“The sea has no renewal, no forgetting,
no variety of death,
is silent with the silence of a single note.”
from "Villon" (1930)
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Basil Bunting 11
Poet 1900–1985Related quotes
“If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent.”
“The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.”
No. 39 (January 13, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)
“The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence between.”
"No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: One of the results of the rapid depersonalization of our age is a crisis of speech, profanation of language. We have trifled with the name of God, we have taken the name and the word of the Holy in vain. Language has been reduced to labels, talk has become double-talk. We are in the process of losing faith in the reality of words.
Yet prayer can happen only when words reverberate with power and inner life, when uttered as an earnest, as a promise. On the other hand, there is a high degree of obsolescence in the traditional language of the theology of prayer. Renewal of prayer calls for a renewal of language, of cleansing the words, of revival of meanings.
The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait. Uttered faith must come out as a surplus of silence, as the fruit of lived faith, of enduring intimacy.
Theological education must deepen privacy, strive for daily renewal of innerness, cultivate ingredients of religious existence, reverence and responsibility.
6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" in The Impossible Question (1972) Part I, Ch. 6
1970s
Context: The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, in being reborn in another life. When you enquire what it is that is going to be born in the next life, you come up against difficulties. What is it? Yourself? What are you? a lot of words, a lot of opinions, attachments to your possessions, to your furniture, to your conditioning. Is all that, which you call the soul, going to be reborn in the next life? Reincarnation implies that what you are today determines what you will be again in the next life. Therefore behave! — not tomorrow, but today, because what you do today you are going to pay for in the next life. People who believe in reincarnation do not bother about behavior; t all; it is just a matter of belief, which has no value. Incarnate today, afresh not in the next life! Change it now completely, change with great passion, let the mind strip itself of everything, of every conditioning, every knowledge, of everything it thinks is "right" — empty it. Then you will know what dying means; and then you will know what love is. For love is not something of the past, of thought, of culture; it is not pleasure. A mind that has understood the whole movement of thought becomes extraordinarily quiet, absolutely silent. That silence is the beginning of the new.
“Behind the word is silence, behind that silence is forgetfulness.”
Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)
“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”