“The Essence of a Symphony is Form”: Exploring the Aesthetics of Silence and Ageing in Julian Barnes’s Fiction

Introduction

“Because what you can’t find out, and where that leaves you, is one of the places where the novelist starts. We (by which I mean “I”) need a little, not a lot; a lot is too much. We begin with a silence, a mystery, an absence, a contradiction,” reflects an ageing narrator in Julian Barnes’s Nothing to Be Frightened of (Barnes, Nothing 238). This work explores various functions of silence in the narrative construction of the experience of ageing and dying. Moreover, silence is mostly perceived as one of the forms of cultural remembering, circulating within social, historical, and fictional frameworks of contemporaneity.

This article aims to provide a comparative analysis of the selected Barnes’s works, addressing the aesthetics of silence and its semantic relation to the concepts of remembering and forgetting, operating within the rhetoric of old age as represented within Western collective memory (Erll, Memory in Culture).

The field of Ageing Studies, often referred to as Age Studies, is characterised by its interdisciplinary approach, akin to Memory Studies (Erll and Nünning; Gutchess and Cho). With its strong inclination toward social sciences, Memory Studies seek to investigate the cultural, social, and political dimensions of ageing, with a particular emphasis on how cultural constructs influence the biological processes of ageing (ibid.) Memory Studies and Age Studies explore a blend of theoretical, political, and empirical methodologies to scrutinise both cultural representations and the self-representations of elderly individuals. Moreover, Age Studies offers a critical lens through which to examine societal narratives that shape perceptions of ageing, addressing pivotal issues such as the dynamics of silence and power, ideological frameworks, cross-cultural interpretations of the ageing experience, and the transgenerational memory associated with the Western cultural conception of old age.

While some memory and age scholars argue for the cultural implications of the representational power of ageing on collective memory studies, by exploring how ageing is represented in media, literature, and public discourse and examining the stereotypes and narratives that influence societal attitudes towards older adults (Dannefer), other focus on considering the significant semantic implications of the politics of cultural memory on the representational power of ageing within the realm of memory studies (Grenier and Valois-Nadeau). Following Line Grenier and Fannie Valois-Nadeau’s point of view, put forward in A Senior Moment: Cultural Mediations of Memory and Ageing (2020), Ageing and Memory constitute intrinsically related cultural processes that engage with time and social history in multifaceted ways. The authors argue that Memory Studies and Age Studies significantly influence socio-historical representations of old age in the present as well as contribute to shaping their further representations. While undertaking an examination of the cultural mediations of ageing and memory, carefully delineating their complex and often unpredictable relationships and interconnections, they focus on investigating a variety of societal practices, ideological constructs of displacement, silence, remembering and forgetting, literary and visual representations, that inform connections of memory and ageing. Although the above-mentioned critical studies aim to analyse the cultural constructs that relate ageing and memory in many different manners, resonating with specific individuals within distinct socio-historical contexts, there are still few studies of the effects of age on memory within and specifically across literatures and cultures. Some researchers, such as Astrid Erll and Aleida Assmann, seek to uncover how ageing is portrayed across various forms of media, literature, and public discourse. By analysing these representations, they aim to identify the prevalent stereotypes and narratives that shape collective memory constructs and societal attitudes toward older people. According to Erll, literary narratives often reflect and reinforce societal values, biases, and misconceptions, ultimately influencing how older individuals are perceived and treated within their communities. This article proposes to look at the dynamics of ageing as represented in Barnes’s selected narratives. We believe that by localising the discursive representation of old age within the field of Memory Studies, with a particular emphasis on the modern conceptual constructs of silence, remembering and forgetting within contemporary British fictional and non-fictional works is crucial for fostering a scientifically more accurate and mulilayered portrayal of ageing in modern literature and culture.

Building upon Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “The Aesthetics of Silence,” this research proposes to look at the multifaceted meanings of silence within Barnes’s representation of ageing in some of his works. The exploration commences by recognizing Susan Sontag’s insightful perspective that silence is deeply intertwined with vocality, highlighting the intricate and constructive relationship between these two elements in shaping human experiences of communication across diverse mediums. In “The Aesthetics of Silence,” Sontag proposes to look into the profound semantic connections between art and silence, positing that art infiltrates the fabric of human consciousness, creating a dynamic dialectical relationship with it. She articulates that the primary role of literary criticism lies in enabling art to flourish on its own terms, free from the theoretical constraints often imposed by traditional interpretations. Through this lens, Sontag ultimately concludes that such liberation is essential for art to resonate with its true essence: “Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable” (Sontag, “Against Interpretation” 8).

The article seeks to critically engage with and revise Susan Sontag’s perspective, which frames a work of art as a mere subject tasked with administering, applying, and ultimately controlling the presence of silence, as articulated in Ulf Olsson’s Dissonant Silence: Susan Sontag and the Aesthetics of Silence. Olsson argues that this characterisation is unduly instrumental, failing to capture the rich complexities associated with narrative interactions involving silence. In response, the article advocates for a more nuanced understanding of literature, positing that silence can function as a dynamic and transformative force that transcends mere discursive utility. This perspective invites readers to immerse themselves in the intricate layers of meaning and emotional resonance that silence can evoke within the narrative representation of the human experience of ageing.

By delving into these themes, the article aspires to deepen the cultural discussions surrounding silence within the context of ageing. It positions silence not just as a void or absence, but as an active contributor to the dialogue between memory and forgetting. This exploration highlights the significance of silence as a crucial element in the emotional landscape of ageing, reflecting its power to shape and inform our understanding of lived experiences across time.

In Astrid Erll’s perspective, the most recent work developed in the Memory Studies field perceives silence as a counter-discourse to the traditionally binary approach towards the politics of remembering and forgetting. The relationship between remembering and forgetting is relational rather than mutually exclusive, and the gap between the two is often occupied by silence. Thus, revising the territory of silence in Barnes’s fiction may suggest new questions about the experience of growing older, adding value to the already existing history and theory of ageing in Memory Studies.

Materials and Methods

In Barnes’s Nothing to Be Frightened of, an extensive reflection on the finitude of life and inevitability of death carries out profound meditations on the significance of silence, foreshadowing the everyday “philosophy of living” of its ageing narrator. Trying to come to terms with the still unresolved dilemmas of human existence, Barnes’s narrator rethinks mortality, divinity, and the human capacity to address, in rational terms, forthcoming death. Thus, silence does not operate only on the subconscious, internal level of narration. Differently from other Barnes’s texts, in Nothing to Be Frightened of, silence performs a vast range of rational, self-conscious functions which ultimately transform the narrator’s sceptical attitude towards the process of ageing and dying. It also constitutes a firm theoretical background for further reflections on possible ways to think about death from the perspective of a non-religious person who does not connect silence to an ultimate realm of peace and psychological fulfilment. To approach and comprehend the process of ageing, along with a growing sense of physical and emotional decline, constitutes one of the main thematic endeavours in Nothing to Be Frightened of. Moreover, rethinking the process of dying from the point of view of an atheist adds discursive ambiguity to silent recollections of concealed memories, experiences, and deep meditations on the sense of human existence, locating dying within a strictly rational, objective and reasonably constructed life trajectory. In addition, silence also might be perceived as an attempt to provide a dialectical revision of the well-established traditional discourses on religion and ageing, arguing against dominant social constructs identified with old age and dying. Contemplating silence, and metaphorically connecting it to diverse historical and cultural domains, the narrator initiates a complex narrative revision of many controversial aspects covering the subject of old age in Western culture. According to Vicent Salvador and Agnese Sampietro, there exist common—and conventional—stereotypes about ageing that theoretically support and model “the thought and collective imagination of our societies” across time and space (1). In these authors’ perspective, most of the discursive constructions of the experience of ageing are intrinsically connected to the scrupulous examination of one’s life trajectory. This trajectory is represented as a progressive biographical cycle featuring common human actions: birth, growth, social and cultural development, love and flourishing, followed by a period of serenity and wisdom but also, as argued in Salvador and Sampietro’s study, by illness, physical and emotional decay culminating in death, “their target, their outcome, their final destination” (1). Although, according to the authors, the discourses on ageing are mainly considered as socio-cultural constructs, subjected to contextual and historical variations, their dominating ontological axes continue to manifest a strong semantic connection to Freud’s Eros and Thanatos theory,¹ insisting on external and internal relations between life and death drive. Sigmund Freud proposed that human behavior is predominantly influenced by two fundamental and often conflicting forces: the life instinct, known as Eros, and the death instinct, referred to as Thanatos. These intertwined drives engage in a constant struggle, shaping the myriad ways in which individuals navigate their lives. Eros embodies the pursuit of life, focusing on themes of survival, self-protection, and social connection, fostering bonds that enhance collaboration and a collective sense of self.

In contrast, Thanatos is anchored in the principle of entropy, which suggests that all systems inevitably decline toward disorder and dissolution. This concept manifests in human behaviour through tendencies toward aggression, self-destructive actions, and a compulsive return to past traumas. Freud’s interpretation of Thanatos highlights a darker aspect of the human psyche, illustrating how it propels individuals toward risky or harmful situations. At the core of Freudian theory lies the intricate and dynamic interplay between Eros and Thanatos. This constant tension between the life drive and the death drive serves as a crucial lens through which we can understand the complexities of the human condition and of the process of ageing, ultimately revealing the profound duality of our existence.

As becomes clear throughout the narrative, Nothing to Be Frightened of challenges the above-mentioned theoretical duality of discourses on ageing by introducing the element of silence into this cyclical perception of being in time. Within its narrative structure, silence provides a necessary structural background to examine the collective memory of dying, enclosing various forms of its cultural remembering and forgetting. It also introduces, by means of a subtle semantic contradiction, the motif of psychological and emotional absence observable in multiple discourses on the topic of physical decline and death. For instance, it reveals, in a suggestively dialectical tone, a universal human tendency not to talk about death directly, restricting its significance to nothing daunting: “People say of death, ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of.’ They say it quickly, casually. Now let’s say it again, slowly, with re-emphasis. ‘There’s NOTHING to be frightened of’. The word that is most true, most exact, most filled with meaning, is the word ‘nothing’” (Barnes, Nothing 169), reflects the narrator, challenging common socio-cultural constructs on life and death derived from the above-mentioned Freud’s Eros and Thanatos theory. In this context, the discursively performed rhetorical silence both articulates and challenges a collectively accepted absence of meaningful reflections about death, enquiring deeper into the concept of nothingness and its non-religious consequences for a human self-perception in time.

Additionally, “nothing” not only discursively produces silence revolving around an extensive range of perspectives on old age and a forthcoming death, but also invites us to reconsider emotional and affective absence existing within the rhetoric of collective and individual approach to generally accepted memory constructs on dying: the issue of death has been perceived as a final human destination, modelled within specific historical and cultural frameworks of meaning, though not providing any definite answer on what exactly is expected on the “other side of the estuary” (Salvador and Sampietro 1). Barnes’s narrative elusiveness revolving around various metaphorical meanings attributed to a discursively comprehensive process of dying reinforces the concept of “nothingness” silently circulating within the rhetoric of collective memory. In the thematic scope of the novel, nothingness is addressed from the discursive perspective of silence, inquiring simultaneously what lies beneath the generally perceived reluctance to focus on death. Additionally, it contributes to displaying discourses on ageing and death as two closely interrelated dimensions, extending traditional horizons of meaning which permeate conventional writings. Nothing to Be Frightened of invites us to rethink critically the symbolic dimension of nothingness, related to socio-cultural constructs of both discourses.

To relieve this sense of nothingness, the narrator becomes increasingly interested in examining the phenomenon of the unsayable or of the unrepresentable while remaining in that inner, self-reflexive condition of silence in which fixed meanings fade into suggestive ambiguity. Following the previously mentioned Erll’s and Dannefer’s argumentation focusing on silence as a counter-discourse to the binary traditional discourses associated with human development and ageing, the narrative dimension of silence provides the necessary discursive tools to foster an argumentative analysis of the main theoretical precepts applied to the sense of human fragility and hopelessness in the face of forthcoming death. Even if the concept of nothingness can be approached from the theological perspective, arguing that God created the universe out of nothing, the narrator tries to insist on the fact that God is invisible and beyond rational human comprehension. The withdrawal of God does not mean, though, an absolute negation of His existence; rather, it challenges the discursive totality of nothingness as a closed semantic system, offering instead an opportunity to consider its great alterity of meanings. Nothing to Be Frightened of represents the concept of nothingness in a completely new perspective, in the same way as silence has a capacity to fragment a singular totality of meanings into a suggestive plurality of semantic differences.

In this way, it becomes clear that the concept of “nothingness”, associated with a silent recollection of its concealed semantic dimensions, is closely related to the discursive phenomenon of getting something out of nothing, also extensively explored in other Barnes’s works. Being strategically located at the thematic centre of the narrative, the discursive moment of silence provides us with the capacity to move beyond the ordinary meaning of words, searching for alterity and difference, and thus transcend the sense of human mortality.

At this point, the focus is exclusively on the process of writing, to give expression to the narrator’s confrontation with silence, absence, and nothingness, thus proposing an alternative way of dealing with traditional discourses on old age and death. Being considered as a significant aspect of silence, repetition of the word nothing plays a central role in the narrative construction of discourses on ageing in Nothing to Be Frightened of. According to Kierkegaard, repetition might be considered as a creative form of silence; while recollection relates to the memory of the past and its controversial versions, repetition symbolizes strong persistence in looking forward to semantic alterity and difference despite the difficulty of getting there directly. Within the narrative construction of Nothing to Be Frightened of, repetition might be recognized as a key stage in the creative approach to conventional discourses on age and dying, articulating a range of unwritten thoughts, concealed emotions and unknowable affections hidden beneath the narrative coherence provided by dominant collective discourses and their semantic absolutes.

In this context, silence performs a double narrative function: if, on the one hand, it allows for a fruitful theoretical background for self-reflection and critical thinking, on the other hand it also reveals the narrator’s hesitation about art’s ability to render a clear and semantically coherent explanation of the concept of nothingness. By addressing anew a field of metadiscursive silence, where the narrative interplay between the words and their metaphorical absence tend to create a strong semantic tension, “nothing” also contributes to destabilise a semantic coherence observable within conventional discourses on ageing. This leads the narrator to experience a sudden lack of control over his own reflections on death and ageing in writing. In his perspective, the idea of nothingness, expressed in traditional discourse on ageing and death, tends to maintain its abstract meaning. Denying a narrative coherence of traditional discourse, the narrator also finds it difficult to fully express, in writing, the complex ontological dimensions of nothingness. Addressing discursive ambiguities of nothingness, the narrator tries to come to terms with a right method of expression that would allow him to produce the suggestive inconclusiveness of meaning implied within its narrative articulation. The question of how to address, within a fictional discourse, the semantically inconclusive dimension of silence, and of nothingness remains unanswered in the novel. His conviction that a silenced, unaddressed conception of nothingness can bring to the fore an alternative rational perspective on old age and the process of dying, gradually acquires a strong semantic connotation within the narrative construction of the text. The metaphorical dimension of silence articulates an attempt to access the yet unexplored meanings featuring the narrative construction of collective remembering associated to discourses on ageing and dying. Constructing a new semantic approach to silence, Nothing to Be Frightened of provides a firm theoretical foundation to explore the dynamics of discursive interaction between cultural remembering and forgetting, while also acknowledging death as a focal point in contemporary debates on the process of ageing:

So if, as we approach death and look back on our lives, we ‘understand our narrative’ and stamp a final meaning on it, I suspect we are doing little more than confabulating: processing strange, incomprehensible, contradictory input … I would expect a dying person to be an unreliable narrator, because what is useful to us generally conflicts with what is true, and what is useful at that time is a sense of having lived to some purpose, and according to some comprehensible plot. (Barnes, Nothing 189–190)

On the one hand, the dimension of silence contributes to constructing a coherent reflection on the memory of a self, related to what is palpable and discursively representable. On the other hand, it also suggests the importance of evaluating the emotional, non-visible dimension of ageing and dying, concealed beneath a neatly constructed narrative advocating internal peace and serenity. The aesthetic representation of silent, therefore, not yet collectively revealed and thus obliterated, emotions, experiences and affections are not directly expressed nor received within conventional discourses on ageing.

Discussion

In Barnes’s fiction, the narrative dichotomy between remembering and forgetting has always been connected to deep philosophical reflections on the aesthetics of silence and ageing, revolving around social and cultural constructs on death and physical decline in contemporary European historiography. Trying to come to terms with time and memory, and with what time does to memory, the narrator in The Sense of an Ending (2011) incorporates the element of silence into retrospective ambiguities involving his own process of ageing.

The Sense of an Ending tells a life-story of an old-aged man, who is retired and spends significant time revising the past. Tony’s ambiguous reading of earlier experiences, displayed as a constant flux of conflicting ideas and images featuring his love affair with Veronica, constitutes a firm methodological background to approach literary fiction as a cultural medium able to construct, in one single form, different competing versions of the past (Erll, Memory in Culture). In Memory in Culture (2011), Astrid Erll defines literary fiction as capable of “build[ing] and observ[ing] memory” simultaneously (159). Tony’s contradictory way of recalling the past, represented by means of interdiscursive intertwining of several controversial acts of remembering, might be perceived as a fictional rendering of a nonlinear memory process in literature. According to Erll, literature constitutes one of the most reliable forms to render sociohistorical accounts of the past within all their contradictoriness and inconclusiveness, displaying a “semantic complexity foreign to other media of cultural memory” (Erll, Memory 151). As demonstrated in The Sense of an Ending, Tony’s process of memory is discursively constructed around ambiguous narrative representations of his younger self, featuring a backwards journey into a fragmented process of recollection of events taking place in his youth. Trying to organize his scattered memories into a coherent narrative, Tony attempts to recover not only specific spatial and temporal patterns of meaning representing physical and geographical settings of the past, but also a subjectively extended psychological picture of emotions and feelings experienced by him in the present. In this dichotomic confrontation of the coherently constructed renderings of the past and the state of deep inner discontinuity revealed in the present, silence acts simultaneously as an emotionally stable and rhetorically disquieting discursive dimension. While sustaining silence as a serene recollection of youth, Tony also looks forward to giving expression to concealed—and thus unspeakable—traumas featuring the narrative construction of his former experiences.

In Tony’s view, to aspire towards accurate remembrance is an act of moral responsibility over the past. Acknowledging human memory as inevitably unreliable, Tony tries to extend recollections of his youth beyond the borders of a specific communicative time span. Facing temporal limitations of human memory, he nevertheless continues to perceive memory as a complex moral process, vacillating between the objective representation of social and cultural reality and the character’s ambiguous reading of his life-story, with conflicting emotional states, unacknowledged experiences, and contradictory feelings. Following Erll’s theoretical distinction between memory-productive and memory-reflexive dimensions of literature, the narrative construction of Tony’s scattered memories of the past oscillates between a fact-based, objective recollection of life history and an emotionally based, subjective rendering of his youth. Consequently, the narrative construction of The Sense of an Ending (2011) demonstrates the complex dialogical tension between a personal sense of the remembered past and a collective representation of misremembering that occurred in the present. In line with Tony, other characters tend to focus upon a non-linear narrative juxtaposition of different levels of remembering and misremembering, providing possibilities for a multidirectional narrative approach to the process of recollection, conceived within the memory-productive and memory-reflexive dimensions. The cross-fertilising textual interplay between memory-productive and memory-reflexive dimensions of a literary discourse is extensively developed in Astrid Erll’s Memory in Culture, in which the author acknowledges the ability of literature not only to create, but also constructively reflect upon the collective past.

The discursive dimension of silence enables Tony to sustain, with great psychological insight, a constructive narrative dialogue between the emphatically vivid descriptions of the collective past and a concealed version of history told by his own aged self in the present. Consequently, the juxtaposition between remembering and misremembering mostly occurs on an internal narrative level, fostering this text’s ability to uphold a dialectical approach to dialogue between the memory-productive and memory-reflexive dimensions. The two-dimensional narrative construction of the novel also contributes to exploring deeper Erll’s currently developed theorisation on the hidden symbolic power of collective memory, implicitly circulating within the processes of remembering, which remain non-conscious on a collective level. In her article entitled “The Hidden Power of Implicit Collective Memory” (2022), Erll distinguishes between explicitly represented collective memory, addressed within an official, conscious, commemorative and visible socio-cultural domain, and a tendentiously invisible, hidden world of implicit collective memory, including narrative discourse, patterns of meaning and socio-historical stereotypes not explicitly known or addressed in memory culture. Once again, she recognizes literature as one of the most effective critical approaches to a systematic study of a complex dialogical dynamics observed within implicit collective memory. Advocating interdisciplinary interconnectability, built upon the productive exchange of synergies from literary studies, cultural studies and mnemohistory, the author proposes to move beyond the self-conscious or ideologically dominant projects of explicit collective memory and (re)-consider the ground-breaking importance of a variety of other forms of implicit remembering, which do not aim at official normativity of cultural memory process. In Erll’s point of view, a thorough academic research into the socio-cultural realm of implicit collective memory necessarily engages with the analysis of multiple possibilities in which the past affects the present in a variety of symbolic ways that most people remain unaware of (Erll, “Hidden Power”).

Doing justice to Freud’s concept of construction in memory, Tony’s controversial impressions—screen memories²—of the past are rendered, in The Sense of an Ending, in a semantically ambiguous, and discursively inconclusive, way. The narrative articulation of the apparently dispersed and ontologically unrelated events testify to the existence of other, alternative, mnemonic methods of rendering memories at old age. The narrative might not always accomplish a coherent chronological sequence of events, being constructed around deep psychological insights into the hidden dimension of one’s true and emotionally authentic self. In Freud’s perspective, screen memories, defined as usually short, vivid articulations of distant recollections and genuine impressions of the past, are ontologically related to the territory of silenced, concealed levels of human consciousness. In Tony’s imagination, multifarious screen memories represent not only what he objectively intends to revise and thus recollect, but also the very specific moment in which those memories are verbalized, retrieved, and analysed. As a retired man, he considers it important to readdress the past, embedded in a dialectical confrontation of freedom and restraint, and extended to the relationship of a self with the outer world and society. To construct a chronologically coherent narrative attempting to transmit inner rejoicing and a serene self-image, Tony addresses memory and time as ontologically inseparable dimensions, constituting an apparatus for emotional self-preservation and inner tranquillity.

Yet, the narrative dichotomy between remembering and forgetting permeates Tony’s coherent discourses on his ageing. Instead of reporting silence as tranquil or contemplative in nature, Tony’s philosophical self-reflection revolves around conflicting memories and emotionally disturbing versions of the past, converting the whole process of narration into a multilayered arrangement of scattered fragments. Thus, Tony’s process of ageing, addressed within a discursively ambiguous construction of memory, articulates the transitory essence of one’s self-perception in time, allowing for a rather unstable sense of identity. Moreover, the task of displaying these complex emotional states into a narrative sequence of memory proves to be a very hard endeavour: on the one hand, the discursive recollection of the past permits him to revise his own emotional and affective reactions to his earliest memoirs, undertaken in old age; on the other hand, by focusing on the emotional aspects of reception of memories, Tony feels unable to reconnect screen memories into a coherent narrative, unfolding across time and space. In The Sense of an Ending, the narrative construction of memory inevitably suggests that an age-old mnemonic technique³ of approaching the past in order to create a coherent life narrative, featuring serenity and inner satisfaction, proves to be semantically restrictive. In the second part of the novel, the older, ailing Tony inquiries about the discursive reliability of his memories, and the constructive nature of time, which both constitute the emotional trigger to assimilate other, fragmented, discourses on ageing and death:

Adrian’s fragment also refers to the question of responsibility: whether there’s a chain of it, or whether we draw the concept more narrowly. I’m all for drawing it narrowly. Sorry, no, you can’t blame your dead parents, or having brothers and sisters, or not having them, or your genes, or society, or whatever – not in normal circumstances. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there’s powerful evidence to the contrary. Adrian was much cleverer than me – he used logic where I use common sense – but we came, I think, to more or less the same conclusion. (Barnes, Sense of an Ending 104)

In this context, silence replaces the coherent life narrative produced within the concepts of time and space which delimit traditional memoirs dedicated to the recollections of one’s biography. Moreover, a complex discursive construction of silent moments provides Tony’s self-narrative with a sense of purpose—to critically revise memories of the past, experiences and responsibilities, as well as emotional anticipation of ageing and the fear of death. Instead of incorporating multifarious fragmentary memories into a sequential narrative, the element of silence fulfils the function of rendering recollections in a non-chronological order, taking advantage of expressing intricate emotional states, times and feelings which can not be subsumed into a continuous biographical narrative or a fact-based story. Within Tony’s consciousness, the process of remembering, involved in silence and retrospection, is discursively connected to the process of forgetting, since there are various unresolved memories of the past which become difficult to analyse, separate, revise, combine and arrange into a sequential memoir.

In a state of contemplative silence, Tony becomes able to recall various memories of his youth, embedded in narrative contradictoriness and semantic inconclusiveness. It would be important to distinguish, within the narrative construction of The Sense of an Ending, between two dimensions of memory: the first comes to represent Tony’s rational dispositions related to his own justified perception of the past, and narrated in a strict chronological order, with an emphasis on the character’s states of mind. The second dimension expresses the character’s emotions and feelings, mostly covering his states of soul in the present, when he tries to readdress the memory in old age. The novel demonstrates that to critically comment on the emotionally complex states of the soul is possible only in silence. According to Steven Bindeman, silence breaks chronology and extends towards a deeper perception of a semantic correlation developed between objective memories of the past and subjective, emotional fantasies of the present (Bindeman). In this way, the narrative articulation of Tony’s silenced memories and emotions contributes to undermine a traditional approach to the philosophy of ageing, which frequently grants primacy to life narratives of temporal sequence and moral progression. On the contrary, by growing older and recollecting the memories of his youth, Tony demonstrates an increasing sense of loss and inner scepticism towards narratives of self-progression:

I could only reply that I think – I theorise – that something – something else – happens to the memory over time…. I press the button marked Adrian and Veronica, the tape runs, the usual stuff spools out…. Then, no longer afterwards, I began remembering forgotten things. I don’t know if there’s a scientific explanation for this – to do with new affective states reopening blocked-off neural pathways. All I can say is that it happened, and that it astonished me. (Barnes, Sense of an Ending 120)

Exploring various forms of discursive silence in the narrative construction of collective history constitutes one of the most important aesthetic dimensions in Barnes’s fiction. Strategically located between historical silence and fictional re-narration, several of Barnes’s novels examine the psychology of collective silence particularly in relation to emotional pressures exercised by discourses on ageing and history in contemporary European society.

In Barnes’s recently published novel, Elizabeth Finch (2022), the narrative dimension of silence is intrinsically connected to concepts of historical time and space. Moreover, it provides a firm discursive foundation for an extensive critical revision of official collective memory, derived from a dialectical confrontation between political history, featuring European culture and civilisation, and a personal history of an aged intellectual woman.

Growing older, Elizabeth thoroughly examines European history and culture, delving into a multilayered critical analysis of various practices of historical oblivion related to collective engagement with the past. She considers silence as one possible path towards a profound cultural self-reflection, aspiring “to find out its limits, its context, and its reference” (Passerini 249). Her refusal to accept the discursive coherence of collective history and culture, which tend to exclude mnemonically concealed dimensions of political authority and social violence, represents her distrust of the late nineteenth-century dominant narratives. In her perspective, those articulate selected memories resting upon dominant ideology and sustained by traditional discourses on history, philosophy, and literature. Revising a collective dimension of history and memory, she proposes to readdress official European historiography. She argues, for instance, that it proceeds selectively to construct a clear, yet deceitful, representation of the historical and cultural past.

Anticipating the ability to follow a nonlinear, retrospective account of forgotten collective memories, the narrative construction of the novel suggestively oscillates between the metaphysics of finitude, sustained by a chronological representation of Elizabeth’s individual life, and the inverted temporality of Neil’s critical approach towards the fragments addressing the narrative ambiguities of European history. Thus, the novel provides access to Neil’s controversial personal recollections of his non-traditional teacher, trying to assimilate Elizabeth’s critical remarks on temporal refraction and narrative incongruity of official European historiography. Readdressing memories of the political arguments of the highly intellectual figure of Elizabeth, Neil tries to come to terms with her sustained academic effort to receive, acknowledge and challenge various forms of official (hi)stories dominating European collective consciousness. Revising received collective memories, recollected in silence, Elizabeth Finch proposes, instead, to formulate questions about the constructed nature of the present. Moreover, this novel contributes to challenge the dominant historical discourses of the present supported by the collectively sustained reinventions of the past, aimed at justifying key events in European culture and civilisation. The intricate process of narration disrupts the ideological coherence of official discourses on memory, proposing to acknowledge the legitimacy of silenced voices that have been obliterated from history, thus insisting that to remain in silence is to remain powerless.

The discursively incoherent process of memory, demonstrated within the narrative construction of Elizabeth Finch, invites us to reflect on the dichotomy between remembering and forgetting, depicted on both individual and collective levels. Though the first part of the novel tends to concentrate on telling the life story of an intellectual teacher, revising controversial accounts of European history from a predominantly unconventional perspective, the discursive coexistence of opposing discourses on memory contributes to reveal the narrative inconclusiveness of the process of collective remembering, featuring the necessity to acknowledge the existence of forgotten, implicit dimensions of history:

‘But are you suggesting’, Geoff continued, with a touch of aggression, ‘that we read Hitler?’

‘I am suggesting that we familiarise ourselves with those who oppose us and whom we oppose, whether it be a living being or a dead figure, whether it be a religious or political opponent, or even a daily newspaper or weekly magazine…. Also, as a great writer once put it, “These monsters explain history to us.”’ (Barnes, Elizabeth Finch 27)

The idea of discursive corroboration between explicit and implicit dimensions of memory is also emphatically stated in Elizabeth’s first address to her students: “I shall teach you as the adults you undoubtedly are. The best form of education, as the Greeks knew, is collaborative” (3). This idea of complementarity of discourses, being formerly reworked in other Barnes’s texts, permeates the narrative construction of the novel. It also contributes to revising the narrative construction of the European cultural past represented in the novel, challenging its readers to approach other discourses, such as discourses on femininity and ageing, for instance. Although the process of narration mostly comprises the recollections of Neil, Elizabeth’s former student, it might also be perceived as a form of collaboration among memories, discourses, and writings. Neil accesses the fragments of Elizabeth’s intellectual reflections on the European History and the Roman Empire after her death, trying to interpret his personal reminiscences mostly related to Elizabeth’s critical way of thinking about European culture and history. Additionally, paying tribute to Elizabeth, Neil becomes a historiographer of his teacher’s controversial writings, providing his proper evaluation of the pieces left.

The narrator’s focus on a constant dialogical revision of memories of the past is very often not directed on conflicting accounts of history. It is much more a philosophically ambivalent tribute to philosophy, culture, and a careful evaluation of the dichotomy between historical remembering and forgetting, being simultaneously an invitation to gently explore each reader’s own theories and assumptions on a shared collective history. In Elizabeth Finch, the position that memory proceeds selectively is firmly stated due to its suggestively evasive narrative construction. In Erll’s view, the narration of silenced memories acknowledges that from the abundance of historical events, narrative discourses, and fictional representations of the past very few elements are selected and collected within the official historiography. For instance, Neil’s process of internalisation of Elizabeth’s memoirs raises a concern that every act of explicit remembering is also an act of implicit forgetting, performed as a representational, creative, and constructive process of historical memory. Instead of proposing a traditional reading of collective history, the fragmented process of memory represented in Elizabeth’s writings recollects, reorganises, and revises various discourses, assembling them into a focused counter-narrative featuring counter-memories of a collective European past.

Similarly, in Barnes’s “The Revival” (2004), Ivan Turgenev’s complex renderings of personal memory, enclosed within the delights and passions of his youth, are permeated with the motif of silence, semantically functioning against common stereotypes of serenity and wisdom in older age. The discursive dimension of silence, referred to in “The Revival,” carries a range of metaphorical meanings that invite us to (re)consider the narrative importance of silence in modern English literature and nineteenth-century Russian culture. These revolve around social, historical, psychological, ethical, topographical and metaphysical aspects of silence, examined transculturally. In Steven L. Bindeman’s view, “Even if silence is another language, it cannot speak to us directly … Silence as indirect discourse can be experienced first of all as a disruption in the connection of self and world within a given linguistic framing of reality” (3).

Considered as a key stage in the creative rewriting of Ivan Turgenev’s life story, the dimension of silence operates on different narrative levels in Barnes’s short story, commenting on love and displacement experienced by the great Russian novelist in his old age. Its narrative construction follows John McPhee’s idea of the intrinsic discursive relationship established between a reader and a writer, articulated through the rhetoric of silence: “The creative writer leaves white space between chapters … The creative reader silently articulates the unwritten thought that is present in the white space. Let the reader have the experience” (McPhee).

This intention to (re)construct a life story around an ambiguous past experience that is not expressed openly, but is still present on an inner narrative level, left for the reader to discover, constitutes one of the core thematic lines explored in “The Revival.” The attempt to revise the unknowable, reading between the lines, leads the narrator to challenge the limits of language, underpinning a neat narrative construction of Turgenev’s process of ageing. The experience of silence revolving around this writer’s love affair with a young actress is suggestively built upon the creative interplay between words and their semantic omissions. A discursive confrontation between the two leaves the unsayable itself latent yet capable of addressing effectively various concealed recollections of the past, articulated mostly on an implicit narrative level: “in the Turgenev case I just wanted to take this incident of love and renunciation and spin something broader out of it”, in such a way Julian Barnes comments on the process of writing of the short story “The Revival” (Guignery and Roberts 121).

Accomplishing Erll’s concept of (trans)cultural silence, Barnes’s narrative builds upon the shifting quality and defamiliarizing perspective of various concealed discourses related to the process of ageing that are discursively transposed from nineteenth-century Russia to contemporary England. The discursive dimension of silence foreshadows the narrative construction of Turgenev’s character, who struggles to express the unsayable. By putting into relief a disconcerting feeling of both physical and psychological displacement, the contemporary narrator tries to approach Turgenev’s biography from a highly dialectical point of view, supported constant questioning and refining of the aesthetics of love at old age in the nineteenth century from a modern twenty-first-century perspective.

The aesthetics of love and desire, thoroughly examined in “The Revival”, is informed by a complex transcultural process of memory constructed by means of backward and forward flashes, metaphorically connecting the past and the present. In this context, remembering and forgetting are closely intertwined, leading a contemporary narrator to readdress Ivan Turgenev’s train journey in Russia in 1880:

But all love needs a journey. All love symbolically is a journey, and that journey needs bodying forth. Their journey took place on the 28th of May 1880…. There is an ironic side to this precision…. At one time, affectedly, he carried a dozen watches on his person; even so, he would be hours late for a rendezvous. But on May the 6th, trembling like a youth, he met the 9.55 express at the little station of Mstensk. Night had fallen. He boarded the train. It was thirty miles from Mstensk to Oryol. (Barnes, “The Revival” 90)

Here, the discursive dimension of silence is symbolically interwoven with empty narrative spaces from Turgenev’s love letters, which a twenty-first-century narrator tries to revise and conduct to a conceptual fulness and to fill with meaning perceptible to a contemporary reader. In this way, the narrator not only creatively rereads Turgenev’s letters, he also actively contributes to disconnecting his readers from the traditional discourse on the history of ageing, bringing them closer to the eternity of human feelings, sexual desires and psychological self-perception in time:

On the other hand, a year later, when everything is safe and stylized, he writes this: ‘You say, at the end of your letter, “I kiss you warmly”. How? Do you mean, as you did then, on that June night, in the railway compartment? If I live a hundred years I will never forget those kisses.’ May has become June, the timid suitor has become the recipient of myriad kisses, the bolt has been slid back a little. Is this the truth, or is that the truth? We, now, would like it to be nest then, but it is rarely neat; whether the heart drags in sex, or sex drags in the heart. (Barnes, “The Revival” 94)

Within the narrative construction of “The Revival,” silence becomes liberating, being discursively employed to certify the absence or renunciation of emotions and feelings, commonly expected from the traditional discourses on the process of ageing. On the contrary, the provoking narrator not merely reads Turgenev’s letters; he also invites a reader to rethink their elusive content. Following Erll’s conception of performative silence, which fills the gap between remembering and forgetting, the ample narrative space left by Turgenev’s factual letters is imaginatively occupied by the further exploration of the politics of ageing and its ambiguities. The dialectical confrontation between past and present, remembering and forgetting is subtly mediated by the silenced, emotionally triggered answer to moral constraints and their limitations. Those emotional gaps reveal the conceptual importance of a transcultural encounter between the contemporary “we” and the nineteenth-century “they”:

Here is the argument for the world of renunciation. If we know more about consummation, they knew more about desire. If we know more about numbers, they knew more about despair. If we know more about boasting, they knew more about memory. (Barnes, “The Revival” 92)

As we can observe, “The Revival” displays an intrinsic interest in transposing temporal and spatial boundaries, especially those of “‘controlled disruption’ that results in an exchange of energy between two conceptual systems” (Dalgarno 131), doing justice to Erll’s theorization on the relevance of retrieving the implicit dimension of (trans)cultural remembering, adding to current debates on the relationship between silence and discourse,⁴ and examining the various ways in which societies impose restrictions and power relations on their members.

Results

In the present article, I argue that Barnes’s fiction heavily incorporates the motif of silence as a pivotal device to delve into a variety of urgent themes relevant to the politics of ageing as experienced in contemporary society. Through the exploration of silence, his work addresses complex issues such as historical consciousness, the nuance of personal and collective loss, and the delicate balance between cultural memory and the act of forgetting. Additionally, it presents a nuanced expression of desire and sexuality in old age, along with a critique of resistance against prevailing political ideologies and social authority.

By examining diverse instances of silence intertwined with profound psychological disturbance, Barnes’s narratives gain a unique capacity to illuminate the often-overlooked dimensions of cultural memory, as theorised by Astrid Erll. This approach not only enriches discussions surrounding the significance of silence, nothingness, and the experience of ageing within the context of contemporary British literature but also challenges the stability of traditional narratives of ageing. In doing so, Barnes invites readers to reconsider accepted discourses, highlighting the complexities of human experience amidst the backdrop of societal pressures and historical legacies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it would be beneficial to propose, for future research on silence and ageing, the alternative perspectives that merit consideration regarding the themes present in Barnes’s fiction and the recurring motif of silence. While silence serves as a compelling motif in Barnes’s fiction, one could mention that it risks oversimplifying the multifaceted experiences associated with ageing. Throughout the history of ageing and its discursive representation in fiction, numerous characters possess vibrant voices and intricate stories, and an excessive focus on silence may overshadow the richness of their narratives.

Moreover, the emphasis on silence within Barnes’s fiction may be influenced by a particular cultural viewpoint that does not encompass the diverse experiences of ageing across various cultural contexts. In various societies, such as Chinese and Russian, the wisdom of elders is celebrated through storytelling, which presents a contrasting perspective to the predominant motif of silence. Additionally, silence can signify peace and introspection, as we can observe in Leo Tolstoy’s approach to the philosophy of old age. It can be argued that Barnes’s concentration on psychological disturbance may eclipse the potential for individuals to discover solace and acceptance in silence as they age.

Furthermore, discussions surrounding ageing could integrate alternative frameworks that emphasise resilience, joy, and the celebration of life experiences. Also, the complexities of the political landscape related to ageing encompass a variety of perspectives that may not be adequately examined through the singular lens of silence, requesting further research on the (trans)cultural intersections of collective memory and forgetting.

These additional arguments can enrich the discourse surrounding the themes in Barnes’s fiction, thereby providing a still more extensive understanding of ageing and its representation within the literary domain. In this concluding section, it may be appropriate to indicate potential future avenues for research. Specifically, one might consider that other cultural artefacts could be ripe for analysis through the lens applied in this study, such as a transcultural approach to the politics of ageing and its discursive representation in modern society. Further theoretical implications of the methodologies, such as the narrative intersections between implicit and explicit dimensions of cultural memory, as discussed by Astrid Erll and associated with the discourses on ageing, should also be considered. In this way, the present article aims to contribute to the broader academic discourse surrounding the subjects presented, thereby paving the way for future scholarship in these domains.

As Paul in The Only Story ultimately remarks,

No: I don’t believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. (Barnes, Only Story 212)

Competing Interests

The author is currently nominated as an Associate Editor at Anglo Saxonica, although this article was submitted before that appointment.