The Dark Matter of Words

Timothy Walsh's study of the function and significance of absence in literature demonstrates its centrality in terms of both literary technique and philosophical consequence. Walsh argues that the use of absence in works of art - of silence, shadow, blankness, and void - is a principle means by which the inherent biological limitations of human consciousness and of human language are encoded in aesthetic constructs. Because of the limitations of our senses and because we often are more attuned to what lies beyond the threshold of perceptual limits, the lacunae in artistic works represent attempts to replicate the real and inescapable limits of human experience.