Ludwig Wittgenstein and the contemporary poetics of silence

Abstract

From an ethical and pragmatic interpretation of the Tractatus as a text that achieves to remain silence by talking, the purpose of this work is tracing a parallel between Wittgenstein’s silence and the type of silence that contemporary poetics advocates as a discourse of a silence realized by the word, not its absence or negation. Unlike the silence of modern poetics, which was an uttered silence and, consequently, a silence broke by the same talking, the silence of contemporary poetics echoes Wittgenstein’s gesture and make of silence not an issue but the action of a discourse that, far from talking or keeping silence before the ineffable, makes its silence audible.

Keywords: Wittgenstein, Tractatus, silence, contemporary poetics, ethical action.