The semantics of sound in Leo Lipski’s “Piotruś” [Little Peter]

Abstract

The article analyzes the image of the phonic space presented in Leo Lipski’s Piotruś [Little Peter]. A characteristic quality of this audiosphere, perceived by the title hero-narrator, is a mutual permeation of sounds being part of the natural world with those generated directly by people and their daily activities, including the ones which might be treated as a figment of Piotruś’s disordered imagination. The noise caused by the everyday life of the inhabitants of Tel Aviv (suggesting both vitality and violence) is opposed to the silence of the night which forms the background to the softest natural sounds. However, the soundscape presented in the novel clearly refers to semantics that goes beyond the purely aural experiences. While the incomplete silence converges with the impression of calmness, intimacy and the natural beauty, the total absence of sound, evoked at the ending of the novel, denotes stillness, emptiness, nothingness and death.