Struggling in Silence

In my experience, attempting to interpret Silence from a 21^st century perspective overcomplicated the text; negotiating Silence’s pronouns throughout the book was a struggle, attempting to identify Silence as transgender made their character confusing, and much of the word choice in the translation of the original 13^th century text was questionable. Does a modern day reading of Silence render the meaning “lost in translation”?

Being born and raised in the midst of the third wave of feminism’s cultural influence, I feel like our generation is more socially conscious than most. In addressing and attempting to rectify the effects of social inequality, participating members of society consider being well informed a responsibility. Reflecting on historical transgressions through the lens of social enlightenment sometimes renders actions and events incomprehensible on our end. An example of this is when we try to make sense of someone’s poor decision making (What Would George Bush Do?), we’ll analyze the effects of their choices based on what we would have done in that situation—but everything is clearer in retrospect.

With the aforementioned word vomit in mind, is it even possible for us to really understand what the author (not the translator, it’s pretty obvious what she was thinking) of Silence really intended the reader to take away from the story? If Professor Blake hadn’t put the story into a historically appropriate context because we are students with no real scholarship in medieval literature, what would our textual analysis look like? Is attempting to apply a 21^st century interpretation to a 13^th century text dismissive of the work’s original integrity?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions and while I am certain that my experiences shape the way I read any text, the mystery behind the author/it’s publication being so very old has left me wondering what exactly the motivations and meanings that make up Silence really are.

“And the human heart is a creature

that has a strange and peculiar nature:

it thinks a great deal,

turns the deep thoughts it harbors

over and over again, far too often,

and causes itself a great deal of grief.” (Silence 125)

Okay so I’m positive this quote is not meant to be about how difficult it was for me to interpret Silence, but I am pretty sure it could be.