To Silence

by Subhash Jaireth

Don't be deceived by this tardis of a book, its three small monologues contain multitudes. Through the gently detailed lives of its subjects whole civilisations the fifteenth-century India of the dying and illiterate poet, Kabir; the Stalinist Russia of Chekhov's younger sister, Maria; and the early seventeenth-century, Inquisition-ravaged Italy of the Calabrian theologian and poet, Tommaso Campanella. The characters, at the end of their lives, are haunted by their pasts, and in prose of simple, meditative, elegiac beauty, Jaireth suggests that this nostalgia is neither a longing for a lost place or a lost time, but is, rather, a homelessness in time - his own included - an uneasiness that has driven all that they have and have not done. The book is ultimately about the mystery of creation itself, the silence from which all things come and to which they inevitably return. - John Hughes.

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Subhash Jaireth lives in Canberra. Between 1969 and 1978 he spent nine years in Moscow. He has published three books of poetry: Yashodhara: Six Seasons without You (Wild Peony, 2003), Unfinished Poems for Your Violin (Penguin Australia, 1996) and Before the Bullet Hit Me (Vani Prakashan, 1994, in Hindi). He has published essays, stories and poems in Australian and international magazines. His book To Silence: Three Autobiographies was published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2011. His play To Silence was performed in February 2012 in the Street Theatre in Canberra (http://www.thestreet.org.au/). His novel After Love was released by Transit Lounge in October 2012.

Reviews

[Lisa]

Review scheduled for 14/11/23 at anzlitlovers.com

[Kaspar Paseko]

Three beautiful, contemplative stories, each a memento mori. Jaireth imagines the internal monologue of 3 historical figures nearing the end of their life, contemplating mortality, memory and its loss. Jaireth's prose it perfectly adept. Jaireth could write about anything at all, without plot, without purpose and reading his work would remain an aesthetic pleasure in itself. As it is, each of these stories provides plenty to think about and each concludes with a poetic 'turn', leading us to think again, so although it's a modest novella size, it won't be finished quickly. Ruminate on it, like the taste of a last meal. Illiterate Kabir negotiates his death, Chekhov's sister, Maria reflects on all that she has survived, Tommaso Campanella struggles for humility amidst guilt, conceit and his legacy of words. The reader gets the sense that Jaireth must be confronting his own mortality. Perhaps he has learned that 'culture' is how we survive our own death. These experiences that are not only our own, but shared by others, and by art last through generations. I look forward to the sequel to this book 'Moments'.