CHAT:hug patrol:heavens & havens, a meditation on perspective
jill robinson
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Heaven - Haven")
the net has its own virtual secret gardens. here are a couple of
mine, in which i like to consider creation and eternity - what we
make, what we leave, and what it is all made of.
though seventy years have passed since he died, on the net i can
still visit claude monet's garden at giverny. monet was one of the most
prominent impressionist painters. he was already over sixty when he
began to create these gardens, and he spent over twenty years working on
them till he died. in this site you stroll slowly from the house
via the grand allee through the most incredible wild beauty to
the utter peace of the water garden at the far end. it is a
glorious, humbling, and quite mystical experience which i feel
sure is just exactly what he meant to get across when he made
this masterpiece. and there is an art beyond art contained in that
revelation:
http://www.monash.edu.au/visarts/diva/giverny.html
there is a painting i have always loved that makes the same point
as the gardens at giverny. called the battle of alexander, it was
painted by altdorfer in 1529. the JPEG image loads this huge
painting from the top, so you can concentrate on the elaborate
realism of all the detail block by block as it appears. when the
painting is fully realized on the screen, i like to pan slowly
from the bottom to the top of the painting. the minute detail of
the battle, with every horse and rider distinct, falls away as the
perspective broadens to include the countryside, and broadens
again to show the heavens beyond the countryside; then broadens
once more (i swear) to show eternity beyond. i think of alexander, who
according to legend was said to have sat and cried because there was no
more world left to conquer. how ultimately insignificant in the grand
scheme of things is his glorious battle, even though so painstakingly
rendered in altdorfer's painting, and how much of the world did he
always fail to see:
http://www.bod.net/CJackson/altdorfe/altdorf7.jpg
perspective is not such a bad lesson to think on, these days, for all of
us. the garden and the painting both make in their way some commentary
about our priorities. monet's life work expresses a oneness with the world,
alexander's on the other hand an insistence on conquering or mastering
it. yet monet in fact arguably left much more behind than alexander.
there are lessons in this somewhere for us all. in life a lot of
the 'value' by which we are measured tends to be based on a pretty
narrow external assessment of our assets: career success and
financial contribution, to name two. these values are tangible,
and depend heavily on what we do and what we win. alexander does well
on that scale. conquering the world counts as an unparalleled
achievement, so his name has been remembered: his empire, though,
did not survive him by even ten years. monet painted
many masterpieces, and art is something that lives on, continuing
to speak to us across millenia. but consider the statement he makes in his
old age by framing the masterwork of his later years within the ephemeral
medium of a garden. his choice expresses his conviction that the important
ways of calculating the value of a life will measure what we are, what we
give of ourselves, and what values we leave behind.
both heavens and havens are in short supply these days, so those two
sites (and the poem, of course) are my gift to each of you today. perhaps
both the garden at giverny and the painting of the battle of alexander will
speak also to you when you find them.
with much affection,
jill
TECHNICAL DISCLAIMER: you'll need graphical interface to reach both sites,
of course, and a good bit of time both to load up and to stroll. i
just got these features recently on my system, and you can
probably tell i'm rather enjoying it. it's nice to know there are small
havens everywhere, even on the net. i often think this list is one. thank
you to all who participate in it, by listening and by contributing, for your
investment in making it so.
Gail
Gail
{{{{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}}}}
--
http://www.internexus.co.uk/users/tranquil/tw.htm
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We can lift ourselves out of ignorance; we can find ourselves as
creatures of excellence, and intelligence, and skill. We can be free!
We can learn to fly!
Richard Bach - Jonathon Livingston Seagull
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