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Immemorial Silence

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Karmen MacKendrick, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Le Moyne College draws on philosophy, theology and literature to pick the chords of silence as she harps on language and its limits. She does so rendering a reading of Blanchot and Bataille: she is a disciple to the first and an acolyte of the latter. The temporalities of time densely set within the fragmentation of language are scoped and rescued to the point of making of this inquiry a revelation of the necessity that is infinity and the incompletion it denotes. She seeks to rescue a fallen language and atone it by way of a redemptive reading that strikes poetic notes. She brings much to the fore as she traces the moment of affirmation in every instant of repetition and forgetting (Nietzsche by way of Deleuze and Klossowski) and the intensity demanded from communicating the mystical befuddlement of everyday communication. The author plunges into the crevices of language to account for the echoes we annotate in absence of anything more to brief. This is an intriguing, well-tuned and complemenatry read, where the contrasting timbres of the likes of poets as varied as Augustine, Rimabaud, Master Eckhart, Holderlin and Jabes become part of a gorgeous harmony that rings soulful and mystical, always concerned with the depth that is torn therein rather than the heights of religious structures. One problem I found with the book is the fact that it does not have enough on Barthes, who would have been able to echo many such thoughts sans the mysticism, and also the fact that quotes from TS Eliot abound but his voice remains but an ornamental base hardly audible. Nonetheless an engaging, poetic read worth the price, the time, and every word...