Joseph Piper Learning How to See Again
Photograph: Public Domain
Art and contemplation
Man'due south power to meet is in decline. Those who nowadays concern themselves with culture and teaching will feel this fact once more and again. Nosotros do not mean here, of course, the physiological sensitivity of the human eye. We mean the spiritual chapters to perceive the visible reality every bit it truly is.
To be sure, no man has ever really seen everything that lies visibly in front of his eyes. The world, including its tangible side, is unfathomable. Who would ever have perfectly perceived the endless shapes and shades of just one wave swelling and ebbing in the bounding main! And all the same, at that place are degrees of perception. Going below a certain bottom line quite plainly will endanger the integrity of human being as a spiritual being. It seems that nowadays nosotros have arrived at this bottom line.
—Josef Pieper, "Learning How to See Again",Only the Lover Sings
IN THE CORRESPONDENCE between Screwtape, under-secretary to the devil, and his nephew, Wormwood, instructing him in the most expedient ways to tempt the followers of the Enemy, namely Jesus Christ, he writes, "Music and silence—how I detest them both!" Indeed, as Josef Pieper, German Catholic philosopher (fourth May 1904–6th Nov 1997) makes articulate in his exquisite collection of essays, Only the Lover Sings, in which he extols all the artistic arts as well as making reference to C. S. Lewis' satirical, epistolary tract, The Screwtape Messages, it is the act of seeing that must be similarly lauded as existence on a par with the auditory realm for its divinatory effects on the human soul.
Photograph: Public Domain
I am writing this on my return from Canada, aboard a ship sailing from New York to Rotterdam. Nearly of the other passengers have spent quite some time in the United States, many for one reason only: to visit and see the New World with their own eyes. With their own optics: in this lies the difficulty. During the various conversations on deck and at the dinner table, I am always amazed at hearing almost without exception rather generalized landments and pronouncements that are plainly the common fare of travel guides. Information technology turns out that hardly everyone has noticed those frequent small signs in the streets of New York that indicate public fallout shelters. And visiting New York University, who would have noticed those stone hewn chess tables in front of it, placed in Washington Square past a caring city administration for the Italian chess enthusiasts of that area?!
Or over again, at table I had mentioned those magazinenifcent fluorescent sea creatures whirled up to the surface by the hundreds in our ship's bow wake. The next day information technology was casually mentioned that 'concluding nighttime there was cypher to be seen'. Indeed, for nobody had the patience to let the optics accommodate to the darkness. To echo, then: man's ability to see is in decline.
—Josef Pieper, "Learning How to Meet Over again",Only the Lover Sings
Comprising 5 short essays, two in detail— "Learning How to See Over again" and "Three Talks in a Sculptor's Studio: Vita Contemplativa" —move me the almost greatly. Moreover, at that place is something deeply evocative virtually reading the reflections of a thoughtful thinker whilst embarked upon a seafaring voyage, one in which time seemingly stands still and where, owing to the physical confinement with minimal outward lark, one is forced to delve deep into the recesses of oneself and truly see that which arises both without and inside.
Photo: Public Domain
Searching for the reasons, we could point to various things: mod man's restlessness and stress, quite sufficiently denounced by now, or his total absorption and enslavement by applied goals and purposes. Yet one reason must not be disregarded either: the average person of our fourth dimension loses the ability to see considering there is too much to see!
At that place does exist something similar 'visual racket', which just like the acoustical counterpart, makes clear perception impossible. One might perhaps presume that Tv watchers, tabloid readers and moviegoers exercise and sharpen their eyes. But the opposite is true. The ancient sages knew exactly why they called the 'concupiscence of the optics' a 'destroyer'. The restoration of human being'due south inner eyes can hardly be expected in this day and age—unless, starting time of all, one were willing and determined simply to exclude from 1'south realm of life all those inane and contrived simply titillating illusions incessantly generated by the entertainment industry.
—Josef Pieper, "Learning How to See Once again",Simply the Lover Sings
Despite existence written in 1950, Josef Pieper'southward words are a manifesto for the current time, one in which nosotros are surfeited with digital stimuli rendering u.s. totally desensitized to all visual class. Drawing on the writings of Plato and Thomas Aquinas and their reflections on beauty and aesthetics, his elegant meditations on daily living are an antitoxin to our consumerist civilization, hell-bent on beingness stimulated by as much optical static as possible.
Photograph: Public Domain
The capacity to perceive the visible world 'with our own optics' is indeed an essential constituent of human nature. We are talking here nigh human being's essential inner richness—or, should the threat prevail, homo's virtually abject inner poverty. And why so? To encounter things is the starting time stride toward that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality, which constitutes the essence of human every bit a spiritual being.
I am well enlightened that there are realities nosotros can come to know through 'hearing' alone. All the same, it remains a fact that only through seeing, indeed through seeing with our own optics, is our inner autonomy established. Those no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are every bit unable to hear correctly. It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical spells of any powers that be.
—Josef Pieper, "Learning How to See Again",Only the Lover Sings
Reminiscent of the Zen artist, Frederick Franck's invocation to employ the "awakened eye" of witting experience, Josef Pieper implores united states to see things as they truly are, without the veil of judgement, lethargy or disaffection rendering u.s. impecunious in the process. Only when the inner vision of the mystic illumines our perception can in that location ever be immunity from the clutches of a diabolical forcefulness, dragging us below the "bottom line" unto the subterranean depths of delusion and darkness.
Photograph: Public Domain
Nobody has to observe and report the visible mystery of a man confront more than the 1 who sets out to sculpt it in a tangible medium. And this holds true not simply for a manually formed image. The verbal 'epitome' besides can thrive only when it springs from a college level of visual perception. We sense the intensity of observation required but to say, 'The girl's eyes were gleaming like moisture currants.' (Tolstoy).
Earlier you lot can express anything in tangible grade, you first need eyes to come across. The mere attempt, therefore, to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh await at the visible reality; it requires authentic and personal ascertainment. Long before a cosmos is completed, the creative person has gained for himself another and more intimate achievement: a deeper and more receptive vision, a more intense awareness, a sharper and more discerning understanding, a more patient openness for all things quiet and camouflaged, an eye for things previously disregarded. In short: the artist will be able to perceive with new optics the abundant wealth of all visible reality, and, thus challenged, additionally acquires the inner capacity to absorb into his mind such an exceedingly rich harvest. The capacity to see increases.
—Josef Pieper, "Learning How to See Once again",Only the Lover Sings
And therein lies the very heart of all authentic artistic endeavour: the capacity to transcend egoic calendar and drink deeply from the archetypal pool of creativity that unites all of humanity—nourishing, inspiring and uplifting us from within. Only then can a piece of work of art truly impart pregnant and profundity considering information technology was initially forged by the touch of a college paw.
Photograph: Public Domain
The distinguishing and characterizing chemical element in the artistic creativity nosotros gloat today lies, as I am convinced, in this: we witness an expression of the wistful life, the vita contemplativa … to contemplate means first of all to run across—and not to think!
The true creative person, notwithstanding, is not someone who simply and in any fashion whatever 'sees' things. So that he can create form and image (not only in bronze and stone but through word and speech as well), he must be endowed with the ability to see in an exceptionally intensive manner. The concept of contemplation also contains this special intensified fashion of seeing. A twofold meaning is hereby intended: the gift of retaining and preserving in 1'southward own memory whatsoever has been visually perceived. How meticulously, how intensively—with the heart, every bit it were—must a sculptor have gazed on a human face before beingness able, as is our friend here, to render a portrait, as if by magic, entirely from memory! And this is our second signal: to run across in contemplation, moreover, is not express only to the tangible surface of reality; it certainly perceives more than mere appearances. Art flowing from contemplation does non so much attempt to copy reality every bit rather to capture the archetypes of all that is. Such art does not want to describe what everybody already sees merely to make visible what not everybody sees.
—Josef Pieper, "3 Talks in a Sculptor's Studio: Vita Contemplativa",Only the Lover Sings
Writing during a period of intense political upheaval in twentieth-century Europe, Josef Pieper spent his entire life reflecting on the value of civilisation in modern society and the necessity of the creative arts for the nourishment of the human soul. Moreover, he intuitively understood that artistic vision, exist information technology visual, musical or literary, is a conduit for the contemplative life. Past fine-tuning our chapters to observe manifest phenomena, we may turn our attention simultaneously upwards and in, wherein we may witness a vast bounding main of beingness, beloved and benevolence, indeed the very Beatific Vision itself.
Photograph: Public Domain
If nosotros at present look from this perspective at the artistic piece of work before us, we clearly see an art that it neither-nor: neither is it 'abstract', much less 'accented art', which is indifferent to the forms of the visible world; nor can we speak of a blunt and simply descriptive realism. These two somewhat involuted opposites demand an caption; after all, what do we hateful by 'neither realism nor brainchild'?
To this end nosotros have to consider a certain aspect of the term 'contemplation', and so far not yet mentioned. For even the nearly intensive seeing and beholding may not yet exist true contemplation. Rather, the ancient expression of the mystics applies hither: ubi amor, ibi oculus—the eyes encounter better when guided past love; a new dimension of 'seeing' is opened up by dearest alone! And this means contemplation is visual perception prompted by loving acceptance!
—Josef Pieper, "Iii Talks in a Sculptor's Studio: Vita Contemplativa",Only the Lover Sings
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Mail service Notes
- Nicholas Roerich: Cute Unity
- Plato: Phaedrus and the Charioteer
- Michel de Montaigne: On Solitude
- Rousseau: Meditations of a Solitary Walker
- Leo Tolstoy: A Confession
- Guy Laramée: Fraîcheur
- Agnes Martin: Writings
- Wassily Kandinsky: Concerning the Spiritual in Art
- Carl Gustav Jung: The Blood-red Book, Liber Novus
- Albert Camus: Jonas or The Artist at Work
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