ALL BUT BLIND
All but blind
….In his chambered hole
Gropes for worms
….The four-clawed Mole.
All but blind
….In the evening sky
The hooded Bat
….Twirls softly by.
All but blind
….In the burning day
The Barn Owl blunders
….On her way.
And blind as are
….These three to me,
So, blind to Some One
….I must be.
-Walter de la Mare
“The intimate darkness of our most precious cognitive organ constantly reminds us – whether we like it or not – that the “inner” content of any human is never absolutely available to our cognitive powers. The most powerful among the senses, thus, recognizes the deepest human cognitive powerlessness precisely during the encounter with the most powerful sense organ of another human being. However carefully we approach or analyze it, the unique personal existence of every human always stays partly hidden in the darkness of the unknowing.
“And this is most expressively manifested when we encounter the small black dot that is the pupil of the eye. At this place we truly do “enter into the human soul,” but at the same time –confusingly and paradoxically – we realize that we cannot enter it. In this kind of darkness, we can get lost and go crazy, or feel warm and safe – for the same reason: because we cannot possess what it reveals/hides. This darkness can be scary or the most welcoming place in the world for the very same reason: because, herein, we recognize the utmost freedom of the human being.
“Through the encounter with the pupil of another human being, we fall directly into the other’s personal infinity, which can never be fully attained – even if our faces are only a few centimeters from each other. Experiencing this kind of infinity, finally, becomes the cognition of the utmost human freedom – freedom that does not depend even on itself.”
I added paragraph breaks to this excerpt from an article by Todor Mitrović from the Orthodox Arts Journal, on “The Epiphany of the Eye.”
I found the author’s ideas fascinating, and convincing. I am not an artist, but I do gaze upon icons quite a bit. When I do, I am looking through the “window,” not caring to analyze what features of the image are having what effect on me. This article nonetheless does help me to better appreciate the whole phenomenon. The artistry of an icon is not the most important thing about it, but contributes to its beautiful effect on our souls, our deepening relationship to Christ through prayer.
VISION
Today there have been lovely things
I never saw before;
sunlight through a jar of marmalade;
a blue gate;
a rainbow
in soapsuds on dishwater;
candlelight on butter;
the crinkled smile of a little girl
who had new shoes with tassels;
a chickadee on a thorn-apple;
empurpled mud under a willow,
where white geese slept;
white ruffled curtains sifting moonlight
on the scrubbed kitchen floor;
the under-side of a white-oak leaf;
ruts in the road at sunset;
an egg yolk in a blue bowl.
My love kissed my eyes last night.
-May Thielgaard Watts
I traveled north several hours to my daughter’s for Thanksgiving last week, and home again three days later. Through rural areas mostly, my favorite views were of the forests and orchards, oaks and maples and almonds, many of the trees with their leaves glowing yellow and red as the light caught them just right, against a dark green conifer background. The sun was, as this poem says, the artist.
THE SUN
All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.
Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.
Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at the light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.
Warsaw, 1943
―Czesław Miłosz
Gladsome Lights 