The Art of Silence and Human Behaviour

Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Theodor Itten

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000078213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the phenomenon of silence in relation to human behaviour from multiple perspectives, drawing on psychological and cultural-philosophical ideas to create new, surprising connections between silence, quiet and rest.

Silence and being quiet are present in everyday life and in politics, but why do we talk about it so rarely? Silence can be cathartic and peaceful, but equally oppressive and unbearable. In the form of communication, we keep secrets to protect ourselves and others, but on the other hand subjects can be silenced with dictatorial posturing - a communicative display of power – and something can be literally 'hushed up' that needs to be disclosed. In unique and engaging style, Theodor Itten explores the multi-layered internal conversation on silence in relation to the self and emotions, demonstrating why it is sometimes necessary in our modern society. Describing and analyzing human behaviour in relation to silence, the book also draws on psychoanalytic ideas by outlining the power of silence in processing our emotions and relationships and hiding innermost feelings.

With rich narrative signposts providing thought-provoking and amusing insights, and interpersonal communication examined in relation to everyday life, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, philosophy, cultural studies, and related areas.

1

Silentium

The clock is ticking. Please, stop the pendulum. It’s quiet.

The silent, primitive connection between mother and baby probably provides the oldest and most enduring iconography of silence and sensory peace in our European culture (shaped by Greek, Hebrew, Roman, and Germanic influences). A baby’s hunger is “stilled” and its crying “quieted” at its mother’s or wet-nurse’s breast. This act is praised by King David (as early as 1000 bc) in his 131st psalm:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvellous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore.

Our mothers are our first gods – and here, the sound of praise and exultant words is extinguished in a nourishing silence.

The silence of the cosmos

Silentium: we might see it as metaphors which “summon one another and are more coordinated than sensations, so much so that a poetic mind is purely and simply a syntax of metaphors” (Bachelard 1964, p.107). Thus, at the beginning of all things was silence, around 13.82 billion years ago. Astrophysicists think of the universe as “something” that was born out of pure energy. It wasn’t until nearly 400,000 years later that stable atoms were formed. Millions of years had to pass before the first stars began to shine in this cosmic silence. Modern cosmologists believe that it all started with a Big Bang. Where there is no sound, there is no silence. Everything is at peace. We currently have no more serviceable metaphor than that of this standardised Big Bang theory, from which astrophysicists have been able to calculate a model of time, with the aid of computers. In the year 1225, the English bishop Robert Grosseteste wrote down his basic theory of creation in his book De luce (on light). The metaphor of the Big Bang comes from the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle (1915–2001). The Belgian theologian and physicist Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) coined the term “primeval atom” in 1931, for what was assumed to be the hot original state of the universe. The Big Bang theory gained increasing traction from the 1960s onwards, as new telescopes and computers failed to disprove it with fresh astronomical observations.

Why do we humans, living on this planet, in the middle of an unimaginably huge universe, need a point of origin? What difference does the origin of matter and space make to us? Astronomers observe the continual expansion of the universe. And it is interesting to work backwards and calculate, or rather to have the latest computers calculate for us, the moment when the cosmic silence came into being, when all matter and radiation was held in an inconceivably tiny space, all energy concentrated there. Since all the established theories of physics, such as quantum field theory and the general theory of relativity, presuppose the existence of space, time, and matter, they cannot describe the Big Bang.

Outer space is aphonic. A place whose silence, in our earthly imagination, is at once eerie and fascinating. The “Big Bang” does not describe an explosion in a space that already exists, but the simultaneous creation of matter, space and time from an original singularity. More precisely, the Big Bang describes a formal point in the cosmological model of an expanding universe. You reach it by tracing the development back in time to the point at which the fundamental general theory of relativity ceases to hold true, because density becomes infinite. By this logic, shortly after the Big Bang, the density of the universe must have exceeded the Planck density, a state which may be described by an as yet unknown theory of quantum gravitation, but not by any existing physical theory. Physics therefore currently has no generally accepted theory that covers the universe in its very early stages (Martus 2017, p.39).

No sound and fury; only silence. No clapping, for as yet there were no hands. The silent night dreamed on. There was no water yet, no forests, meadows, and paths. A state of rest, as emptiness passed the quiet time with stillness. Cries came before language, before speech, but after the silence. Noiseless lip-service.

Hamlet

In the final scenes of the tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (first performed in London in 1602), the actor and playwright William Shakespeare (1564–1616) included this brief exchange, which was to become world famous:

Hamlet: O, I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit:

I cannot live to hear the news from England;

But I do prophesy the election lights

On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;

So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,

Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

Dies

Horatio: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Why does the drum come hither?

“The rest is silence” has been much quoted for more than 400 years and, pregnant with meaning, goes hand in hand with Roma locuta, causa finita (Rome has spoken, the case is closed). “But” is the word that begins each contradiction and erases what has been said before. To experience something in life that we can remain silent about is exciting, but our ultimate finale doesn’t have to be a deathly silence. If we quiet down, we can all listen to the great nothingness. Silent notes and rhythms mostly sound harmonious. We have the right to silence and retreat. We always need the option of retreating into redemptive silence.

From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death—all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence (Huxley 1931, p.19).

Aldous Huxley was a master of articulating what had been revealed to him behind the doors of perception. What cannot be described in words can best be expressed in music. In the expressive power of musicians and composers. Pauses are silent music, expressive moments that communicate what otherwise cannot be heard. Music, in my experience – which contains a dearth of silence – is of fundamental significance for us. By expressing what cannot be spoken, it touches our souls and awakens there, perfect in the moment of hearing, the feeling that our senses are connecting us to our true nature.

When the inexpressible had to be expressed, Shakespeare laid down his pen and called for music. And if the music should also fail? Well, there was always silence to fall back on. For always, always and everywhere, the rest is silence (ibid p.22).

Stimulating words from this wily cultural analyst. His fellow writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) used silence to shield himself from the promise of revealing himself and his inner life.

Letting it rest

Silence is drawn out when we keep quiet, and the echo fades away when we “let it rest.” Silentium has been encoded within religion. It characterises silent retreats and prayers in convents and monasteries. Enforced silence is a form of expression for someone who considers themselves close to the Eternal. The whispered address without an addressee. There are experiences of silence in which the inner pain of some horrific event – Srebrenica – can only be made slightly more bearable with a long, soundless scream. Noiseless weeping as a community embraces and gazes at each other without saying a word. The image to go with this: Munch’s Scream.

I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

This is how the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch described the state of mind that he transposed into the famous painting The Scream (the text was written as a poem on the frame of the 1895 version).

This is about much more for us than the harmonious echo-chamber in our own minds. In silence, images can, may, should, and must be laid to rest from time to time, as necessary. Much like the stirred-up silt at the bottom of a pond, which creates fresh clarity as it sinks.

The Latin word silere means: to be silent; to stop speaking or making noise. A silentiarius or silentiary is a court official whose job is to maintain silence (Partridge 1979, p.622). Silence in court! The silentiary was also a Byzantine courtier, charged with keeping order and silence in Byzantium’s imperial court.

“Quiet please!” says the umpire on Centre Court in Wimbledon, as they restart the match. The same rule of silence applies in snooker, in ice hockey at the start of play (no music), and in athletics before the start of a race. All quiet. On your marks… set… starting pistol. Being silent always plays its part in the context of a situation. And silere, schweigen, not speaking – the human expression of silence – is practised in different places and for different lengths of time depending on that context. The familiar minute’s silence in the arena for a sporting figure who has died. Or a national minute’s silence after great catastrophes, whether natural or man-made.

“Ode quiet, quies” is, as it were, a response, an answer: be quiet and peaceful. Let something rest, lay it to rest. We can tune into our own wor...