The Semantics of Silence in the “Song of the Hidden God” by Karol Wojtyła: A Reconaissance
Abstract
The article comprises an attempt at tracing the ways in which Karol Wojtyła evoked the quality of silence in his poems. The main thesis of the author is that silence plays a fundamental role in the structure of poems by Wojtyła. The first part of the considerations embraces a general theoretical analysis of the categories of ‘silence’ and ‘not speaking,’ as well as examples of artistic solutions employed in this respect by Polish poets (Czesław Miłosz, Józef Czechowicz, and Anna Kamieńska) in the twentieth century. The second part of the considerations comprises a review of the ways the effect of silence is accomplished in poems by Wojtyła. The structural, semantic, imaginative and symbolic levels, on which silence is evoked in Wojtyła’s poems, are identified.
