El silenciero de Antonio Di Benedetto: lenguaje, silencio y comunicación

Abstract Antonio Di Benedetto wrote a novel titled El silenciero, and its topic, he says, is abandonment; the narrator, without a name, suffers from abandonment and wants to write a novel, the topic of which is abandonment, he says, and title it El techo, but he never begins writing. In El silenciero, thus, we are faced with two novels: one written and the other one not; one says and the other one does not. El silenciero, consequently, may be read and understood as a commentary on the limits of language and the role of silence when it comes to communicating ideas. Under this framework, this article proposes that the novel suggests when one attempts to explain and understand the world, even when departing from logic and tautologic relationships, little can be said without becoming nonsensical and, as Wittgenstein suggests, when it is not possible to say something meaningful, silence is what fills the gap.