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In Search of Silence (Part II)
Dreams and Visions

In Search of Silence (Part II)

Julia Fiedorczuk
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Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

“When I pronounce the word Silence / I destroy it”, wrote Wisława Szymborska in a poem I quoted in the previous part of my paradoxical investigations into silence.

When I pronounce the word silence, I think about several things simultaneously.

First of all, I simply imagine a quiet place; some space where no noises can reach me, especially no civilized noises. A quiet room with a view. A house with a garden. A cabin in the woods. But it is not only sounds, or a lack thereof, that I think of when I think about silence. I also think about being free from politics and

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Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.
Publish date: 05.02.2020

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In Search of Silence (Part I)

Julia Fiedorczuk
Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

To write about silence – what a paradox. “When I pronounce the word Silence / I destroy it”, wrote Wisława Szymborska in The Three Oddest Words (translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh).

What could be said about silence except that there is less and less of it, just as there is less and less darkness (excessive night-time lighting due to numerous sources of artificial light is the cause of the ‘light pollution’ hindering astronomical observation of the sky, but it also interferes with the well-being of animals and plants adapted to living in darkness during the night)? In the civilized world, it is almost never completely dark – and never completely quiet. Like everything that is natural and rare, silence becomes an exclusive commodity – we leave the city to find ourselves away from its clamour, to wind down and rest. Silence is a luxury, being ‘out of reach’ (with no access to the internet or a phone) – an extravagance few of us can afford, while there are fewer and fewer places where it is possible to really ‘cut oneself off’ from the world.

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