Explore how nothingness, void, absence, and emptiness have been portrayed and utilized as powerful literary devices throughout the history of literature.
Literature has a unique ability to explore nothingness in ways other art forms cannot. Through the power of language, narrative, and metaphor, writers can conjure absence, describe the indescribable, and give form to emptiness. Nothing has served as both subject and technique in countless literary works, from ancient religious texts to postmodern novels.
The concept of nothing in literature manifests in numerous ways: as existential emptiness, as meaningful silence, as structural absence, as the white space between words, as the unsaid but implied, and as the void at the heart of human experience. This multifaceted approach to nothingness has created some of the most profound and enduring works in the literary canon.
On this page, we'll explore how writers throughout history have grappled with the concept of nothing, how they've used it as both theme and technique, and how the literary treatment of nothingness reveals deeper truths about human existence and the very nature of language itself.
The literary treatment of nothing has evolved dramatically over time, reflecting changing philosophical, religious, and cultural understandings of emptiness and absence. Let's explore how the concept of nothing has been portrayed across different literary periods:
In ancient literature, nothingness often appeared in creation myths, where the void preceded existence. Many ancient texts depict nothing as a primordial state from which the universe emerges. The concept was often linked to both creative potential and existential dread.
One of the earliest literary explorations of nothingness appears in the ancient Hindu text, the Rigveda (composed c. 1500-1200 BCE). The Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of Creation) begins with a profound contemplation of the state before existence:
This text is remarkable for its ability to describe the indescribable—a state before being and non-being were distinguished. It uses negation as a literary device to approach that which cannot be directly described, a technique that would be employed by writers for millennia to come.
Describes Chaos as the primordial void from which all existence emerges.
Explores emptiness (wu) as a generative force: "The Dao is like an empty vessel that yet may be drawn from without ever needing to be filled."
Contains the famous phrase "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form," exploring the concept of śūnyatā (emptiness).
Medieval literature often approached nothingness through the lens of religious mysticism. The concept of "divine darkness" or the via negativa (negative way) in Christian mysticism used the language of absence and negation to approach the ineffable divine. Nothing was also explored through the memento mori tradition, which emphasized the transience of earthly existence.
This anonymous 14th-century mystical text uses nothingness as a central concept in approaching the divine:
Here, nothingness is not a void to be feared but a necessary emptying of the self to make room for divine presence. The text uses paradox and negation to express how knowledge of God comes through a kind of active not-knowing.
An allegorical poem in which birds search for their king (the Simorgh) only to discover that the Simorgh is themselves; the journey ends in a recognition of both presence and absence.
Explores the "naked intent" of approaching God through emptying oneself of thoughts and images.
Reflects on impermanence and the aesthetic value of absence in Japanese culture.
During the Renaissance, nothing became both a thematic and rhetorical device in drama, poetry, and prose. Shakespeare, in particular, developed sophisticated uses of nothing, from the literal "nothing" that drives the plot of King Lear to the wordplay around "nothing" (which in Elizabethan slang could refer to female genitalia) in Much Ado About Nothing.
The concept of "nothing" forms the dramatic fulcrum of Shakespeare's King Lear. The play begins with Cordelia's honest but politically unwise answer to her father's demand for professions of love:
This exchange sets in motion the tragedy that follows. Lear's famous line "Nothing will come of nothing" echoes the ancient philosophical principle ex nihilo nihil fit (from nothing, nothing comes). The play then systematically dismantles this assumption, showing how profound consequences can emerge from what appears to be "nothing."
Uses "nothing" as wordplay and central theme, exploring how rumors (things that are not real) can create consequential effects.
Explores spiritual emptiness and nothingness as a state preceding divine grace.
Contains reflections on human emptiness: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."
Romantic literature often explored voids, absence, and emptiness through the sublime—the aesthetic quality of greatness beyond calculation or measurement. In the Victorian era, nihilistic themes emerged more prominently as traditional religious and social structures began to erode.
Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc" (1817) uses the vastness and emptiness of alpine landscapes to explore the relationship between human mind and apparently vacant nature:
Here, emptiness becomes a canvas for imagination and transcendental experience. The void of nature is not simply an absence but a presence that speaks, albeit in a "mysterious tongue." This positive reframing of emptiness characterizes much Romantic thought.
Explores the silence of art and the void of time, culminating in "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Uses absence and emptiness in both setting (moors) and narrative (the absence of Heathcliff) to drive the story.
Depicts a character confronting the emptiness and absurdity at the heart of modern existence.
Modernist literature embraced nothingness as both theme and technique. Writers like T.S. Eliot ("The Hollow Men"), James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf explored fragmentation, absence, and the void left by the erosion of traditional meaning. The world wars intensified the sense of existential emptiness in the literature of this period.
Portrays a fragmented world emptied of spiritual meaning: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
Uses emptiness as a narrative device, particularly in the famous "Time Passes" section.
Depicts a world empty of inherent meaning through the eyes of a protagonist who feels nothing.
A fragmented work exploring the emptiness at the heart of modern identity.
Postmodern literature frequently used absence as both theme and structural principle. Writers embraced narrative gaps, missing information, unreliable narrators, and metafictional techniques that called attention to the constructed nature of the text. Nothing became a destabilizing force that questioned the possibility of stable meaning.
Postmodern writers often explored the emptiness at the heart of language itself. In Italo Calvino's novel If on a winter's night a traveler, the reader repeatedly encounters the beginnings of novels that are never completed, creating a void in the narrative:
The novel continues with second-person narrative addressing "you," the reader, and repeatedly frustrates the conventional expectation of narrative completion. This creates an experience of literary emptiness—a book seemingly about nothing, or about the absence of the stories it promises.
Centers on a conspiracy that may or may not exist; the revelation the protagonist seeks is perpetually absent.
Uses absence and forgetting (particularly in the insomnia plague that causes collective amnesia) as narrative devices.
Explores emptiness through the impossible space of a house larger on the inside than the outside, using experimental typography and narrative gaps.
Contemporary literature continues to explore nothingness in innovative ways, often incorporating digital void, information gaps, and the emptiness of hyper-connected but meaningless communication. Environmental literature explores the concept of extinction and absence in the Anthropocene.
Novels like Norwegian Wood and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage explore emotional emptiness in contemporary society.
Explores the emptiness of a world where forests are disappearing, contrasting human emptiness with arboreal fullness.
Depicts a dystopian near-future where digital connectedness creates emotional emptiness.
Writers have developed a rich arsenal of techniques to represent, evoke, or embody nothingness in their work. These techniques transform nothing from a mere absence into a powerful literary presence:
Empty space, ellipses (...), and deliberate omissions create textual voids that the reader must fill. Ernest Hemingway's "iceberg theory" relies on leaving most of the story unsaid, beneath the surface. His story "Hills Like White Elephants" never explicitly mentions abortion, though it's the central subject of the conversation.
Describing something by stating what it is not—a technique borrowed from negative theology—has become a powerful literary device. Samuel Beckett frequently employed apophatic descriptions, as in Murphy: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."
The physical arrangement of text on the page can create visual representations of nothing. From Mallarmé's "Un Coup de Dés" to Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, writers have used white space, blank pages, and typographical innovations to embody emptiness.
Narratives that circle back to their beginning or repeat with variations (like Joyce's Finnegans Wake) suggest a kind of emptiness or absence of progression, a narrative void where movement leads nowhere.
Many literary works organize themselves around a central absence—something or someone missing that drives the narrative. In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is constructed almost entirely through others' descriptions before he finally appears; in W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, the Holocaust is the absent center that structures the entire narrative.
In Isak Dinesen's short story "The Blank Page," a convent displays the wedding-night sheets of princesses, each stained with blood as proof of virginity and bearing the name of the bride. The most revered item in the collection, however, is a blank, unstained sheet with no name.
The story is a masterful example of how absence can be more powerful than presence. The blank page—representing freedom, resistance, or tragedy—carries more meaning through its emptiness than all the other named and stained sheets.
Beyond technique, nothing appears as a thematic element across literature in several recurring forms:
The emptiness at the heart of human existence becomes a central theme in existentialist literature. In Albert Camus' The Stranger, Meursault confronts the fundamental meaninglessness of life. Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea depicts the protagonists's visceral encounter with the emptiness behind everyday reality.
Literature frequently engages with death as the ultimate nothingness. From Emily Dickinson's "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" to Don DeLillo's White Noise with its "plots of land" and "plots of narrative" pointing toward death, literature uses nothing to confront mortality.
Religious and spiritual literature often explores emptiness as a path to enlightenment or divine union. The Japanese concept of ma (negative space) appears in haiku and other forms, while Christian mystical literature explores the "dark night of the soul" as a necessary emptying.
Contemporary literature frequently examines the emptiness of consumer culture, digital life, and political systems. Don DeLillo's White Noise, Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest all explore different aspects of cultural emptiness in late capitalism.
Poststructuralist-influenced literature explores the emptiness at the heart of language itself—the absence of stable meaning, the void between signifier and signified. Works by writers like Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida directly engage with this linguistic nothingness.
Inspired by the rich tradition of nothing in literature? Try these writing exercises to explore how emptiness, absence, and void can enhance your own writing:
Write a short dialogue between two people where the most important thing is never explicitly mentioned. Use context, subtext, and implication to create a "present absence" in your text.
Create a story with deliberate narrative gaps. Remove a crucial scene or piece of information, requiring the reader to fill in the blank space with their imagination.
Write a descriptive paragraph about nothingness without using negation (no, not, never, etc.). Instead, try to evoke emptiness through positive terms and sensory details.
The history of nothing in literature reveals a fascinating paradox: the more writers engage with absence, emptiness, and void, the more substance they seem to find there. Nothing, in literature, is never simply nothing—it's a space of possibility, a canvas for imagination, a mirror reflecting our deepest fears and aspirations.
From the Rigveda's contemplation of pre-creation emptiness to contemporary explorations of digital voids, nothing has proven to be one of literature's most enduring and generative subjects. The blank page—both literal and metaphorical—continues to be the writer's most challenging and promising starting point.
As Samuel Beckett wrote in Molloy: "Nothing is more real than nothing." In literature, this enigmatic statement finds its fullest expression, as generations of writers transform absence into presence, emptiness into meaning, and nothing into everything.