In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

SILENCE VS. NOISE 32S
is, whenever it is taken for granted that phenomena, gestures, and persons
have their inherent meanings within a cosmological order. [see
Authenticity vs. Artificiality] Spanish pilots on a mission for their homeland
belong to this world of authenticity as much as the gauchos of the
Argentinian Pampa who communicate in silence even the order to be
silent: "We greeted each other as always. Together we rode about a mile
in the usual manner. We didn't speak. Why not? Beneath the touch of his
rough hand, I received a command of silence. Sadness made us reticent.
We turned around to wish each other, smilingly, the best of luck. Don
Segundo's horse rubbed haunches with mine, and I realized, in that
turning away, everything that would separate our fates" (Giiiraides,
360). In a world where the slightest body movements are immediately
interpreted as expressions, undeserved misery needs no words to attract
the attention and generate the compassion it deserves. In Lang's film
Metropolis, the workers' children appear noiselessly at the "Club of the
Sons" with their protector, Maria: "Through the door came a procession
of children. They were all holding hands. They had dwarfs' faces, gray
and ancient. They were little ghostlike skeletons, clad in faded rags and
smocks. They had colorless hair and colorless eyes. They walked on
emaciated bare feet. Noiselessly they followed their leader" (Lang, 26;
also 60). Despite all ideological divergence, Maria's silent appearances in
Metropolis are similar to the appearances of a young widow in Hans
Grimm's nationalist novel Yolk ohne Raum (Nation without Space);
"Grimm stood up. If he and the young woman remained silent for a
while, it may have been because they were both remembering the man
who was no longer physically near her but who nevertheless was by her
side ... She did not even mention the man. Nor did she wear the black
apparel of a widow. But there was a double reference in her eyes"
(Grimm, II, 666-667). The claim to be eloquently silent is not limited to
those who are ideologically and philosophically conservative. Walter
Benjamin, too, cherishes the idea of honoring an admired individual
through-respectful-Silence: "Karl Kraus. Nobody more embarrassing
than those who imitate him; nobody more hopeless than his enemies. No
name more appropriate than his to be honored through silence" (Benjamin,
121).
Within the world of Authenticity, where meaning is always already
given and therefore does not require language in order to become acces-