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A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by Alain Corbin

A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by Alain Corbin Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/27/1/126/867432/0270126.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 Alain Corbin, A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 155 pp. Writing or speaking about silence is always paradoxical and ree fl cts the means by which the mind works with it. The mind, for example, has to focus on a single point in order to become silent and forget its usual chatter. For the mind to seat new knowledge in memory, or to recover the lost word on the tip of the tongue, it must forget (“sleep on it”) in order to remember. But the present work is con - cerned not so much with function as with a range of the many- faceted experi- ences of silence, largely through (mostly French) literature and works of art in various genres. Corbin catches the psychological nuances and contexts of silence, from monastic silence to the silence of intimacy (Proust: “The air of [this room] was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter . . . without a sort of greedy enjoyment”); from the discipline of silence in education to its tragic manifestations (Maeterlinck: “Of how many ordinary friendships may it not be said that their only foundation is the com - mon hatred of silence!”); from silence as a tactic to silence as a form of speech (Blanchot: “Silence— it alone has the last word”). Attitudes toward silence range from terror (Pascal’s “eternal silence of these infinite spaces”) to desire ( John of the Cross: “In the calm and silence of night and in this knowledge of divine light, the soul discovers . . . a certain correspondence with God”). The effect of the book is kaleidoscopic rather than linear. The translation ree fl cts the beauty of the French and is itself refulgent with silence. One problem, though, is that the price of the English edition is five times that of the French. In the contemporary world, silence in any form tends to come at a price; it is frequently a luxury avai- l able only to the rich. — Maggie Ross doi 10.1215/0961754X-8723330 C OM MO N K N O W L E D G E 12 6 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by Alain Corbin

Ross, Maggie
Common Knowledge , Volume 27 (1) – Jan 1, 2021
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Abstract

Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/27/1/126/867432/0270126.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 Alain Corbin, A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 155 pp. Writing or speaking about silence is always paradoxical and ree fl cts the means by which the mind works with it. The mind, for example, has to focus on a single point in order to become silent and forget its usual chatter. For the mind to seat new knowledge in memory, or to recover the lost word on the tip of the tongue, it must forget (“sleep on it”) in order to remember. But the present work is con - cerned not so much with function as with a range of the many- faceted experi- ences of silence, largely through (mostly French) literature and works of art in various genres. Corbin catches the psychological nuances and contexts of silence, from monastic silence to the silence of intimacy (Proust: “The air of [this room] was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter . . . without a sort of greedy enjoyment”); from the discipline of silence in education to its tragic manifestations (Maeterlinck: “Of how many ordinary friendships may it not be said that their only foundation is the com - mon hatred of silence!”); from silence as a tactic to silence as a form of speech (Blanchot: “Silence— it alone has the last word”). Attitudes toward silence range from terror (Pascal’s “eternal silence of these infinite spaces”) to desire ( John of the Cross: “In the calm and silence of night and in this knowledge of divine light, the soul discovers . . . a certain correspondence with God”). The effect of the book is kaleidoscopic rather than linear. The translation ree fl cts the beauty of the French and is itself refulgent with silence. One problem, though, is that the price of the English edition is five times that of the French. In the contemporary world, silence in any form tends to come at a price; it is frequently a luxury avai- l able only to the rich. — Maggie Ross doi 10.1215/0961754X-8723330 C OM MO N K N O W L E D G E 12 6

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2021

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