Quand le silence donne voix à l'art: Vilhelm Hammershøi et Maurice Maeterlinck

This research deals with the comparison, made by the Danish painter Niels Vinding Dorph (1898) and the Italian critic Emilio Cecchi (1911), between the art of Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) and the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949). The two artists were brought together for the silence evoked by their works, for the waiting dimension that characterizes their interiors, painted by Hammershøi in the famous rooms of the apartment in 30 Strandgade (1898- 1909) and described by Maeterlinck in his first theatrical works as Les Aveugles (1890), L’Intruse (1890) and Intérieur (1894). The purpose of the research is to understand the meaning of this silence. Is it just a physical silence as the absence of noise in a quiet place? Is this silence eloquent? If it is, can we understand what it wants to tell us? I will answer these questions through the analysis of the two artists’ works and by referring to art theory and to Rainer Maria Rilke’s interpretation of these two artists (in 1902 he wrote an essay about Maeterlinck and in 1905 he quoted Hammershøi in three letters). We will see that silence is linked to a voice that testifies something unknown.