Buber -- Dialogical Silence

         Our bias—we too easily assume that dialogue is a verbal exchange. This is due in part to the use of the word to refer to a script for a theatrical play. Or we see it as a synonym for “conversation,” which specifically refers to the oral exchange of thoughts and sentiments between persons. “Dialogue” as Buber uses it has an important non-verbal dimension and it is broad enough to include interactions that are not verbal; in fact, for him, dialogue can take place in silence between two persons or creatures. In fact, for him dialogue has a crucial non-verbal component.

        Buber makes clear that to present dialogue through discursive reasoning is impossible, so he uses anecdotes to disclose it:

The true nature of dialogue cannot be conveyed to readers by simply using ideas. It can best be presented only in narrative accounts that embody the opening up of dialogue, thereby revealing dialogue as a genuine transformation from communication to communion. That is, it is most adequately conveyed through examples— provided that we do not shrink from drawing such examples from the inmost recesses of personal life. For where else could such a thing be found?  (“Dialogue,” 5)

        In I and Thou and in Dialogue, its contemporaneous companion piece, Buber gives three striking examples of dialogical silence. We begin with Buber’s discussion of the gaze of his cat, which he presents as an example of how the eyes of an animal can silently address a person as Thou (I and Thou §52). “Independently, without sounds or gestures, most forcibly when they rely wholly on their glance, the eyes express the mystery” of being. “No speech will ever convey what that stammering gaze knows and can proclaim.” When Buber looks into his cat’s eyes, although “the world of It surrounds the animal and myself, for the space of a glance the world of Thou shines out from the depths, only to at once be extinguished and put back into the world of It.” Thus Buber presents the depths of a dialogical encounter, the moment that reveals mutuality-in-being, in its naked immediacy, stripped of words.

        In a passage in “Dialogue” Buber creates a scenario to convey the power of silent dialogue. Two people are seated on a park bench alongside each other after a morning of hiking. They are strangers and do not talk to each other. The one is calm, present in the moment, and rests in postures that communicate ease, non-reactivity, and an openness to whatever happens. The other is reserved, restricted, closed to even his own experience. Yet something happens between them. Buber:

And now – let us imagine that this is one of those moments that manages to break through the seven iron bands around the heart† – imperceptibly the spell is lifted. Even now the man doesn't say a word, doesn't move a finger. Yet something happens. The letting go came upon him without his doing, the release of a reserve over which only he himself had had control. This shift freely flows from him, and the silence carries it to his neighbor and his neighbor receives it unreservedly like all genuine destiny that comes to him. He will not be able to tell anyone, even himself, what he has experienced. What does he "know" about the other? It is no longer a matter of knowledge. For where unreserved openness has prevailed between persons, even when wordless, the dialogical word has happened sacramentally. (“Dialogue,” 4)

† Here Buber alludes to the fairy tale “The Frog King” where Faithful Heinrich had to place iron bands around his heart like barrel hoops to keep it from bursting in grief and sorrow. These bands broke apart and fell off once a turn of events restored his hopes.

Buber tells this story to highlight a tacit exchange, one that is completely without words: the self-enclosed person has come to know a new way of being in the world and it is not coincidental that the open person is present. Here the sense of relief, release from constriction or restriction, is part of a dialogical encounter that completely lacks a verbal component. Yet in it both persons have come to a new, non-cognitive knowing. Both have been changed in a way that is only possible in the mutuality of dialogical encounter.

        In another passage in “Dialogue” Buber gives a first-person anecdote that shows how a dialogue that begins as a verbal interchange can culminate as an I-Thou moment shared in the silence of a non-verbal gesture:

My friendship with [Florens Christian Rang] arose in an incident that may be described as a broken-off conversation. The date is Easter 1914. Some people from across Europe had met in an undefined presentiment of the [outbreak of World War I] in order to make preparations for an attempt to establish a supra-national authority. The conversations were marked by a lack of reserve, whose substance and fruitfulness I have scarcely ever experienced so strongly. It had such an effect on all who took part that the fictitious fell away and every word was an actuality. As we discussed the com­position of a larger circle from which a public initiative should proceed, one of us, [Rang,]a man of passionate concentration and the judicial power of love, said that too many Jews had been nominated for this. . . .

Obstinate Jew that I am, I protested against this protest. I no longer know how from that I came to speak of Jesus and to say that we Jews knew him from within, in the impulses and stirrings of his Jewish being, in a way that remains inaccessible to the peoples submissive to him. ". . . In a way that remains inaccessible to you"—so I directly addressed Rang. He stood up; I too stood. We looked into the heart of one another's eyes. "It is gone," he said, and before everyone we gave one another the kiss of brotherhood. The discussion of the situation between Jews and Christians had been transformed into a bond between the Christian and the Jew. In this transformation dialogue was fulfilled. Opinions were gone, in a bodily way the factual took place. (“Dialogue,” 5-6)

        Dialogue was fulfilled because the interaction had been transformed from mere contentious opinions to the “factual” concreteness of mutual affirmation. From that moment Buber and Rang became lifelong friends.

        These three examples show how silence as attentive, receptive openness to the other is an essential component of the fabric of dialogue, often the pivotal moment at which I-Thou blazes forth.