A TIME TO SING: THE NECESSITY OF SURPASSING SILENCE

Abstract

By considering the limitation of discursive language before the intimate experience with God, many Christian mystics adopted or recommended silence as a response to that experience. Nevertheless, in his Expositions of the Psalms, Saint Augustine, despite endorsing the recurrent suspicion regarding logos, advises against silence. Before something that can neither be talked about nor fallen silent before, the solution would be to sing with jubilus, a song of exultation without words, practiced at that time. The present article will examine this curious prescription, checking firstly the possible limitations of silence as a form of expression (be it general or mystical experience) and, secondly, how music could reveal itself as the most adequate response to an experience of the transcendent. For this purpose, besides Saint Augustine's Expositions, texts by contemporary authors including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Susanne Langer will be considered, all of whom were attentive to the theme of ineffability.

KEYWORDS: Silence. Jubilus. Expression. Ineffable. Music.