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Article

Open Access

“Life Comes as Spring Comes, From All Sides”: Constructing and Reconstructing Silence in The Noise of Time

Author(s)

Elena Bollinger

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5526/2018.03.004

Affiliation(s)

University of Lisbon, Portugal

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on a non-linear relationship between the course of one individual’s life and its creative reshaping in the literary work of art as experienced in Julian Barnes’s novel The Noise of Time. Contemplating a creative process of writing, the author seems to insist on a symbiosis between art and life. Writing about Shostakovich, he goes on challenging art’s ability to deliver a clear message about life: how to put what one has experienced into words? A creative dialogue thus established between a non-speaking, extra-linguistic, and unique self and its verbal representation in literature is built upon a relational nature of the said and the not-said. Eloquent silence is employed to transpose one’s life experience into the realm of verbal represenation. Focusing on the limits of verbal representation, Barnes’ character in The Noise of Time similarly strives to grasp a meaning of the relationship among language, “silence”, and liberation from the self. Refiguring silence as one of the most valuable narrative devices, the text challenges the illusory nature of historical time, of historical places, and of selfhood.

KEYWORDS

J. Barnes, L. Tolstoy, silence, language, self

Cite this paper

Sociology Study, March 2018, Vol. 8, No. 3, 138-145

References

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