• Listing.The best books and movies of 2019

Two future lovers meet and throw themselves into the courtship game with alcoholic loquacity and deafening music. At the end of the night, they kiss and lie and when they make love, they do it in a touching silence and, when they finish, they remain silent because, after so much noise in bars and taxis, silence is the measure of connection of two souls, of two bodies. Flash forward: the two lovers have become a couple. They have argued loudly for years and have talked in therapy until exhaustion about, among other things, why they stopped making love. The process ends in silent hatred. There is not one more word to say. If we were scriptwriters, we could finish off this film with a montage in which the images of the lovers, silent and full of promises, overlap with those of the haters , silent and very sad.

I have not seen History of a marriage , the film by Noah Baumbach. Does it resemble the previous paragraph? Are silences important in the relationship of their protagonists? What do couples in love talk about when they finish watching the movie?

Actually, the idea of ​​connecting the silence of love with the silence of hate does not come from any film but from History of Silence , the essay by Alain Corbin published this year by the Cliff publishing house. And it may be your most evocative idea.

Before, a clarification: A history of silence is not a story as its title promises but a spin of ideas that have to do with silence and that are illustrated through quotes, almost all literary and almost all French. Actually, 90% of the book is about people looking for the sublime in a lonely landscape, in an antique piece of furniture or in the figure of Jesus , who would probably tend to keep quiet.

The sublime: a delicate matter that feels or does not feel and that if it is not felt, it is impossible to understand.

Marcel Proust appears for History of Silence , with his desire to line his room in cork to achieve the perfect silence in it. Later, Proust wrote as if it were a string ensemble that performed endless music. Proust dedicated pages and pages to the different "textures of silence": the silence of the moon, the silence of Combray , the silence of Albertine when he sleeps and the silence of Albertine when he lies ... Julien Gracq also appears, speaking of the "silence of plague, silence of decay ». Teresa de Ávila appears writing about the silence of ecstasy, and Ignacio de Loyola appears as Ignacio de Loyola, serving as a soldier of mysticism .

That is the most predictable part of History of Silence , which looks like a mindfulness manual for educated people. One of the first ideas that Corbin conveys says that the men and women of 100 years ago enjoyed the gravity and the grounds that gave them to have been raised in a discipline of silence. The image is beautiful, but it seems difficult to prove. Above all, when Corbain explains, a few pages later, that the cities of 2019 are no louder than those of half a century ago.

Actually, it doesn't matter: the monasteries are filled every weekend with urban professionals who pay for a few hours of austerity and silence. It may be a way to rest and sanctify the days, but it may also be a way to make sense of the noise of life. Silence is also a strategy to narrate reality .

Once upon a time, years ago, a phrase by the Argentine architect ClorindoTesta appeared in the newspapers that came to say, more or less, that the best of Buenos Aires were the middle walls of the skyscrapers that border three or four-story houses. Testa's thesis was that these silent canvases allowed the walker to rest his eyes, that the city acquired the right density, neither too much nor too little.

Let's follow that thread: don't you remember the idea of ​​Clorindo Testa to Michelangelo Antonioni's films? Those planes that were nothing, dedicated furniture and landscapes, to the skin of lovers. Those seconds of silence apparently lost that, in the end, changed the flavor of history.

And they don't remember Antonioni's films to those of Bergman who even titled a film Silence? And does Bergman not remember the couple of silent lovers from before? Silence explains the world.

Expert votes

PATXI LANCEROS

1. Philosophy of the technique of nature (Abada), by Félix Duque.

2. After physics. Ionic start and quantum rebirth of philosophy (Abada), by Víctor Gómez Pin.

3. Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie (Suhrkamp), by Jürgen Habermas.

4. Signs of contraband. Report against the idea of ​​communication (Underwood), by Antonio Valdecantos.

5. Deadly Republic. How Rome fell into tyranny (Gutenberg Galaxy), by Edward J. Watts.

ANTONIO COLINAS

1. History of silence (Cliff), by Alain Corbin.

2. The magical art (Atalanta), by André Breton.

3. The infinite in a reed (Siruela), by Irene Vallejo.

4. The tragic resentment of life (Pre-Texts), by Miguel de Unamuno,

5. Difficult compassion (Gutenberg Galaxy), by Chantal Maillard.

NURIA LABARI

1. Violation (reservoir Books), by Mithu M. Sanyal.

2. History of silence (Cliff), by Alain Corbin.

3. The feelings of Prince Charles (Graphic Reservoir), by Liv Steomquist

4. A summer with Homer (Taurus), by Sylvain Tesson.

5. The colloquium of the bitches (Captain Swing), by Luna Miguel.

CÉSAR ANTONIO MOLINA

1. Literary thinking and criticism in the 20th century (Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician) (Cátedra), by JM Pozuelo Yvancos.

2. When Einstein found Kafka (Gutenberg Galaxy), by Diego Moldes.

3. María Zambrano mysteries on fire (Siruela), by Antonio Colinas.

4. Dignity (Galaxia Gutenberg), by Javier Gomá.

5. A lost year (Espasa Calpe), by Francesc de Carreras.

GERMAN CANO

1. Nervous states. How emotions have taken over society (Sixth Floor), by William Davies.

2. The eclipse of the fraternity (Akal), by Antoni Domènech.

3. Imperiofilia and national-Catholic populism (Rag Language), by José Luis Villacañas.

4. The worst part. Memories of love (Ariel), by Fernando Savater.

5. Grievance States (Rag Tongue), by Wendy Brown.

JAVIER SÁDABA

1. New to approaches to ways of meaning (Tecnos), by Alfonso Garcia Suarez.

2. Anarchists and libertarians (Catarata), by Carlos Taibo.

3. The horsemen of the Apocalypse (Harp), of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet and Harris.

4. Time of magicians (Taurus), by Wolfram Eilenberger.

5. One last conversation (Apeiron Ediciones), Maria del Olmo, Jesus Mosterin and Javier Sádaba.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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