Image

“ To judge the image as a picture is judged, would, as we have seen, be absurd; and what is sought in poetry by those painters and others whose interest in the world is primarily visual is not pictures but records of observation, or stimuli of emotion. ”

“ STRANGER: The common notion pervading all these objects, which you speak of as many, and yet call by the single name of image, as though it were the unity under which they were all included. How will you maintain your ground against him?
THEAETETUS: How, Stranger, can I describe an image except as something fashioned in the likeness of the true? ”

“ The details which give significance, and which by us are seen vaguely as through a vanishing mist, are by them seen in sharp outlines. The image which to us is a mere suggestion, is to them almost as vivid as the object. And it is because they see vividly that they can paint effectively. ”

“ To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art. ”

“ And as an image necessarily resembles its object, must not the frequent placing of these resembling perceptions in the chain of thought, convey the imagination more easily from one link to another, and make the whole seem like the continuance of one object? ”

“ The question arises—can there be invented any concrete, tangible symbol which shall appeal to every attribute of the complex vision and be an accumulated image of that side of the unfathomable duality from which we draw our ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness? ”

“ A genuine symbolic or ritualistic image is a concrete expression of the complexity of life. It has the creative and destructive power of life. It has the formidable mysteriousness of life, and with all this it has the clear-cut directness of life's terrible and exquisite tangibility. ”

“ But imagination can transcend the work of fancy, and compare an image drawn from the external world with some spiritual truth born in the mind itself, or infuse a series of images with such a spiritual truth, molding them as needed for its more vivid expression.
The imagination modifies images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all things in one.... ”

“ Such grumblers, however, do not duly consider that the imaginative faculty invariably depicts the objects it would represent as grand and impressive, with a few striking touches, rather than in fulness of detail, and that thereby it lends to the image more of character, solemnity, and dignity. A thousand times have I heard the complaint that the objects for a knowledge of which we are originally indebted to description, invariably disappoint us when we see them with our own eyes. ”

“ Image might have pointed out more clearly the contrast between the purely pictorial subject and the subject that includes among its elements such things as historical associations or poetic memories; the contrast, in fact, between impressive art and the art that is expressive also. ”

“ You find yourself in the midst of a landscape, and there is an image at the back of your eye. The manner in which you accept and interpret this image bears the mark of your personality and also of a crowd of other personalities which you call to your aid without knowing it. ”

“ But what looms up before the vision of the artist first of all is an image, and that is accepted on account of its fitness for a picture; and an image which was not pictorial would be rejected at once by any true artist, whether it was an illustration of the noblest moral conception or not. ”

“ And I may mean all mankind, with perhaps a very sharp image of one man in my mind's eye. The meaning is a function of the more 'transitive' parts of consciousness, the 'fringe' of relations which we feel surrounding the image, be the latter sharp or dim. ”

“ And so far from the impressive clearness of the picture vanishing in the crowd of images, it is by these images that the clearness is produced: the details make it impressive, and affect our imagination. ”

“ Man, like Deity, creates in his own image, and when he portrays some one else, he pictures himself, too—this provided his work is Art. ”

“ When the presentation of a picture is our central purpose, we attempt to present it as it appears to us, and select details that will enable others to form the desired image; but if we desire to set forth how a scene affected us, we must choose details that will make our reader feel as we felt.
+137. Necessity of Observing our Impressions.+—In order to write a description which shall give our impression of an object or scene, we must know definitely what that impression is. ”

“ That many images of objects rove In many modes to every region round— So thin that easily the one with other, When once they meet, uniteth in mid-air, Like gossamer or gold-leaf. For, indeed, Far thinner are they in their fabric than Those images which take a hold on eyes And smite the vision, since through body's pores They penetrate, and inwardly stir up The subtle nature of mind and smite the sense. ”

“ By what art or mystery, what craft of selection, omission or commission, does a given picture of life appear to us to surround its theme, its figures and images, with the air of romance while another picture close beside it may affect us as steeping the whole matter in the element of reality? It is a question, no doubt, on the painter's part, very much more of perceived effect, effect after the fact, than of conscious design—though indeed I have ever failed to see how a coherent picture of anything is producible save by a complex of fine measurements. ”

“ Nothing, within the picture, occurs; nothing is done or, more acutely than usual, than everywhere, suffered; it is all a mere affair of the rich impression, the complexity of images projected upon the quintessential spirit of the hero, whose own report is what we have—an affair of the quality of observation, sentiment and eloquence brought to bear. It is not too much to say even that the whole thing is in the largest sense but a theme for style, style of substance as well as of form. ”

“ With perception we have entered a new and very wide spiritual field; and truly, words are not strong enough to satirise those thinkers who, now as in the past, confound image and perception, making of the image a perception (a portrait or copy or imitation of nature, or history of the individual and of the times, etc.) ”

“ I am surrounded by images, [Pg 96] my present state of being is a shadow, but I crave reality. The symbol is fair, but Truth is fairer. To that verity all types must yield, how beautiful soever they be, or meet to express their burden. ”

“ Lastly, this creative power investing the image with all its attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact—the state of belief, i.e., adherence of the mind founded on purely subjective conditions. ”

“ The apparitional and unsubstantial character of the image is derived from its seeming transparency, and from the manner in which it may be made to melt away, by diminishing the brightness of the light which falls on the real person. ”

“ Thus the complete mental image of such a simple object as a rose is made up of numerous distinct mental pictures, each joined to all the others, and each located in its own particular domicile. Now, such a mental image is termed a concept, and concepts are the material of thought. Thought is the play of consciousness among these concepts—a play which always, in our waking hours, is within definite boundaries and along lines of association. The oddity of our dreams arises from Fig. 7.—The location of the Memory-Pictures of the Word-Image Rose. ”

“ To repeat the whole nature of the world abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts, and thus to store up, as it were, a reflected image of it in permanent concepts always at the command of the reason; ”

“ In addition to our first general definition, we may further observe, that by a Whole in Painting is signified the complete expression, by means of form, color, light, and shadow, of one thought, or series of thoughts, having for their end some particular truth, or sentiment, or action, or mood of mind. We say thought, because no images, however put together, can ever be separated by the mind from other and extraneous images, so as to comprise a positive whole, unless they be limited by some intellectual boundary. ”

“ The distinct and graphic imagery of men, scenes, events, objects and their properties, with which he has stored his mind, will give correctness to his ideas, variety to his mental operations, comprehensiveness to his intellectual view, clearness to his judgment, and truth to his conclusions. ”

“ The poetic quality reveals itself in breadth of vision and picturesque imagery. One is, indeed, not seldom in peril of forgetting plot and character-action in these dramas, because of the glowing imagination.”—Home Journal. ”

“ The gift of being strongly affected by objects and reproducing their absent or vanished images, and the power of modifying these images so as to compose of them new ones,—do they fully constitute what men call imagination? No, or at least, if these are indeed the proper elements of imagination, there must be something else added, to wit, the sentiment of the beautiful in all its degrees. ”

“ the other, the image it bears of the natural creation. ”

“ There are things and there are faces which, when felt or seen for the first time, stamp themselves upon the mind like a sun image on a sensitized plate and there remain unalterably fixed. ”

“ In the case of immediate and direct imagery, 159 which is the subject at present, nothing more is requisite, than to paint truly, what nature presents to the eye, or common sense suggests to the mind of the writer. A vivacity of thought will, indeed, be necessary to run over the several circumstances of any appearance, and a just discernment will be wanting, out of a number, to select such peculiar circumstances, as are most adapted to strike the imagination. ”

“ When we try to represent to our minds the highest reality, the spiritual world, as distinguished from the world of appearance, we are obliged to form images; and we can hardly avoid choosing one of the following three images. ”

“ True, that the images are few and endlessly reiterated; but that, we suspect, is the case with all poetry composed not in a philosophic age. The great and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all its purposes. ”

“ "But how shall I get ideas?" Keep your wits open! Observe! Study! But above all, Think! and when a noble image is indelibly impressed upon the mind—Act! ”

“ Of course the kind and amount of imagery depend upon the imaginal type to which the spectator belongs and the wealth of the imaginal furnishing of his mind. In any art, moreover, the chief and requisite thing is expression through the sense medium, which should never be obscured by expression through associated images. ”

“ Images, though they USUALLY have certain characteristics, especially lack of vividness, that distinguish them from sensations, are not INVARIABLY so distinguished, and cannot therefore be defined by these characteristics. ”

“ We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire; ”

“ The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images. ”

“ High above his birthplace the snowy Alps paint themselves against the sky, an aerial dream of beauty, softened by the tender hues of dawn and sunset, serenely fair through the rift of the tempest; even their white death takes a nameless grace from distance and atmosphere, clothing itself in beauty as a spirit in clay, and tempting wanderers to their graves: but no such beauty clothes the man whose daily vision beholds them; hard, clamorous, disputatious, with one hand he rends the rotten splendors of Rome from its tottering Image, and with the other plunges baby-souls to inevitable damnation ”

“ Whatever man feels deeply or images clearly, is impressed upon the subconscious mind, and carried out in minutest detail. ”

“ Those parallel Circumstances, and kindred Images to which we readily conform our Minds, are, above all other Writings, to be found in Narratives of the Lives of particular Persons; ”

“ A work is imaginative in virtue of the power of its images over our emotions; not in virtue of any rarity or surprisingness in the images themselves. ”

“ But the images of men’s wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. ”

“ The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images. ”

“ And so we sit and refresh the inner man, while the soul revels in the world of beauty around us, and picture after picture passes before the mental vision, connecting these scenes with famous historic characters, or wonderful events of legendary lore. ”