Eye and Brain by Richard L. Gregory (review)

204 Books-Livres Two typical examples are the following-respectively by Gomringer and Pignatari : silence silence silence silence silence silence silence silence silence silence silence hombre hombre hombre hambre hembra hambre hembra hembra hambre [Note: hombre=man, hambre= hunger, hembra=female]. All this is unfortunate. As the path of concrete poetry (whatever the label may mean) is worth being explored: wherever it may lead to. Luckily, the writers in the Anthology are not the only concrete poets on the market. Experiments are being made all over the world, and independently from those of the Noigandres-Gomringer group; pretty often, one even chances to stumble upon interesting results. A case in point is that of Jean-Francois Bory. A concrete poet, if there ever was one, he is the author of at least four books: among them, is the recently published Height Texts+One (mark the Bory’s poems are a joy to the eye and sweet music to the ear. They possess a freshness, an immediacy of imagery, and a disenchanted sense of humour that one would vainly look for in the Anthology. In a vein akin to that of Apollinaire, he starts where the futurists left off. His constructions of words and shapes all have a superb ease; the creative effort is completely obliterated by the dazzling beauty that again and again this poet succeeds in recapturing for us. It would be difficult to make a choice of poems from Bory’s last book. Theonereproduced with this pun). ‘Spot’, Concrete poem, 1967. (From Height Texts +One). review,and which he presents in a seriesof blow-ups till only the center of the vortex is visible, is not his most typical. But there is nothing ‘typical’ in this poet-at least in the sense that he does not rely on fixed patterns of expression. On the contrary, once he finds a form, he exploits it on the spot and then discards it: as one should do. The search of Bory for new forms is endless. To state it here, is a tribute to his honesty and to the high quality of his work. Piero Sanavio, (Italiannovelist), Paris, France. Eye and Brain. Richard L. Gregory, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1968. (World University Library), 254 pp., illus. $2.45 (also available in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish editions.) The eye which is the window o f the soul is the chief organ whereby the understanding can have the most complete and magnijicent view o f the injinite works o f nature. Leonard0 da Vinci Leonardo’s admonition to art students that they should learn about the structure and workings of the human eye seems to have fallen on deaf earsvisual psychology receives little or no attention in the curriculum of traditional art schools. This, despite the fact that Art cannot be divorced from the instrument which perceives it. It could be argued that visual psychology is a discipline known only to specialists, and hence is a closed door to the layman. In this book, Professor Gregory has shown that the findings of the science of vision is available to everyone. This highly readable work presents the highlights of the subject up to the most recent discoveries. No previous background is required of the reader except that he recall his own visual experience. Gregory was the director of the Perception Laboratory at Cambridge University and has, himself, contributed greatly to the science of visual psychology. His racy style imparts an excitement to the field which often a less knowledgeable person (the ordinary popular science writer) would find difficult to do. After a brief survey of the physical nature of light, he plunges into the structure of eyes of primitive creatures (his story of the Copilia is masterful) leading up to the human eye. The eye as an instrument is then examined. He then presents a cursory treatment of the eye-brain complex-necessarily limited, since scientists really know so little about it. The remaining chapters are concerned with what we see: levels of brightness, movement, color, illusions (including depth perception) and, finally, how we learn to see. Some specialists may regard the arguments (on visual illusions, for example) Books...