ABSTRACT

 “Fiat Lux”: Silence and the Power of Poetry Or  Thireen Ways of Looking at Silence

 Fiat lux or, in Hebrew, Yehi ‘ohr.

According to Judeo-Christian tradition, these were the first words ever uttered. Out of the abyss of silence, the world was brought into being as the creator of the cosmos spoke the first poem.

This incursion of the word into the silence of the universe is a ritual re-enacted daily in our own lives. The creator’s first fiat lux is echoed each morning at dawn, when we rise to greet a new day. Each day, in a sense, begins as a poem: we open our eyes to the light and fill the world with words of our own.

This opening lecture will consider the various ways in which this sublime fact finds expression in the realm of the ordinary, exploring the demands and opportunities that silence affords those of us who are creatures of the word. By “creatures of the word,” I mean all human beings - for who among us does not live and die by words?- but, more particularly, I wish to focus on poets: celebrated poets, both living and dead, and ordinary poets like myself.

Recognising the vastness of this topic and the limitations of time, I have had to draw some boundaries. I therefore intend to explore the contours of silence through thirteen key ways of thinking about it, ways that have served as a spur to creativity for me and for many other readers and writers. I have chosen the lucky number thirteen in homage to Wallace Stevens’s brilliant poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” in which he considers that enchanting, elusive creature from a variety of perspectives. Following Stevens’s lead, this lecture will approach silence from as many different vantage points (and perhaps one or two more), pursuing her as she moves from tree to tree in an attempt to capture, if only momentarily, something of her mystery.