Light literature

“ From whence those lightnings come,
That kindle from a far and better day.
The light that is of heaven shone there the first,
The elements of art,
Mankind’s diviner part;
There was young science in its cradle nurst. ”

“ Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. ”

“ The one fine attribute conspicuously lacking in the work is its illumination, generally too yellow; the fine quality of light, naturally directing the hearts with the intelligences of the beholder to the central fact of the subject theme, "I am the Light of the World." ”

“ We get beautiful effects from wit, all the prismatic colours, but never the object is in fair daylight. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always its essential object is the purest white light of truth. ”

“ There cannot be a more glorious theme for the poet, than the vast utility of light, or a more sublime spectacle, than the varied and beautiful phenomena that accompany it. Ever since the divine command went forth, has the sun continued to shine, and to remain, "till time shall be no more," the great source of light to the world, to be the means of disclosing to the eye of man all the beautiful and varied hues of the organic and inorganic world. ”

“ And so, on and on through endless transformations he passed, and he saw how the first world of dark elements crept in upon the world of beauty, clothing it around with grossness and veiling its fires; and the dark spirits entered by subtle ways into the spheres of the spirits of light, and became as a mist over memory and a chain upon speed; the earth groaned with the anguish. ”

“ By an ingenious arrangement of lights, of which the secret has been carefully kept, landscapes are represented in color; all the gradations of light are given, from the varied twilight hues to purple night, until the moon, rising, lights anew the picture. During all these variations of color little groups continue to come and go, acting out the story of a poem, which the poet delivers from the surrounding obscurity as only an author can render his own lines. ”

“ Is it any more useless than art—for does art reach realities? Is it any more useless than light—for can light penetrate the real darkness? Is it,"—she wavered, quivered; she had been talking in low, quick voice, her eyes fixed on something straight ahead, as though reading her words out there before her. ”

“ If poetry is to be believed, the symphonies of light as rendered by nature in the sunsets, in the aurora borealis, and in other sky-effects of great magnitude have deeply impressed the poet. If his descriptions are to be accepted at their face-value, the melodies of light rendered in the precious stone, in the ice-crystal, and in the iridescence of bird-plumage please his finer sensibilities. ”

“ Who has questioned the artist to whom the forms of his thought are vivid as the forms of nature? Artist and poet have rarely been curious about the processes of their own minds. Yet it is reasonable to assume that the highest ecstasy and vision are conditioned by law and attainable by all, and this might be argued as of more importance even than the message of the seers. I attribute to that unwavering meditation and fiery concentration of will a growing luminousness in my brain as if I had unsealed in the body a fountain of interior light. ”

“ Perhaps only through a similar loss would one fully appreciate the tremendous importance of light to him, but imagination should be capable of convincing him that it is one of the most essential and pleasure-giving phenomena known to mankind. ”

“ Where light to shade descending, plays, not strives,
Dies by degrees, and by degrees revives.
When the mind is tranquil, and all the sweet sensibilities of our nature are awakened, we acknowledge the glory and indispensability of light: then we are followed by an enchantment, and the very spirit of loveliness seems to enfold us in its mystic charms. In how many paths does light in its greatness travel! it moves through spheres illimitable, attended by its wondrous train of radiances, shades, and colours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Conversely we find, more especially in the treatment of landscape, reflections of light, the flash and its counterfeit, that wonderful echo of light, which arises from the interplay of light and dark, and offers an ample and progressive subject of study both to the artist and the spectator. Such a scheme of lighting, which the artist has either by direct imitation or imaginatively conceived in his work, can, however, by itself only be a transient one, which is subject to rapid change. ”

“ Nor are the phenomena of broken reflections inferior in beauty and suggestion. Instead of motionless repetition of given detail, there are flickering, sinuous, mazy windings and twistings of colour, light, and shadow—a capricious hurrying from surface to surface. Knowledge of optics cannot rob them of their marvel and their glamour. ”

“ And in landscapes and buildings, such is the delicacy and accuracy of such representations, that the marks of the chisel and the crevices in the stones may frequently be seen by applying a magnifying lens to the picture; so that we may justly exclaim, in the words of the Poet: ‘Who can paint like nature!.’ That LIGHT—which is the first-born of Deity, which pervades all space, and illuminates all worlds—in the twinkling of an eye, and with an accuracy which no art can imitate, depicts every object in its exact form and proportions, superior to every thing that human genius can produce. ”

“ Does it extend through eternal and measureless space? or is it only a creative property dependent upon the functions of the eye? Our darkness is to one part of creation light, and our light their darkness. ”

“ Light in the mode of brightness exists only for eyes which look thereon, and the soul enamoured with the pageant of universal beauty, and fixing its attention on that luminous script of the endless book which is called things manifest, seems to cry on its own part, as God at the dawn of the first day, the sublime and creative words: Fiat lux. ”

“ Too brilliant a light gives not good shadows; wherefore be wary of it. Observe the tenderness and charm on the faces of men and women as they pass along the shadowed street between the dark walls of the houses under twilight on clouded days. This is the most perfect light; your shadow, gradually vanishing into the light, will fade like smoke—like a soft music. Remember that between the light and the dark there is something which participates in both; a bright shadow or a dark light. Seek for it, O painter! ”

“ You have to stay a long time in the darkness to know just what it is light means.
"They call great men 'great lights.' 'And then came the light,' they say, regarding the solving of some great thing. 'He brought the light'—that's what I wanted to do! They tell about science bringing the light. I know now what a tribute they pay when they say that. Light of understanding, light of truth—and ah, mein liebchen, the light of love—and well do I know how that light can shine into the darkness! ”

“ While every illumination is inner knowledge (omnis illuminatio cognitio interna sit) we may distinguish the external light, (lumen exterius) , to wit, the light of mechanical art; the lower light, to wit, the light of sense perception; the interior light, to wit, the light of philosophical cognition; the superior light, to wit, the light of grace and Holy Scripture. The first illuminates as to the arts and crafts ”

“ The way by light and shade is, on the contrary, taken by men of the highest powers of thought, and most earnest desire for truth; they long for light, and for knowledge of all that light can show. But seeking for light, they perceive also darkness; seeking for truth and substance, they find vanity. They look for form in the earth,--for dawn in the sky; and seeking these, they find formlessness in the earth, and night in the sky. ”

“ These passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination, which is the illumining of a capable material by a spiritual light, a light thrown into it from the glow kindled in the poet’s mind with richest sensibilities, that are refined and sublimated by an exacting, subtle inward demand for the best they can render. A single flash of new thrilling light irradiates a continent of thought. ”

“ That was the true light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world.” It is farther added, “this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, but men love darkness rather than light.” ”

“ Sun and shadow flit across it, changing every moment dark to light and light to dark, so that the general emphasis and expression of the scene constantly vary, like the expression of a human face, as we watch it. ”

“ Good and evil are combined, like lights and shadows in art—sometimes, as in Rembrandt, voluminous darkness nursing a small spot of light; sometimes all light and hardly enough dark to cast a shadow.
“In looking at our own day and our own country there is both light and shadow. ”

“ What then can restore him to like, to energy, to activity, to fellowship and communion with the great world which God has spread around him, and which perhaps in the darkness may be passing away? LIGHT restores him to himself and to nature which seemed lost to him. Naturally, therefore, the primitive men regarded light as the principle of their real existence, without which life would be but one continued weariness and despair. ”

“ It is that light which projects the shadow which is seen of the multitude, to be wondered at and reverenced, even while so little comprehended as to be often confounded with the substance,--the substance being admitted from the shadow, as a matter of faith. It is the economy of Providence to provide such lights: like rising and setting stars, they follow each other through successive ages: and thus the monumental form of Genius stands for ever relieved against its own imperishable shadow.
33. All excellence of every kind is but variety of truth. ”

“ How such light will then shine out, and with wondrous thousandfold expansion spread itself, in forms and colours, depends not on it, so much as on the National Mind recipient of it. The colours and forms of your light will be those of the cut-glass it has to shine through.—Curious to think how, for every man, any the truest fact is modelled by the nature of the man! ”

“ The schoolmen well said that there is a fourfold darkness—of nature, of ignorance, of misery, of sin. The symbol of light applied to God must designate perfect goodness and beauty, combined with blissful consciousness of it, and transparent luminous clearness of wisdom. ”

“ Light and shadow are beautiful things, capable of a thousand blendings, softenings, and harmonizings, which one loves to have represented: the great Artist of all loves light and shadow; why else does he play such a magical succession of changes upon them through all creation? But for an artist to make the most solemn mystery of religion a mere tributary to the exhibition of a trick of art, is a piece of profanity. What was in this man's head when he painted this representation of the hour when his Maker was made flesh that he might redeem a world? Nothing but chiaro-scuro and foreshortening. ”

“ The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness;—in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. ”

“ The original ingenuity does not show in bringing light out of darkness, nor in bringing things out of nothing, but in evolving, through the just opposition of light and darkness, this wondrous picture, in which the black and white lines have equal significance—in evolving from life and death at once, the conscious spirit. ”

“ Nay, if the elements of light are ever in the space, and when the flame goes out, return to the vital air, so thought once kindled lives forever around and about us, a part of our breathing atmosphere. Many a thinker, many a poet, may yet illumine the world, from the thoughts which yon genius, that will have no name, gave forth to wander through air, and recombine again in some new form of light. ”

“ All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” ”

“ But let no [Pg 108] one be discouraged by the fact that the theory of light, as, indeed, of all the imponderable agents, is imperfectly understood. Rather let us rejoice that there are vast fields of discovery yet to be explored; and that light, the most glorious and inspiring element in nature, invites us from the sun, the moon, and the stars, and from the face of every green leaf and variegated flower, to search out the wonders of its nature, and further to exemplify the goodness and wisdom of God. ”

“ I tried to light the candle on my forehead to peer into every darkness in the belief that the external universe of nature had no more exquisite architecture than the internal universe of being, and that the light could only reveal some lordlier chambers of the soul, and whatever speech the inhabitant used must be fitting for its own sphere, so I became a pupil of the spirit and tried as a child to learn the alphabet at the knees of the gods. ”