“The word does not allow silence to speak,” writes Ionesco in Journal en miettes [Fragments of a Journal], while Antonin Artaud adds: “The soul of a thing does not dwell in words.” “We speak only in moments when we are not living,” writes Maeterlinck — “authentic life, the only kind capable of leaving some trace, is formed only out of silence,” and it is precisely this “dark power” of silence that fills us with such deep fear. Silence is the language of the soul. According to Charles du Bos, the fundamental problem lies in translating that language into words.

Alain Corbin, History of  silence

***

KAŚKA: 
Come, let’s go to the cottage. Everything will come back to you.

JASIEK: 
Not to the cottage, Kasia. Oh, listen, how they’re playing. I must go there.

KAŚKA: And you’d leave me alone? Wouldn’t you feel sorry for your Kasia? Kasia would cry her eyes out for her little Jasiek.

JASIEK: 
Eh, Kasia, Kasia. You’re too good for Jasiek. Why did you ever find him?

Wiesław Myśliwski, Klucznik (Key master)

***

Discussing the function of symbolic imagination, Gilbert Durand placed its meaning first as a “vital, dynamic negation — a negation of nothingness, death, and time.” The briefest summary of Durand’s immensely important thought can be expressed in the statement that the symbol restores vital balance, which has been disturbed by the awareness of death. Symbolic anthropology therefore brings to light, above all, the function of symbolic imagination as a protest against the disintegration brought by death. “The symbol, in its establishing dynamism of seeking meaning, creates by itself a model that mediates Eternity within the temporal.”

Maria Janion, To Europe – yes, but only with our dead

***

Lead me, little worm
dwelling beneath the earth
lead me there, you
who already dwell within me

Urszula Kozioł, Raptularz, Lead me