Illuminant

“ The light of the lamp falls full upon her face and bust and hands, its shade leaving the rest of her person and almost the whole of the room in a soft shadow. She seems like a luminous figure evoked by the imagination from amid the vague shadows of fear. ”

“ To a short-sighted person, colours run together and intermix, outlines disappear, blues and reds and yellows become russets or browns, the lamps or candles of an illumination spread into an unmeaning glare, or dissolve into a milky way. He takes up an eye-glass, and the mist clears up; every image stands out distinct, and the rays of light fall back upon their centres. ”

“ It was of grand proportions—a robed form, with wings—and the whiteness of this shadow was not like any other whiteness that we know of, except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even the lightnings are not so intense as it was, for one can look at them without hurt, whereas this brilliancy was so blinding that it pained my eyes and brought the water into them. ”

“ Lightning, the red demon that, from the dawn of Creation, has been rushing down its zigzag path through the clouds, as if intent only upon spreading death, metamorphosed into an errand-boy, brings us illumination from the sun and carries our messages around the globe. ”

“ Fading Illumination. The farther we move from a light, the less strong, or intense, is the illumination which reaches us; the light of the street lamp on the corner fades and becomes dim before the middle of the block is reached, so that we look eagerly for the next lamp. The light diminishes in brightness much more rapidly than we realize, as the following simple experiment will show. Let a single candle [106] (Fig. 57) serve as our light, and at a distance of one foot from the candle place a photograph. ”

“ And yet it seems to me that he might brighten the world as the sun fills this sky with light. As it is, the rays that illumine hearts and faces glint only here and there between the threatening clouds of evil. ”

“ The splendor of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only as brightness to the morning-star. It is a reflex from beyond the shadow of the Now,—a ghost-light of vanished suns. Unknowingly within that maiden-gaze we meet the gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts of heaven,—eyes otherwhere passed into darkness and dust. ”

“ He had never seen anything in his life so bright as that golden bough that hung over him, and when he gazed through it, he saw that the sky was bluer than he had ever imagined that it could be, and that everything at which he looked had not only this quality of intense, of penetrating brightness, but appeared transparent, with a luminous transparency which seemed a veil spread over something that was shining beyond it. ”

“ In describing that which comes to us all at once, there is a difficulty in choosing between what is first and what is last to say: but, interpreting as best I can, I seemed to behold the onward movement of a Light, one among many Lights, all living, throbbing, now dim with perturbations, and now again clear, and all subtly woven together, outwardly in some more shadowy shining, and inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it was invisible, I knew to be the Lamp of the World. ”

“ The blackness of the night was lighted up at rapid intervals by vivid flashes of lightning, which, quick as the eye could glance, now discovered the hideous tragedy that was then acting, and now threw it again into darkness, leaving the imagination to fill up the rest. ”

“ But, as he goes on to say, between the awful blank of total privation of vision, and the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies the widest difference. “In the moment of their restoration the blind have but one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering gleam of brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot extinguish. The new darkness is not like the void darkness of old: it is filled with rapid, changing visions of brilliant colours and ever-varying forms, rising, falling, whirling hither and thither with every second.” ”

“ The illumination had something dismal about it, for the magnificent sphere seemed to have lost the substance of its splendor as at the time of an annular eclipse, and threw, but a pale light upon land and water. The silence of death prevailed over the face of all nature. ”

“ For a time it is brighter than the background which may conveniently be the sky. On [Pg 26] closing the eyes and placing the hands over them the background now is dark and the appearance of the after-image changes markedly. There are many kinds, effects, and variations of after-images, some of which are discussed in other chapters.
As the intensity of illumination of a landscape, for example, decreases toward twilight, the retina diminishes in sensibility to the rays of longer wave-lengths such as yellow, orange, and red. ”

“ The last, and by much the most splendid illumination, is that for which the artists of the middle age, and especially the old illuminators, seem to have reserved all their powers, and upon which they lavished all their stock of gold, ultramarine, and carmine. ”

“ As no one can doubt that the 14th century was the period during which illumination attained its highest perfection, not only in point of artistic spirit in design, but in the dexterous processes of execution as well, it has been considered that it might prove useful to the English student to supply him or her with as large a proportion as possible of illustration of that which we may really regard in matter of illuminating as our national style. ”

“ Whereas light, being to our minds merely the cleansing vibration that dispels the black, requires some origin, some lamp whence to shine. From the appalling torch of the sun down to the pale belly of the glowworm we deem light a derivative miracle, proceeding from some conceivable source. We can conceive darkness without thought of light; but we cannot conceive light without darkness. Day is but an interval between two nights. In other words, darkness is a matter which includes light just as the conception of a joke includes that of humor. ”

“ The light of a lamp in a dark place shines but a little way; but by the rays of the Divine lamp men are to walk, in faith that the steps beyond will become clear in their turn. And thus alone will the problems of life be really solved, the religious contentions, the social difficulties, the trials of family life, the individual doubts and fears: all are elements of darkness; all need to be illumined by the lamp which God has provided. ”

“ In the twelfth century when, as far as we know, the word illuminator was first applied to one who practised the art of book decoration, it meant one who “lighted up” the page of the book with bright colours and burnished gold.
These processes suggest the definition of the art. Perfect illumination must contain both colours and metals. To this extent it is in perfect unison with the other mediæval art of heraldry; it might almost be called a twin-sister.
As an art it is much older than its name. ”

“ LLUMINATION, in whatever form practised, can never be properly regarded as any other than one of the genera into which the art of Polychromatic decoration may be subdivided. What was originally termed illumination, was simply the application of minium or red lead, as a colour or ink, to decorate, or draw marked attention to, any particular portion of a piece of writing, the general text of which was in black ink. ”

“ With passionate earnestness Lauder cried: ‘Boys, think of that man who lit the lamp, for you are his successors, only in a much nobler and grander way. You are not lighting for a few hours the darkness of passing night. You are lighting an avenue of lights that will make it safe for the generations of all time. ”

“ These bright and living lights, darting to and fro 'mid the dark foliage, formed the most beautiful illumination imaginable—at one time clustering into a ball of glowing fire, at another streaking away in a line of lightning flame ”

“ In fact, the reason of her great apparent brightness at night is merely the contrast between her and the dark background against which she is seen; a fragment of our own world, put in her place, would shine quite as brightly, perhaps even more so. ”

“ Nothing dispelled that darkness but the dim starlight from above, but now, as we gazed forth, we became aware of a faint light coming feebly toward us from far ahead, a faint light that seemed like a great, feebly-glowing cloud in the darkness, and that was intensifying in radiance with each moment that we rushed toward it. ”

“ So that in illumination what we receive is knowledge, and the end of knowledge is rest—the last thing conceived as the object of aspiration. As, then, inexperience comes to an end by experience, and perplexity by finding a clear outlet, so by illumination must darkness disappear. ”

“ That which is entirely devoid of light is all darkness; as the night is like this and you wish to represent a night subject, represent a great fire, so that the object which is nearest to the fire may be tinged with its colour, since the object which is nearest the fire will participate most in its nature. And as you will make the fire red, all the objects which it illumines must be red also, and those which are farther off from the fire will be dyed to a greater extent by the dark colour of night. ”

“ Although born in darkness all seem to strive after light. Myriads of them collect round every burning lamp in the open air, to the great annoyance of the human being who attempts to read out of doors after dark. ”

“ Every one knows the changed aspect of the whole material world, when one of the lights that radiated the inner self has merged into shadow, leaving us to grope our way in darkness, until the radiance of a new light, emerging from ourselves, shall penetrate the shadow and shine with the combined brightness of both. ”

“ For it consumes the dark Essence in the Fire, and proceeds forth out of the Fire, out of the Anguish of the Impression, with the Spiritual Properties in the Light; as you see, that the outward Light so shines forth out of the Fire, and has not the Source and Pain of the Fire in it, but only the Property; the Light manifests the Properties of the Darkness, and that only in itself; the Darkness remains in itself dark, and the Light continues in itself Light. ”

“ The super-unknown, the super-luminous and loftiest height wherein the simple and absolute and unchangeable mysteries are cloaked in the super-lucent darkness of hidden mystic silence, which super-shines most super-brightly in the blackest night, and in the altogether intangible and unseen, superfills the eyeless understanding with super-beautiful brightnesses. ”

“ LIGHTING It should be obvious by this time that the lighting of objects or of a scene can alone produce an illusion, and that it can in still more cases contribute toward an illusion. Furthermore, there are many cases of illusions in lighting due to brightness and color. ”

“ The pages of almost all books, from the 8th to the 15th century, are beautiful, even without the addition of ornament. In those that are ornamented without pictures illustrative of the text, the eye is so pleasured, and the fancy so tickled by the beauty and exhaustless cheerful invention of the illuminator, that one scarcely ventures to ask that the tale embodied in the written characters should be further illustrated. ”

“ Are there spectres moving in the darkness?
Trust the Hand of Light will lead her people,
Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish,
And the Light is Victor, and the darkness
Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages. ”

“ While I watched, the luminous cloud seemed to concentrate itself, become substantial, and form itself into a figure of a child, illuminated as it were by daylight that did not shine on it but, somehow, from within it—the darkness 200 of the room seeming to act as a background, throwing up by contrast every curve of the form and every feature into strong relief. ”

“ The fire on the hearth had by that time sunk to a glowing bed of coals, and, save for the dim ruddy glow, the illumination was afforded by means of a single candle—just sufficient to make of the commodious library a place of ghostly shadows, and failing to relieve its farther reaches from utter gloom and darkness. ”

“ These objects light renders cognizable under their distinctions of form by irradiating them, that is, illuminating to a greater or less degree their obscurity and invisibility, and permitting certain parts to be more visible, namely, as they approach the spectator, and others, on the contrary, more obscure as they withdraw from him. For light and darkness, putting for the present on one side the particular colour of an object, is generally speaking due to the relative remoteness of the illuminated objects from us in their specific degree of illumination. ”

“ Would some magic power lend me Aid to stay the witching tone, Art to pain the beauteous picture Ere its impress swift has flown. While I dreamed the day has faded, Stars are shining overhead, Evening winds have ceased to whisper, Twilight's shadows all have fled. Thus, too oft, our life-work seemeth, And we, when disowned its sway, Find we are pursuing phantoms, Shadows in the twilight gray. ”

“ Another interesting example of optical illusion is the luminous sensation produced internally when the eye, or the neighbouring parts, are struck or stimulated by friction or electricity. These appearances are experienced even by those who have lost their sight. ”

“ And although with a penitent heart, and a face suffused with blushes, we have sometimes to say, 'See, Father, what I have done!' it is far better that the revealing light should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of the light turned into lightning. ”