the humiliation of the Word

Mystery of SILENCE

Now we are coming to the last characteristic to keep in mind about the word : it is mystery. The most explicit and the best explained word still brings me inevitably back to mystery. This mystery has to do with the other person, whom I cannot fathom, and whose word provides me with an echo of his person, but only an echo. I perceive this echo, knowing that there is something more. This is the mystery I feel as I recognise spontaneously that I do not understand well or completely what the other person says. There is a mystery for me in my own lack of comprehension, as I become aware of it. How am I going to react ? How can I respond ? I sense a whole area of mystery in the fact that I am not very sure I understand correctly. I am not very sure about answering. I am not very sure of what I am answering.

There is always a margin around our conversation. More precisely, conversation is like this printed page, framed on all sides by white margins, without words, but which can be filled in with any word at all. The margins situate a conversation and give it the possibility of rebounding and beginning again. They allow the other person to participate with his marginal comments. I am aware of this possibility, but I do not know what marginal comments are going to appear beside what I say, changing it. Here again we are dealing with the unexpected. And we come up against the mystery of silence.

The mystery of silence as a break in discourse, not silence in the sense of something that discourse fills up! The enigmatic, disturbing, saddening silence of the other person is an inconvenience as I wait. I expect a response, an explanation, or a statement from him. He falls silent, and I no longer know where or how to take my place in relation to him. More precisely, I no longer know how to be as I face him. I find myself faced with a mystery which eludes me when there is a lull in the conversation. I expect words, but this silence constitutes a chasm in the word, which continues unspoken. It is unheard, but it cannot be eliminated. Thus in all sorts of ways the word is related to mystery. It expresses and engulfs us in mystery. There is a reason why mythos and logos go together.
- from “The Humiliation of the Word” Jacques Ellul pp 25 - 26 1985 ISBN 0-8028-0069-6