Leon Wieseltier takes to the back page of the New Republic with 1,143 words on the importance of silence, of not delivering an opinion. “I am empty,” he begins, and then continues on for another 1,140 more words. (When Wittgenstein reached the conclusion that “whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent,” he ended the book he was writing.) In the course of this disquisition on emptiness, he offers this tantalizing remark:

Last week I was in Jerusalem for a few days, and I am brimming with impressions and ideas. Obama and Clinton and McCain continue to inspire thoughts, and of course witticisms. A few days ago a friend of mine published a miserable piece on a matter about which I care deeply, and I am of a mind to be withering about it. The decline of The New York Times remains worthy of comment, as does the poverty of imagination in American theater and film. But for now I am refusing to play. I am in the mood not to be smart….[T]he call of brilliant argument would have to wait, and yield to more fundamental reveries in which brilliance has no place. And so my confused friend, the one who perpetrated that op-ed piece, got away. He knows who he is.

Well, perhaps he knows who he is, but we sure don’t! Anyone have a guess? You can leave your supposition in a comment below. (Clearly, it isn’t Maureen Dowd, since she isn’t a he.) Or you can simply remain silent. Because, in Wieseltier’s words, “compared to the mad rush of fine minds to satisfy the appetites of the world, to rise in the world by interpreting it, there is nothing at all parochial about the confinements of interiority.”