The Eloquent Silence: How Great Writers Harness Quiet in Literature
On a snowy Sunday morning in February 1808, the poet William Wordsworth walked along Fleet Street in London, his spirits dampened after visiting his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge, mired in personal struggles including an unhappy marriage, financial woes, writer's block, poor health, and opium addiction, cast a shadow over Wordsworth's mood. As Wordsworth trudged with downcast eyes, absorbed in sombre thoughts, a sudden vision broke through: Fleet Street lay blanketed in snow, described as "silent, empty, pure white," with the majestic form of St Paul's Cathedral looming at its end. This spellbinding moment, with the thoroughfare devoid of carts and the cathedral blurred by falling snowflakes, profoundly affected Wordsworth. In a letter to his patron Sir George Beaumont, he reflected on the blessing of exalted imagination, seeing this London silence as evidence that intuiting beyond oneself leads to moral magnificence.
Silence Through the Ages: From Anglo-Saxon Loneliness to Modern Grief
Silence has long inspired, daunted, comforted, and terrified writers throughout English literature. One of the earliest poems, The Wanderer, composed in Anglo-Saxon, captures the strangeness of silence through an alien grey seascape where the protagonist is utterly alone. This silence is not complete noiselessness—hail beats on waves and seabirds mew—but an intense absence of human voices. The poem conveys wretched loneliness and lost happiness, yet also portrays silence as a duty, shaped by Graeco-Roman stoicism, Germanic hero ethos, and Christian asceticism. It introduces a silent inner voice, foundational for interior life.
Silence and grief naturally pair, as seen when Alfred Tennyson faced the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam at age 22 in 1833. For Tennyson, this loss was a personal and professional affront, leading him to write In Memoriam, a poem of nearly 3,000 lines. He described the ship carrying Hallam's body, the pressing absence at his friend's door, and unfulfilled potential. The emotional impact, however, lies not in what is said but in what remains unsaid—the inexpressible grief that silence conveys.
Silence as Solace and Defeat in Historical Contexts
For others, silence offers solace rather than inexpressibility. In 2016, the 16,141,241 remain voters in the Brexit referendum, including the author, experienced the losing side of a historical turning point, with emotions like disbelief, anger, grief, shame, and denial. This mirrored experiences in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, where groups such as royalists during the Interregnum or Tories under George I faced defeat. Such losses led many to question God's providence and rethink life's meaning, with writers like John Milton and Anne Finch withdrawing into the green silences of gardens and estates, expressing either devastated defeat or calm self-possession.
Silence in the 19th-Century Novel: From Tact to Humour
The 19th-century novel, often seen as verbose, surprisingly showcases liberating silences. Elizabeth Gaskell's tactful silences remind us that kindness sometimes means not saying everything. Thomas Hardy's companionable silences convey easy togetherness ruined by words, while George Eliot's empathic silences connect during high emotions. Humour also emerges in tiny silences, such as in Jane Austen's Persuasion (1817), where Sir Walter Elliot's preposterous remarks about restricting tenants are followed by Mr Shepherd's "short pause," a perfectly timed silence that highlights folly.
Modern Silences: Protest and Tragedy in Contemporary Poetry
In 2016, poet Jay Bernard began a residency at the George Padmore Institute, focusing on radical Black history in Britain. Haunted by the New Cross fire of 1981, which killed 13 young Black people, Bernard was further sickened by the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, noting similarities in lack of closure, responsibility, and accountability. Their multimedia collection, Surge, registers a gamut of silences between these tragedies: details "Tipp-Ex'd out" of files, media silence, and the weighty silences of the ghostly dead, using silence as a powerful mode of protest.
The Enduring Power of Silence in Literature
Over 1,200 years, English literature has spoken eloquently through silences as well as words. Without silences, we would lose the exquisite hush of medieval lullabies, the suspenseful secrets of realist novels, and the jagged fragmentation of modernist poetry. Implicitness, ambiguity, precision, protest, and varied moods would diminish. From Iago's unexplained motives in Othello to Keats's quiet urn, silence explores the ineffability of the divine, wordlessness in strong emotions, self-effacement, and awe at nature. These are not peripheral but central to human concerns, as explored in Kate McLoughlin's Silence: A Literary History, published by Oxford University Press on 27 March.
