PARADOXES

After my father died in 1976, my mother developed another love: that of cemeteries. Although his grave didn’t follow us when we moved to another city not long after the event, mother would drag us to the cemetery every Sunday. Her argument was that there was no place like the cemetery where one could really get a sense of silence. I paid attention. Ever since then my love for silence has been constant. It manifests itself in many ways, however. Also in association with sound. I suppose that saying that nowhere is silence more formidable than in a blasting Bach organ recital would be a kind of paradox. ‘Tis true, though. When I was in my teens, mother was worried that I never went to anything other than such recitals or the opera. She would say, “but, young people don’t go to these things. Try a disco place.” I would go, “excuse me?”, and that would settle it. When I came to Denmark in my early 20s I realized quickly at that point that I must have been the only person on the planet who had not heard of the hippies, Woodstock, and Bob Dylan. It was a kind of irony that in spite of such major ignorance I wanted professionally to be in American studies. You can imagine the big holes I had to start filling in terms of acquiring what others would call basic knowledge. It was also about that time that I realized I was an epistemologist at heart, only my love for abstract formalism kept messing with my plans to study hard core philosophy. All the better, as I’m not really interested in big questions. If there’s one truth out there it’s this one: we’re all going to die – and if you ask me, the sooner the better; just get it over with. It’s the only end result I ever believe in. Now some would say, “don’t be so cynical.” I would, of course, deny any such charge. But I forget now what the argument for it is. Perhaps this one: because “our days are numbered.” Not very original, but then quoting the Bible has always proven to be very efficient, especially when one has nothing to say. Which makes me think that what I really wanted to be in this life time is a famous mathematician. It never happened. Given that I was no good at putting two and two together, ever, my love of math must remain both a mystery and a paradox. Anyway, where was I, yes, silence. My God, how I love it! So did Wittgenstein. When he elegantly passed the ineffable over into silence, he made a paradoxical move where the tension between finitude and the infinite is concerned. On this I like what Jabès has to offer in The Book of Shares: “finite: all that is no more. Infinite: all that is more” (30). Of course as a formalist epistemologist, mathematician, Americanist, Bach enthusiast, and cynic, I would have to ask Jabès: “what do you mean by all?” (this is me as a judge talking, which I also fancied becoming especially since I always thought that if one has to measure silence, one has to make recourse to a notion of scaling actions; another paradox, I know). But Jabès would instantly reply – already there, through a silent reading of the juxtaposed page where the above quote is lifted from, so that even any such noise resulting from turning the damn page is altogether liquidated – that “silence is no weakness of language. It is on the contrary, its strength. It is the weakness of words not to know this” (31). So we’re back to fucking knowledge. My God, will it ever stop? Let’s stay silent for a while, and observe others observe. Here’s Guy Davenport hunting The Hunter Gracchus:

“Poe’s mind was round, fat, and white; Kafka’s cubical, lean, and transparent.” (15)

“The emptier a room the smaller it seems. This is true of minds as well." (230)

“Jaako Hintikka, philosopher and critic of Wittgenstein. In private life a reindeer.” (228)

“Hemingway’s prose is like an animal talking. But what animal?” (234)

“ – Rabbi, this tearing off of the foreskin, is it right?” (231)

“Poetic knowledge is polythetic: it needs only a representative example to make its case. But to talk about poetic knowledge in prose we need the full set." (300)

“Talk ruins everything.” (300)