we can silence our minds when we are in it. For example, if we sit contemplating the sea or a river, the water may be noisy, and if we walk through a forest, there will probably be many sounds, but we can appreciate them in silence. What is the most beautiful and perfect silence? Falling snow, that of the desert... The sound of falling snow—for which there is a special word in Japanese: shinshin —signifies the absence of sound where there once was: a profound silence. Snow muffles sound, as does fog, producing a special kind of silence. You also write about the negative side of silence. For example, your negative experience with meditation. Silence can be negative... Solitary confinement, as well as people who are silenced for their beliefs. Personally, I've had difficult times with silent meditation, but I think it's important to persist and not judge yourself too harshly. There's a section of your book dedicated to silence in literature, art, and music. Who is the author who best understands the importance and beauty of silence? It would be impossible to choose the author who best understands silence. I write about several authors who have written about silence in English, as I unfortunately don't speak Spanish. For example, the Romantic poets: Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and later writers like D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot. I think paintings can be a path to silence... If you look closely at paintings, for example the wonderful Spanish still lifes, words are unnecessary. And music: it's often the pauses between notes that make great music. The Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel wrote: "Silence is the basis of music. We find it before, after, within, beneath, and behind sound." Where can we find silence in big cities like London or Barcelona? In every city, there are usually quiet places: in parks, churches, and cemeteries. What is your best experience with silence? Where did it happen? My great personal experience with silence was in Antarctica. I had left the ship and was on a small motorboat, sailing among icebergs. The pilot cut the engine and everything went silent. Then it started to snow, and the silence was complete. It's that silence I've been trying to recover ever since.

Literature

Sarah Anderson The Forgotten Art of Silence Kairós Johan Eklöf Manifesto for Darkness Rosamerón Sigri Sandberg Ode to Darkness Captain Swing Vicente Monroy Brief History of Darkness Anagrama Gabriele D'Annunzio Nocturno Fórcola