Tra i silenzi

Abstract

The paper explores the relationship between silence and speech, highlighting the coexistence and mutual implication of these two seemingly opposite poles. Silence is explored in various senses: as the source from which speech springs; as the absence of voice that can arise from an unspeakable experience of pain or ecstasy; as a dimension of meditation and deep listening, necessary to embrace the event of language beyond its conceptual objectification. Word, in turn, cannot claim to exhaust or contain the silence from which it emanates, but at the same time it is the only means to make it intelligible, while being aware of its own limitations. Philosophical logos and poetic speech grapple with this aporia, seeking to correspond to the excess of reality that escapes the meshes of language. By trying to put into dialogue some traditions of Western and Eastern thought, from phenomenology to Zen, recognizing art as a privileged path to sustain the encounter with the immeasurable and the unspeakable, the aim is fostering a different consciousness and a different form of ethics, in a paradoxical vision of the relationship between silence and word, sign and world.