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Saturday, April 7, 2018

Boethius, The Consolation 1.7



Then was dark night dispelled,
the shadows fled away,
and my eyes received returning power as before.
It was just as when the heavenly bodies
are enveloped by the west wind's rush,
and the sky stands thick with watery clouds;
the sun is hidden and the stars are not yet come into the sky,
and night descending from above
overspreads the earth:
but if the north wind smites this scene,
launched forth from the Thracian cave,
it unlocks the imprisoned daylight;
the sun shines forth, and thus sparkling Phoebus 
smites with his rays our wondering eyes.

—from Book 1, Poem 3

There are all sorts of wonderful and inspiring images to describe a moment of insight, a revelation of clarity, or a liberation from confusion and worry. It is surely no accident, however, that we so often appeal to the symbols of light and darkness to represent the corresponding states of wisdom and ignorance, of happiness and misery.

The Platonists, and all those who followed and were inspired by them over the ages, were arguably the masters of this analogy, though it is to be found in most any tradition of philosophy and religion, in vastly diverse deposits of reason and faith. Just as the eye can only see objects in the physical world through the medium of light, so we might also say that the mind can only understand the world of ideas through the medium of truth. In each case, what is visible or intelligible depends upon the presence of another, greater source that provides for the very possibility of awareness.

We will speak of seeing in a room because it is illuminated, and we will also speak of understanding in a world because it is illuminated. It can be quite fitting to consider the sun as a likeness of what is Divine.

Conversely, darkness, shadow, haze, or mist are fitting representations of being lost, disoriented, and unaware. I was never afraid of the dark until I first found myself deep in the woods, far from any city or town, and with the moon and the stars blocked out by thick clouds. I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face, and I lost all sense of direction or distance. What strange blurs I occasionally glimpsed around me become monstrosities in my imagination, and the slightest sound would set me on edge. I suddenly understood why being terrified of darkness, as a form of fearing the unknown, can have such a powerful effect.

The eyes are powerless when they receive no light, and the mind is lost when it is separated from truth. Boethius’ vision, remember, was clouded by the distraction of perishable things. Who has not experienced that sort of blindness? Who has also not, to whatever degree, experienced the sort of moment, when light and warmth flood back in, and one is back among the things that provide genuine comfort?

Over the years, I have always intensely disliked having to work in windowless rooms, buried deep in climate controlled slabs of steel and concrete, my eyes pained by the fluorescent lighting, and my ears annoyed by their incessant hum. Escaping back out into natural light and fresh air, however hot or cold, wet or dry the season may be, comes as such a relief.

When I was in college, many of the best classes I took were also sadly in some of those restrictive little boxes, and whatever I had learned about in that stale air and cold light only really started becoming real for me when I made it back into the life of the world outside. I would joke about this being my own little version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, or of Boethius coming back into the sunlight, and maybe I wasn’t that far off.

Give me a brisk wind over plastic mustiness, and the lights of the heavens over artificial dullness. With Boethius, I would like to pass from gloom to color.

Written in 4/2015

Image: Charles de La Fosse, Sunrise with the Chariot of Apollo (c. 1672)


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