Apologies for another long hiatus in blogging. I haven't been in the library for a long while, so I haven't had access to a desktop. I'm trying to tap this one out on a phone, though it's irksome.
Today I'm writing about a rather strange topic, and wondering if I'll manage to so much as convey the reason it interests me. I'm writing about the backdrops of holy pictures, and my lifelong fascination with them.
They often come into my mind when I'm praying the mysteries of the rosary. I usually imagine painted depictions of the rosary mysteries, whether actual paintings or imaginary ones. Somehow I seem unable to picture the sacred scenes in a "photo-realist" manner.
And the backdrops, strangely, speak to me almost as powerfully as the action in the foreground.
The non-human world around us can seem so starkly indifferent. (I was going to say "the inanimate world", but when I think about it, it includes plants and animals as well.) We might project our own moods into the natural world around us but, ultimately, we know they are without feeling, without personality, without a soul. They are a brute fact-- just there.
Sometimes, this has appeared to me as a kind of nightmare, especially whenever I've inclined towards philosophical materialism. The world doesn't care. If the human race were to disappear tomorrow, it would carry on as normal.
Thomas Hardy says in some poem, I think, that it would be a relief if the universe were actually hostile. Its indifference is far worse than its malice. The thousands of people who die in an earthquake or a tsunami suffer meaningless, motiveless deaths.
And, even apart from natural disasters, the sheer weight and solidity of the physical world can be overwhelming. To me, at least. Looking up into the night sky or into the tracts of the ocean makes me shudder rather than swoon. It seems so alien. Consciousness seems like an orphan in the cosmos.
What kind of reactions are these in a Christian? But then, I was an atheist for so many years of my life, I have retained many atheist "instincts". Or perhaps it is pessimism rather than atheism. Faith, for me, is not the obvious thing, the given. Faith is the second thought. Futility is the first thought. My natural way of perceiving the world around me is not as God's creation, but as a brute fact.
When I look at the backdrop of holy pictures, that weight lifts for a moment, and the relief is glorious.
It's more than relief. It's suddenly seeing everything fall into place, into the correct order. Those mountains, those clouds, those trees, those buildings... now they are not merely clumps of matter, but the stage scenery for a sacred story. And that sacred story is not only the Annunciation, or the Baptism of our Lord, but all of history.
The Incarnation changes everything, but by raising it onto a a new level. The beauty and the innocence of the physical world is saved. The rivers flow on, the clouds drift, the trees send forth leaves. But now, it has a meaning. Now, it witnesses to the Eternal.
This post reminds me how much I've been missing your writing. The last words are beautiful, all the more so because of how you arrive at them.
ReplyDeleteCertainly it is important to me that 'the beauty and the innocence of the physical world' should be saved — I am very attached to physical places. I suppose that just as holy pictures show human beings as they should be, the background shows the physical world as it was meant to be.
Thanks so much for those very kind words, Dominic. Your last sentence is something I meant to address but didn't, since I find typing on a phone so bothersome. But you put it better than I could have.
DeleteIt's something I always note in a sacred image, usually how different the background would actually be, particularly to Palestine. I know an adult convert to Catholicism who restored a Way of the Cross after visiting the Holy Land, which struck her mostly for it's flatness and bleakness. Nine of the Stations had Swiss Alps-like background, the last three apocalyptic darkness, which may have been meant to be but she remarked strongly on how the real thing was anything but Alpine, notwithstanding some deforestation since.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. I've always liked how different cultures domesticate the Gospel and make it their own. When I see TV pictures of the Holy Land it does seem quite unappealing.
DeleteWhat a good thing to notice the sacred art backgrounds like that! Maybe my mind wanders too easily by diverse snapshots of imagination. Not that these moments make focus as it should be while saying the Rosary. Yet the recalling goes on like an itinerary to some extent, even without reference to the places (the sceneries around the event). There is probably no principal place in Nature either, that gives me such kind of indifferent feel you described in front of certain vast spaces. The nearest simile to that comes perhaps by man-made things, like from some devastating Russia-style monster building here and there. Being in some grey place, or even to remember one, to having been in some sense trapped inside one, more often than not makes an impact that is cold as nihilism, even depressingly claustrophobic. A lack of everything, in the indifferent "empty" shuddering sense. But then it could be also taken as a picture to use in relation to the mysteries? Thanks for making me consider.
ReplyDeleteYou're most welcome! My mind is also chilled by huge impersonal buildings, like a lot of modern museums and art galleries. And my mind jumps about like crazy when I try to concentrate on anything, as well.
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