"THE DIFFICULTY OF CONVERSATION: SPEECH AND SILENCE"

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THE DIFFICULTY OF CONVERSATION: SPEECH AND SILENCE

Prof. A.M. Sergeev, Doctor of Philosophy,

Murmansk State Humanities University

The peculiarity and significance of conversation aredue to the fact that … we cannot do without it. We arealways talking to other people, those we hold dear orthose we scarcely know, and if this is not possible wespeak with ourselves.

Let us begin our discussion of the ubiquity ofconversation and its unavoidable presence in our lifeby making a number of key statements. First, let usturn our attention to the fact that speaking may beconnected with an excess of the inner, the pressure of whichpeople try to relieve by putting the burden of whatthey do not understand on their interlocutor.Understandably, the inner is then turned into itsopposite. It is important to note at this point that itis difficult for a human being to stay concentratedwithin oneself, i.e. in the clearance between oneexternal embodiment of the inner and its nextembodiment. What we want is a state which is definite,not an uncertain one of being ‘in-between’.

At the same time, in the process of conversation onemay become involved in a search for a kind of ‘oneself’that one had actually never known before theconversation. And then the conversation is needed for‘finishing’ one’s person and giving it a ‘finished’definition. Here we are confronted with a situationwhere lack of knowledge becomes more significant thanknowledge, since one can become so closely bound upwith one’s knowledge that one’s openness and indefinitenessgrow unbearable.

Another circumstance deserves attention, too. We knownot only what we are talking about, but also what has to be

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said in this or that situation. But then theconversation we are involved in fails to induce ourentry into consciousness. Consciousness is not containedin what is known, the latter cannot accommodate it. If itactually does occur, then it is only at the edge ofknowledge, when one feels that what is known is notenough, and one can discover something new, i.e. onecan in principle become bound up with what is not known.

To an outsider, a polemical conversation may look likea kind of sparring of subjectivities, although theinterlocutors themselves would rather perceivethemselves as subjects of their speech acts.Conversation normally concerns what is remembered byeveryone, however, it is important to emphasize thatremembering something goes hand in hand with thoroughlyforgetting something else and maybe concealing somethingmore.

Objectivity is impossible within a conversation: it canonly emerge at a point where and when subjectivitydisappears, i.e. with another subject making anappearance, someone who is not connected with theessence of the conversation, but who is describing itfrom the outside. Each interlocutor bases his or herspeech on the states and facts of their consciousnesswhich, of course, do not coincide with those of anotherinterlocutor. The objectivity of the consciousness ofthose taking part in a conversation emerges togetherwith its description: in a description the factualityof consciousness is separated and becomes estrangedfrom the remaining contents of what is being said thatdo not directly belong to consciousness. Wheneverything has been said, or rather, when people havehad their say, the conversation reaches its logicalconclusion and can only be resumed if and when peoplediscover a logical connection between the facts of theirconsciousness. In this case, they become interlocutors.

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A real conversation communicates to us something not somuch about the facts of life as about the facts of consciousness,and it may be that the latter relate to the former onlyindirectly, if at all. In a real conversation, anexchange takes place of the facts of consciousness, i.e.a certain circulation of consciousness emerges. And ifthe integrity of life cannot be seen from within life,and is not manifested within it, then in the situationof a real conversation – with people communicating thefacts of their consciousness – both the individualtotalities of life and life as a whole becomecomprehensible. At this point it is important toemphasize precisely the fact that within a conversationlife begins to be understood and becomes meaningful. And,moreover, this is achieved by making the various becomepart of the whole.

It should be mentioned specifically that we can assumedifferent attitudes to what our interlocutor is saying. Onthe one hand, we can proceed from what is in principlean open attitude and take his or her every utteranceseriously, if not in terms of its content, then atleast in terms of accepting its form. But if we assumea distanced attitude to our interlocutor, whereby,irrespective of what he or she is saying, we set out toanalyze what is being said, while observing mostly ourown attitude to it, we still participate in the processof becoming conscious of it.

Because conversations are so common in our life, wenormally tend to pay attention to the content theycommunicate, rather than to their form as such. Takingpart in a conversation, one may speak both about thecircumstances of one’s life and about one’sunderstanding of these circumstances. Conversation doesnot only enable its participants to exchange the facts oftheir consciousness with other interlocutors, it alsoenables each participant to exchange them with himself

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or herself. And if this happens, one begins tounderstand oneself. Moreover, the stream ofconsciousness within which the various facts ofconsciousness come across one another, may not coincidewith either the speakers’ stream of life or with thosefacts of life that they have to deal with as they tryto solve the problems of their existence. Or rather,the stream of life may either coincide with the streamof consciousness or fail to do so: it is entirely amatter of one’s ability to distinguish between the factsof consciousness and those of life. But if this does happen –sporadically or periodically – then conversation has tobe seen as a ‘device’ for reproducing consciousnessthat enables an interlocutor to become ‘involved’ inconsciousness and to participate in its work.

It should be noted that, as far as real conversationsare concerned, they are mostly constructed in such away that the speakers attempt to communicate to theirinterlocutors something which is incomprehensible tothemselves, while being unable to distinguish on their ownbetween the ‘incomprehensible’ and the‘comprehensible’. Being completely involved in thesituation, the speaker cannot achieve self-concentration onhis or her own, but can do it in the process and as aresult of the conversation. The matter is that theinterlocutor is not entirely integrated in thesituation painful for the speaker and, keeping at adistance from the content of the situation, he or shebecomes able to see its ‘underside’ and come face toface not only with the unfolding of actions, but alsowith some of their regularities. However, theinterlocutor, too, would like to understand himself orherself, but is unable to do so for the same reason ofbeing involved in their own life and its situations,unless their aim in engaging in the conversation is toget it to put them ‘beside’ themselves and then ‘lead’them back to themselves.

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When speaking one would normally like to distanceoneself from one’s problems, an aim which is achievedby intentionally getting involved in the problems of one’sinterlocutor. One gets a respite from one’s ownproblems by turning to those of another, i.e. by turningone’s attention to what is not one’s own. However, the resultis that every participant in the conversation acquiresthe possibility to see what is their own from a new anddifferent angle, whereby what they have previouslyperceived as something entirely familiar, being nowseen from another perspective, manifests itself in adifferent way. Still, all this is the case only as longas the conversation remains just that, a conversation,rather than degenerating into pointless prattle andidle talk.

It would be appropriate to add at this point that muchbecomes comprehensible to the interlocutors preciselybecause they are focusing their conversation on shared,i.e. nor their own problems: if one of them were tostart speaking about what is exceptionally his or herown, the most probable result would be incomprehension.

Gradually one comes to realize that there is much inoneself and in the seemingly familiar interlocutor thatis different from, and other than what one tended toassume before. And this otherness deserves closestattention. Other persons induce us to pay attention tosomeone in us whom we, but for the conversation, wouldnot have known. Other things, those that have a peculiarability to drive back what we used to know aboutourselves, take shape when we begin to be of interestto someone else, first of all – of interest asinterlocutors. It remains an open question whether wewill be able to preserve what we have discovered aboutourselves thanks to the conversation when theconversation is over and we no longer have aninterlocutor. It remains an open question, too, which

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attracts us more in a conversation – that which we knowabout ourselves, or that which we do not. And then, arewe able to accept the changes affecting ourselves and theOther?

Let us state that a human being copes with his or hersubjectivity by means of its partial objectivization. It isa way of coping with it when one does not understandoneself, but would like to do so and, in an effort toachieve this aim, turns to oneself via the Other.

Let us also mention in passing that we normally countsomething as a loss because we have already made a kindof ‘investment’ in it: an investment of our very being,our feelings and impressions. Impressions tie thevarious together to form a unity – a single knot; thestronger the impression, the tighter the knot. We findsome knots of this kind exceptionally difficult to undodue to the strength of these impressions, so thatconstructions based upon such impressions can only bedismantled by means of utterly compromising them, i.e.by the event of death.

It takes an enormous effort to extract ourselves fromwhat we have completely immersed ourselves in, the workof ‘bringing out’ one’s subjectivity through itsobjectivization. Normally, such an objectivizationresults in the text of a conversation, and it is bythinking it through repeatedly and becoming consciousof it that on becomes able to loosen the grip ofsuffering and set free what is one’s own.

Conversation helps us to become conscious of what isalready with us, but of what we are unaware. In fact,it is a matter of becoming conscious of what one is.Becoming conscious, in turn, requires that work shouldbe done to relocate the human being beyond the limits ofthe known and to have him or her overstep the boundaryof their identification with what they know. Such a

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move aside and into a different perspective ofperception, which is required for any understanding tobe possible, takes place during and within aconversation, including that with ourselves.

The device of conversation helps human beings, firstly,to perceive themselves, secondly, to know that they areperceiving themselves and, thirdly, to understand thatthey know themselves as perceiving ones. Conversationmakes it possible to actualize and get started adialogical device, inherent in our consciousness, whichenables each of us to keep talking with oneself byaddressing the interlocutor as the Other. The Other’sspeech undermines the balance of the stream of innerspeech and the rigid directedness of our consciousness,enabling the latter to become ‘collected’ in theprocess of conversation on what is already a differentbasis.

A conversation that has taken place is important forboth interlocutors, as either of them comes tounderstand himself or herself through the other. This iswhy it is so important for a conversation to be frankand open, and for the participants to be prepared toaccept everything determined during and within theconversation as relevant for themselves.

The matter is that we are all ‘attuned’ in some way:attuned by life and its cares which make us solve lotsof problems connected with our day-to-day existence. Weare already attuned by the rhythm of life, attuned bythe rhythm of our ‘biological clock’, by variousphysiological rhythms and those of social life. Theseare already leading us, dragging us along, absorbingus. Moreover, a human being is not only from time totime, i.e. periodically, caught in certain streams oflife: he or she is completely and simultaneously caughtin life. It is incredibly difficult to break free fromthis plurivocal rhythmical field that has already

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caught, seized and almost absorbed us, which would alsomean to catch up with ourselves, since catching up withoneself is directly connected with being estranged fromthese rhythms.

A change of mood is necessary, a kind of displacement ofone’s general mood and concentration on one’s own innerworld. The rhythm of life prevents one from feeling aplenitude of oneself. This is the case because in theprocess of getting accustomed to the rhythm of life webecome diverted from ourselves towards life. We arecarried along by life, grow fascinated with it and getinvolved in it. It is precisely here that it isimportant to turn to the mood of the conversation andyield to it. And, if people are in a mood for aconversation, they can come to understand much aboutthemselves: they can, for example, deal with what theyare used to treating as something referring to themwhich can, however, have nothing to do with them. Therhythm of conversation must be different from the rhythmof life, rather than being its mere consequence,otherwise this conversation may prove unproductive.

Thanks to conversation, what we unthinkingly used toregard as our own and referred to ourselves because itwas referred to us by life with all its variousoccasions and situations ceases to appear to be that.What enters us of its own accord and without ourknowledge, i.e. without our being aware of it, can, ofcourse, do nothing to make us stronger. It is far morelikely to destroy us, pull us apart and unbalance us.Against the background of consciousness, those contentsof life that we have not become conscious of, taken assuch, should be perceived as smuggled and illegalgoods.

It is noteworthy that most arguments, quarrels and rowsoccur because of people’s intention to protect thesignificance of their personality precisely in the

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process of conversation, when one is powerfully drawninto the epicenter of a linguistic exchange, losingone’s ground due to its increased speed. The innerworld of a human being serves as a motivating factor tolook for the kind of verbal constructions that would benaturally compatible with it; however, due to the speedof linguistic exchange, the lexical means that arefound fail to give it full satisfaction. Duringquarrels, whose characteristic feature is a rapidproliferation of words, we grow desperate with a senseof impotence as we find ourselves both powerless tocope with the speed of the linguistic exchange andunable to locate ourselves in it. In a conversation,the participants’ mutual reclaiming of themselves takesplace in the common, i.e. nobody’s, territory oflanguage, but to achieve this, the speed of the speechstream must be reduced, and here one cannot do withoutsilence.

Speech can overcome many obstacles in its way. “You cansay whatever you like” is a familiar expression. Thisopenness of speech lays bare the problem of whether ithas any limits in its way that are set by the speakerhimself or herself. Anyone who has been involved in aconversation knows that after an ‘effusion’ ofceaseless talking one comes to feel exhausted, andvexed with a sense that one’s being, having been caughtin speech and alienated from itself, has becomeimmersed in a kind of unnatural state. In aconversation like this, one experiences one’sdesolation. Lacking a word that one could absolutely relyon is a symptom of lacking a world.

Limiting one’s speech activity is always a matter of adeliberate, willful refusal. An act of will connected withfalling silent and accepting one’s bond with silence,with the depth of speech, contributes to our innerconcentration. In fact, we only come face to face with the

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thoroughness and depth of speech when it is connectedwith the inner world of a human being, rather than withchoosing between various and always numerous meaningsof words. The kind of speech that has absorbed bothinterlocutors binds them up in a single thematicdimension where they have to react to its depth. Ourpartner’s speech is accepted by us if it is consonantwith our inner speech, due to which an aspect of theentity in question is revealed that we findsignificant. Highlighting the congruence of ourpartner’s speech with our inner speech we normally tryto record this state of affairs in some way. This isusually done by introducing particles and theindividual usage of words which serve as markers ofsuch an – inner – identity between our speech andourselves.

The kind of speech that absorbs us is weighty andunhurried: it also makes us weightier and more profound,whereas high-flown speech is rapid and shallow. If thecourse and tempo of our speech has been changed by theintroduction of what is not immediately relevant to it,the topic of our conversation no longer coincides withthe thematic field of thought, and the conversationfades to a close.

When we find ourselves reflecting on something, we seemto be putting different phrases to a test in order tosee if they will be able to carry our thought – andourselves – through. Getting involved in the matter ofconstructing a phrase, we inevitably assume theposition of an external observer with respect to what isbeing said. In the unhurried tempo of speech whichlends it depth and secures it, what matters to us aboveall is precisely the choice of the right word. Werealize that it depends on just this whether we willgive in to our lack of understanding and will,consequently, remain in the obscurity that makes us

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blind, or will overcome it and pull ourselves throughto the expanse of language.

It is important to us that our word should be able toaccommodate, as much as possible, our presence (Dasein)and give it an opportunity to reveal itself. The propertest of a felicitous phrase is not its conformity withthe impersonal language standards, but its capacity foraccommodating the sweeping surge of the mood forconversation that is carrying us along. And if thiscomes to pass, if the phrase is easily constructed,then the sheer harmony of this experience will neverfail to fill us with joy.

A felicitous conversation extends the human being, to bemore precise, it extends the inner space and time ofhis or her presence. In fact, we find it felicitousprecisely because we feel that, together with the eventof this conversation, we have gone beyond our limits thatwe found a nuisance, even if we did not fully realizeit. And then the expanse of speech invades us.

It may happen, however, that speaking becomes adefining or even a predominant activity of someindividual, whether a human being or a nation. In thiscase conversation becomes, to the exclusion ofeverything else, a form of reality for such an individual.And then everything, no matter what, is establishedthanks to conversation and within conversation,functioning as no more than an element of linguisticreality. Sometimes such a – rhetorical – reality may cometo dominate and define many spheres of the individual’slife and activity.

The initial and final moments in a human life unfoldingitself in the parameters of rhetorical reality arerepresented by constructions like “I told him (her,them) about it, didn’t I?” or “I have said so before,haven’t I?” In an environment like this much importance

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is given to the speaker, i.e. to someone who can anddoes speak. This type of conversation draws thespeakers’ attention to the substance and sphere of theword irrespective of their relation to the matter inhand.

A different way of conducting a conversation is foundwhen its participants have to peer into what is behindthe word and what is there before it is pronounced. Inthis respect, the word itself is no more than anintermediary, something ‘in-between’, a ‘clearance’that is significant in itself and not only in itsconcrete definiteness.

We are earnestly concerned either with the power of theword connected with the speaker’s ability to besituated within a phrase, when such a word – a rare one– gives us hope, or with the weakness of the wordarising from its not being provided with the speaker’spresence, when the speaker will cling to the particularat any cost, with the result that the word will acquirehigh-flown levity.

In the final analysis, both the power and the weaknessof the word we say depend on our ability to provide forour connection with the immensurability of any word thatbrings the message of the openness of the world. If we,mortals that we are, manage to become bound up with theword, then real power is found in its scope, a kind ofpower that can affect our being and mediately influenceour interlocutor or listener. But then it turns outthat we impart power to our word if and when we entrustourselves to it. The identification and realization ofthe scope of the word are connected precisely with thepower of the human being.

The fact that nowadays we seldom and only occasionallycome in touch with ourselves has resulted in aproliferation of conversations lacking power, i.e.

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empty conversations, or, to put it simply, prattle, gossipand idle talk, whereby the problem of one’s non-presence inoneself not only fails to be brought to light, but is,in fact, trivialized in the course of suchconversations. Having to face one’s own absence is anexperience which is hard to bear for anyone, but thosewho are unable to be open to themselves, are primarilyinterested in what views and opinions other people have ofthem. And then they are prepared to connect theiressence, unknown to themselves, precisely with suchexternal views of themselves, which only makes them moveeven further away from themselves.

Our authenticity, connected with what is our own, i.e. ournearest, remains at a distance from us due to not havingbeen thought through and to our reluctance to turn andface ourselves. In these far-away parts, caught in theinterests of other people and concerned about their viewsof us, as well as being engaged in idle talk aboutvarious communication strategies and how such thingsrelate to them, we run a serious risk of neverreturning to ourselves.

There is another important point that deservesattention. We often get into a conversation with theintention of building up a complete communicationbetween our inner world and that of our interlocutor,something that never happens, no matter how much wemight wish for it.

We may, of course, believe that, if this has nothappened in the conversation we have just had, it issure to occur in another conversation, later on. Still,there is always a certain ‘residue’ of what is one’sown which proves to be utterly acommunicative, and whichis there to stay. It should be noted here that any kindof communication imaginable is built up on the basis ofwhat is in principle the openness of a human being,which, on the one hand, accounts for our vulnerability

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and defencelessness and, on the other hand, providesfor the acceptability of the Other. Communications areimportant not only in terms of the contents that can bediscovered and defined within them, but also in termsof what is realized above and beyond them, namely thehuman ability to perceive in oneself something one didnot know before, i.e. the ability to get to know oneself.And in this sense, conversation is to be seen as amessage – a message about the Other in ourselves, someonewe come to discover in ourselves through ourinterlocutor. At the same time, conversation lays barethe necessity we have of taking into account our innerworld, something that gives us an incentive to bear inmind the ineradicability of our inner world and to proceedfrom what is our own.

We often make unconscious use of linguisticconstructions that happen to be ‘ready at hand’,however, it does not work where our inner ‘investment’in the word is required or when we have to answer thecall of the world with our own word.

It is important to realize that the sense of what isbeing explained may fail entirely to coincide with thecontent of what is to be explained. And there may be noconstruction in our everyday language that couldexpress both the sense and the content in their mutualunity. What is needed then is new linguistic experiencethat would enable us to regroup the contents in a newway, and this experience would seem to involve a turnto silence.

It is noteworthy that these days people tend to beangered not so much by situations where a necessary wordis absent, as by those of silence, in which thephenomenon of soundlessness enables theirrepressibility of the world to manifest itself, andin this aperture the feebleness of our privateintentions comes to be acutely felt.

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It is more customary and gives us a greater sense ofsecurity to cling to any kind of words whatsoever,since we can always comfort ourselves by thinking thatif they are inexact and not to the point, we can alwaysjoin the race after other words, those that are more‘exact’ and more ‘to the point’. Few are those who arecapable of listening to silence: we are confused by theimpossibility, even in principle, to have it calculated.It is difficult, if not impossible, to build anythingdefinite on silence.

The human being values the inner meanings of his or herlife. It is precisely because of their significancethat people often keep silent about them, although theymay in fact be much more significant than the thingsthey easily talk about. We are always occupied withwhat is passed over in silence. We do not puteverything into words, far from it. What we areprepared to share with other people is by no meanseverything that is our own, and if do share somethingwith others, then it is not with everyone, noteverything and not always.

Silence makes it possible for us to interact with ourown language: we ‘dose’ our linguistic communication andset limits to it, and as a result we keep certain ‘bitsand pieces’ of the relevant entities for ourselves, asif we were hiding them for our future use. In this waywe define a certain environment for our own presence.

It should be mentioned specifically that any humanpresence based on one’s ability of silence (passingthings over in silence, hushing things up, keepingsilent, falling silent) and supported by that abilitycan diminish and decrease its size.

It goes without saying that silence is dual andambivalent. When a certain explication of silence takesplace, be it in the form of a verbal or corporeal

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action, everything can be discovered in silence, fromthe positive to the negative. Not infrequently silenceis the preferable choice. At least, this is the case ina situation where falling silent and passing thingsover in silence are connected with the conscious choicemade by someone wishing to break his or her links withthe environment of idle talk.

The ambivalence of life, of course, like that of oursilence, makes the contradictions of life even deeper,as a result of which our life world becomes far morecomplicated. Still, silence can serve as a support forus, enabling us to speak of the ‘a priori’ moment oflanguage. Silence is a reference point, in accordancewith which the contents of our life experience are madeproblematic and can, consequently, be re-considered, inprinciple.

We seldom speak about the principal things: we prefer tokeep silent about them. This may be the case preciselybecause what is passed over in silence exerts an essentialinfluence on us, shaping the articulations whereby ourlife experience is manifested as a kind of contensivewhole. People find it difficult to bring ‘out into theopen’ things concerning their inner world, being notonly unable, but also unwilling to do so. They do notwant their inner world to become no more than informationfor somebody, existing on its own, having been turnedinto something alienated from them. This goes to showthat we appreciate individual mental contents of ourlife and are aware of the importance they have for us.

Still, permanent silence is often fraught withproblems: mental stress due to the inner experience ofunresolved problems; worsening loneliness connectedwith a growing distrust of the ‘external’ world,primarily of society; ever more frequent occurrence ofexcesses and affects, whose unexpected and untimelyappearance only makes the matters worse. This is why it

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is so important to speak about what people are normallysilent about.

For the contents of what is passed over in silence tobecome easily integrated with the general trend ofone’s customary communications with the world and withoneself, certain conditions must be in place. It is, infact, a question of providing possibilities for suchcontents to be given an analytical form of consideration.

Let us mention in passing that it is precisely when weare present in ourselves that we are reluctant to talk.Soundlessness primarily marks one’s communication notwith other people, but with oneself, when the very intensityof silence becomes an indicator of being immersed inoneself.

Being, as it turns out, a fundamental mood, silence, atthe very least, gives us a reminder of depth and a hintof the unseen and unheard presence of vast spaciousnessin language. Silence points to the future possibilitythat we have of discovering ourselves, which isconnected with our expansion and with exceedingourselves. The depth of the word makes one revealoneself, requiring as it does the fullness of one’spresence, whereby one comes across something new andunknown in oneself. It is precisely a failure in one’sexistence that can result in acquiring one’s presence.

It should be mentioned specifically that any word isdetermined not only by another word, i.e. one precedingor following it, but also by silence. In fact, silence isresponsible for securing the connection of any singleword with any other single word. A word is always akind of emphasis which is arbitrary: it is arbitraryfor the simple reason that by revealing something, theword also conceals something. Every word carries ahint, a hint at something which is not there. And it is

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not important whether it is a case of ‘not yet’ or ‘nolonger’ being there.

Thus, apart from language units, such as words, word-groups and sentences, silence, too, takes part inconstituting sense. Of course, the action of theunderstanding (Verstand), which is potentiallyconnected with reducing the linguistic phenomenon toits constituent parts, leaves no opportunity fordiscovering linguistic emptiness. However, everyone hascome across the excessiveness of any linguisticphenomenon.

This ‘excessiveness’ is manifested even in the commonfact that a word is something larger and moresignificant than the mere combination of its constituent parts.Emptiness is therefore a significant category of themetaphysical attitude to language that must not beidentified with a linguistic description which is orientedtowards a certain definiteness of language connectedwith some principle – substantial, functional,structural, or any other.

In other words, as long as we are dealing with thequestion of the nature of language or with the varietyof natural languages, there is no alternative tolinguistics. However, as soon as we are concerned withthe problem of understanding, rather than merelyknowing a language, a problem that presupposes speakingabout things that cannot be grounded in a natural way,i.e. by way of a contensive interpretation of language,metaphysics has to be brought into the discussion. Thisis why, when describing different linguistic phenomenafrom a metaphysical perspective, we must recognize therole of silence.

In different cultures, the regime of ‘not speaking’about, or ‘passing over in silence’ the most importantthings manifests itself in different ways, as it did in

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the past. The sophistication of the modern civilizationis connected primarily with producing ever more newmeans of enabling the human being not to return tohimself or herself. One of such means is the presenceof permanent background sound which can no longer beproperly described as either ‘speech’ or ‘music’.

The principle aim of the ubiquitous modern combinationof idle talk with quasi-musical interludes may beprecisely to provide us with a means of not returning toourselves and with a possibility of escaping fromourselves, i.e. with a possibility of permanent internalexile. In the incessant noise and cacophony that shut outthe soundlessness of the world, one can no longer hearoneself and has, therefore, to collect one’s own beingfrom the outside, treating it as if it were aconglomerate of various constituents.

The situation is made even worse by the fact thatnowadays almost any word runs the risk of gettingdrowned in the ocean of ceaseless talking, acircumstance that imparts even greater value tosilence. Collecting ourselves on the surface of theworld, we keep silent because we have nothing to say,for we realize that our bond with the world may snapany moment now, if it has not already done so. And themost probable reason for this is our thoughtlesstalking.

On the other hand, the human being is aware that his orher claim to be speaking in the name of the whole worldis worthless and has been compromised to some extentfrom the very beginning. Our intuition suggests thatany claims made in the name of the authentic are, in asense, discredited even before they are made, for theauthentic never coincides with the present time and placeof human life, keeping as it does beyond their limits.And therefore, coming into contact with silence, wecome to feel a sense of being ill at ease.

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In the final analysis, the way we live is determined by theway we interact with the world, i.e. by the kind of questions that wecan or cannot ask of the world, the kind of questions we arecapable or incapable of asking it. It is by such questions or bybeing silent about them that we, in fact, construct thespace and time of our life, alternately makingourselves comfortable in the world, while at the sametime losing touch with it, and giving up ourestablished position in the world, while keepingacutely in touch with it.

There is no reason to believe that any question willnecessarily carry a sweeping problematic of the kindthat its impact may cause our being to exhaust itsdefiniteness and, winning from the world time and placefor its presence, to determine the depth of the world –and of itself. On the contrary, we normally do no morethan touch the world, answering its rhythms with surgesof our own, so that silence about the world may be ofdifferent character.

However, silence about the world against the backgroundof idle and superficial talk, when one has actuallynothing to say, is different from eloquent silencewhich seeks to correspond to the tranquility and depthof the world. Silence about the authentic can give onethe strength for a conversation about the situations ofone’s own life. In such a perspective, the individualand the particular are understood as a whole and as aunity, so that any conversation, as long as weunderstand its being provided with a bond with the worldas a whole, can lead us to ourselves.

Conversation carries over and brings to us what is notapparent and not manifest, but, thanks to conversation,comes to life in the present. It is not only thehistorical experience of those who are no more thatconversation brings to life, though it may be veryimportant in itself. What is even more important,

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however, is that the ‘construction’ of conversationintroduces us to what accommodates in its aperture anyliving speech, to the world.