The only thing we know about silence is that it opposes sound and, in that absence of noise, it speaks, speaks without stopping, and speaks to us. We know perfectly well the delicacy and brutality with which its verbosity is capable of acting. But if it were the only language capable of saying something, why were words invented? Knowing what silence is capable of saying—and what it says is precisely what cannot be said, what cannot be heard—words, and with them, literature, were invented to surround it.
Poetry, fiction, thought, and feelings find a way to filter the silence in words. They give us their message of the absolute, they make us feel time, they give us information about the darkness, but only through words: up to that point. So that they don't reach us pure, but in the name of the word. silence .
Literature understands its power and prestige without envy, and we readers know—perhaps it is the only thing we know—that, when we read, what is made present in the words that flow by like a river is the silence from which they come and the silence to which they go.
In these four days, the invitation is to listen to the poetry of what silence expresses.
