The Eloquent Sounds of Silence - Pico Iyer
Introduction
God’s one and only voice is silence,
says Melville. Pico Iyer brings out the importance of silence in his essay “The
Eloquent Sounds of Silence” by singing paeans to silence. According to Pico
Iyer, when people go on retreat, to a high place and feel the warmth and joy of
being lifted up in a cool and secure place far away from the madding crowd,
they start to recite the standard litany: that silence is sunshine, silence is
rapture, silence is golden, etc. But silence is not so easily won. Moreover, before
rushing off to the hills, it is essential to remember that fool's gold (i.e the
easily obtained iron pyrite) is much more common and that gold can be obtained only
by a great amount of hard work, since it has to be dug out with great care and
effort, from other substances. Such
is the case with silence.
Silence is the Consecration of the Universe
According to Herman Melville, all
profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence,
and hence silence is the general consecration of the universe. Just
before his death, he came forth with his final utterance -- the luminous tale
of Billy Budd - and showed that silence is only as worthy as what we can bring
back from it.
Silence
is Spiritual
We have to strive a lot to earn
silence, and then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence in
our lives. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted
place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands.
In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say
is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below ourselves
into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better
say, we can hear someone else think.
