Pool of Silence

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 503, 11 February 1949, Page 8

Pool of Silence

"LJNDER the Dome" was a BBC programme telling listeners about the reading room of the British Museum, probably one of the most famous spots in the world. Immediately this . programme began, a hushed and reverent atmosphere descended on the listener by the presentation of probably the most difficult "background noise" in radio — the silence of a great library. It is true that a library is never quite silent. Be the attendants never so rubber-soled, the readers never so engrossed, there is always the occasional hobnailed boot tiptoeing on the floor, the sibilant whisper, so much more penetrating than low speech, of request and instruction, the inhibited cough under furtive palm, the rustle of pages. But with these few sounds dripping into a vast pool of silence, the listener felt the unseen presence of the thousands of readers, famous and infamous, known or unknown, who have frequented this historic spot. Attendants recalled some of those who sat

and read there-Swinburne, Macaulay, Marx, Lenin-and some of the hundreds of inoffensive nonentities, each with an inward vision or a search for the unfathomable, poring long hours in fruitless silence. The atmosphere of this programme was indescribable. The reading

room was brought to unheard yet pulsating life. The truest actors in its story were those who weren’t there at allthe books, authors and characters, the long-dead but ever-living presences who crowded the breathing actors away from the microphone and took charge of the whole programme.