[lit-ideas] Re: Silence
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 17:58:07 -0700
On May 6, 2010, at 4:10 PM, Robert Paul wrote:
David Ritchie wrote
One cannot arrest quiet, or cause it to speed on by; one can but
interrupt it.
Pages about silence, read quietly, like John Cage's demonstration
might prove diverting.
The rest, unless it is in outer space, is not likely to be silence.
And yet we hold fast to the term and think we have heard what it
means.
One of my good friends, who is even older than I am, has been blind
since he was seventeen. He says he asked himself, after he'd been
blind for some years, whether he'd rather be blind or deaf. To him,
the answer was obvious: he'd far rather be blind, for in being deaf
one would lose the intimacy which only human voices can express.
Does anyone have the full text of Mary Clemmer, "Silence"? I can't
find it on the web, even under Mary Clemmer Ames. The excerpts I
have in a book of quotations go:
Down through the starry intervals,
Upon this weary-laden world,
How soft the soul of Silence falls!
How deep the spell wherewith she thralls,
How wide her mantle is unfurled
and
Of all our loving Father's gifts,
I often wonder which is best,--
And cry: Dear God, the one that lifts
our soul from weariness to rest,
The rest of Silence,--that is best.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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