1. See particularly A. Izzo, “Il concetto di mondo vitale”, in Aa. Vv., Complessità sociale e identità, Milan, 1983; A. Nesti, I labirinti del sacro, Rome, 1994.

2. S. Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence, Turin, 1975.

3. M. Picard, Il mondo del silenzio, Milan, 1951.

4. Ibid.

5. P. Eluard writes significantly: “Poems always have big white margins, which are great margins of silence.”“Donner à voir”, Oeuvres, I, Paris, p. 81.

6. L. Lavelle, La parole et l'écriture, Paris, 1947, pp. 65-66.

7. Ibid., p. 139.

8. P. Valesio, “Il fiore intelligibile”, in Alfabeta, 1988, p. 17, n. 110-111. Conceits and concepts are in English in the original.

9. See P. Valesio, Ascoltare il silenzio, Bologna, 1986, esp. Ch. 5.

10. Such a process, in Luckmann's view, dates back to the cultural climate of Romanticism, to the exaltation of themes such as the individual self-governing and creative principle, national sovereignty and identity; but the process finds in “modernity”, in the social hegemony of the middle classes, its topical element, “to such a point that subjective individuality becomes the new social form of religion and its basic nucleus at the same time”. This formulation, too, is liable to censure, on the grounds that it lacks historical perspective. How can one maintain, for example, that privatization is only a contemporary phenomenon? Moreover, the appraisal of the processes of transignificance internal to their different cultural contexts is very inadequate.

11. See M. Heidegger, L'abbandono, Genova, 1983.

12. C. Geertz, “Ethos, World and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols”, in Antioch. Rev., December 1957, p. 422.

13. See generally J. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, Turin, 1953; I. Cecchieti, “Tibi silentium laus”, in Aa. Vv, Miscellanea liturgica in honorem L.C. Mohlberg, Rome, 1949, II, pp. 521-560.

14. G. Van der Leeuw, Fenomenologia della religione, Turin, 1960, p. 337.

15. See generally J. Jungmann, op. cit. Note 13.

16. Expositio Missae (P.P. L.L. 101, 1256D) reports this episode revived by G. Mosco in his Pratum Spirituale, Chapter 196, pp. 87, 301.

17. See D. Sartore, item “Silenzio” in Nuovo Dizionario di Liturgia, Rome, 1984, pp. 1382-1390; E. Lodi, “Parola e silenzio nella liturgia occidentale”, in Silenzio e Parola, Brescia, 1991.

18. E. Lodi, op. cit. Note 17.

19. E. Lodi, op. cit. Note 17. See also B. Helon, “Silence during the Celebration of the Mass and Other Rites”, in Notitiae 3(8) (1972), n. 74.

20. V. Messori and J. Ratzinger, Rapporto sulla fede, Milan, 1985, p. 131. See also K. Fanagan, “Liturgy, Ambiguity and Silence: The Ritual Management of Real Absence”, British Journal of Sociology XXXVI(2): 193ff.

21. R. Guardini, Lo spirito della Liturgia, Brescia, 1930 (trans. from the 21st edn of Vom Geist der Liturgie).

22. The San Remo festival is a very popular music festival in Italy.

23. See M.M. Halwachs, La memoria collettiva, Milan, 1987.

24. See D. Bonhoeffer, Resistenza e Resa, Milan, 1988.

25. R. Guardini, Il testamento di Gesú. Pensieri sulla S. Messa, Milan, 1950, p. 5.

26. D. Bonhoeffer, La vita comune, Brescia, 1978, pp. 102-103.

Silence as Elsewhere

Abstract