Breaking the silence: The deployment of language as a translation of silence into sound in Martin Heidegger

The aim of the present article is to offer a new interpretation of Heidegger's account of the unfolding of language by analysing the notion of GeMat der Stille,"sounding gathering of silence." Taking as a starting point the experience of silence described by Stefan George in his poem "The Word," the article presents the opposition between silence and the sounding words, showing that the latter coincide with the language we speak. The passage from silence to the spoken language belongs to the unfolding of language itself, which presents itself as a translation of silence, redefining thus what translation originally is. The latter, understood as violence and harmony, gathers itself under the term of "rift," overcoming thus the ontological difference and offering us a radically new perspective over the nature of "relation" within Heidegger's thinking.