Kriukova E.B. Argument from Silence: Etchical Context of Celan's and Beckett's Work with Language. Proceedings of Voronezh State University. Series: Philosophy, 2020, vol. 37, no 3, pp. 134–141. (In Russ.)

Abstract

The article suggests that the experiments with the form, which distinguish modern fiction, are caused by the desire of writers and poets to find a new way of expression in the language that has compromised itself ethically, since it was a witness and accomplice of the history that took place in the twentieth century. Such close attention to the poetic word is due not least to the “linguistic turn”, which changed the instrumental attitude to the language and gave it the status of ontological reality. Wittgenstein’s opposition between language and silence, in which silence marks the sphere of unspeakable values, is unusually reflected in post-war literature. The article draws on the poetry of Celan and the drama of Beckett to show that silence, understood as a negative mode of language, begins to play an important role in organizing the semantic dimension of a literary text.