In relation to

[Johnyxxx]

Hi.

I have been racking my brain for some time without being able to get to the bottom of the meaning of the sentence "What we usually call silence seems so only in relation to the din of ordinary experience." Can anybody help me to understand it?


"Perfect silence,—the crushing silence of[138] deep forests at night; and more, for always, even in the most impenetrable fastnesses of the wooded mountains, is the multitudinous murmur of little lives, awakened by the darkness, exaggerated and intensified by the stillness of the air and the great dark: but here and now the silence seemed unbroken even by the turn of a leaf, the movement of a twig, the note of night bird or insect. I could hear the blood beat through my veins; and the crushing of the grass under our feet as we advanced with hesitating steps sounded like the falling of trees.
"And the air was stagnant,—dead. The atmosphere seemed to lie upon the body like the weight of sea on a diver who has ventured too far into its awful depths. What we usually call silence seems so only in relation to the din of ordinary experience. This was silence in the absolute, and it crushed the mind while it intensified the senses, bringing down the awful weight of inextinguishable fear.


The Dead Valley, Ralph Adams Cram, 1895.

Thanks a lot.

 

[jutfrank]

What we usually call silence is nothing compared to this kind of perfect, absolute silence. We normally use the word 'silence' only in contrast to the noise of daily life.