The noted Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, born almost exactly 150 years ago, was an immensely influential composer whose seven finished symphonies and over a dozen tone poems, many of them based on Finnish life and literature, like the Kalevala, Finland’s heathen national epic. While critical thought on his composing has long been divided, and although his long life was a bit of a surprise in light of the fact that he had a throat tumor removed and a long struggle with smoking and drinking and overeating [1], what was most surprising was that for the last thirty years of his life he was largely silent, except for editing some earlier works and attempting unsuccessfully to write an eighth symphony and writing some Masonic music, a far cry from his earlier prolific writing.

This period of silence, known as “the silence of Jarvenpaa,” after the location of Sibelius’ family home, is not unknown in the annals of writing. Although Sibelius was a composer whose work was highly nationalist in nature, there are others who found themselves silent for long stretches of a productive life. In some cases, like that of Harper Lee or Juan Rulfo, an accomplished first work led to a long silence as nothing was thought to meet the level of excellence of their first published works. Sibelius does not seem to have been the sort of person who was concerned about reaching the level of his previous work, given his large body of work. Sibelius’ silence seems more like that of the Polish-born author Joseph Conrad, from some ten years before.

Conrad’s silence [2] is instructive because he was written out at the time when he had finally gained popular attention as an author. To be sure, the books he wrote earlier when he labored in obscurity are read and valued today. I first became familiar with his work in high school, when I was required to read one of his novels, and I have managed to read others from time to time [3], including some before the time I started blogging book reviews. Sibelius was already well known by the time his silence occurred, and had spent decades traveling from his native Finland all over Scandinavia and the rest of Europe and was in communication with the wider classical world of which he was an honored part. Yet, all the same, it is quite possible that Sibelius was simply mostly written out. It is a sad thing to happen to any creative person, to simply lack the creative fire to create at the same level as before, but it has been known to happen, even if the reasons are unclear.

When I look at Sibelius’ silence, and the frustrated way he attempted for decades to write another symphony before destroying his abortive efforts, I am reminded that we cannot take our creative flow for granted. Like anything else in life, the creativity we have must be properly cared for, and so long as it lasts, let us enjoy the works of our hands, because all too often various aspects of life dry up the well of inspiration inside of us, and we no longer create as we did before. Let us make sure, at least that such productive times as exist in our lives are properly encouraged and leave behind a record that we are honored by. If we have one good novel inside our heads, let us make sure that we write the novel while we have the chance. If we have seven symphonies, as Sibelius did, let us make sure we write those and that the record of our existence is the best that we could do. At some point, there may be no more words inside us, and no more pleasing melodies, and our reputations will have to rest on the works that we have made.

Let us take comfort, though, in the fact that this does not happen to everyone. For example, Jane Austen continued to write until her death, and as she lay in her deathbed with Addison’s disease, she continued to refine and edit her last completed work, Persuasion [4], and was working on a light-hearted post-Napoleonic romance in Sandition. She clearly was not yet written out, and death took the pen from her cold and dead hands before the ink had finished spilling her, as is sometimes the case. Let us take some hope in that, for perhaps we may not live long enough to run out of the words that we were put on this earth to say, and may carry them with us to our grave, beyond the power to tell them until we rise again at the judgment seat of God. We may yet be buried with some secrets yet, if we are lucky.

[1] See, for example:

Goss, Glenda Dawn (2009). Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-30479-3.

Botstein, Leon (14 August 2011). “The Transformative Paradoxes of Jean Sibelius”. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 21 January 2014.

Barnett, Andrew (2007). Sibelius. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11159-0.

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/the-perfect-paramour-you-were-in-your-letter/

[3] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/book-review-lord-jim/

[4] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/as-she-lay-dying/