Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
ATTRIBUTION:
Jean Arp (1887–1948), French-German artist, poet. “Sacred Silence,” On My Way, ed. Robert Motherwell (1948).
