Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest

1959

1959 Since the Soviet rocket circled the moon and returned to the Earth a few days ago, my perception of our celestial satellite is beginning to change. No longer do I see it in a class with the lamp on the ceiling, with places at a distance where I will never go. Now the moon looks like a landmark on the horizon, distant but reachable.A path leads through space to the outer world. Different ways of viewing hewn stones. "And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it" (Exod. 20:25). The stone's geometry can be seen as its nature: it is regular, crystalline, rational. Or, its straightness may denounce the violence of human interference , incompatible with the sacrosanct. Niels Bohr, speaking about complementarity, is concerned with "two statements that are both true although they contradict each other." Whether this can happen in physics, I do not know; but it cannot happen elsewhere. "Intuition" and "intellect" may be complementary in the sense in which two angles can add up to 180°; but they 1 11 October are not complementary in Bohr's sense, because they do not contradict each other. One can reach the midpoint of a mountain slope by descending from the top or by climbing up from the bottom; but there is no contradiction . Only statements can contradict each other; facts cannot. On board ship, the rhythmical rocking is perceived as the progress of time. When the boat finally stops, it is as though time is stopping. Later, on land, time seems to stand still until the sense of voyage has been forgotten. When we visited the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the guide said, "This gate used to be three hundred years old!" Wood architecture can decay fast and is replaced when needed. The reconstruction of old buildings, so disappointing in the West, is successfully practiced in the East. Taste, style, and the method and criteria of workmanship have changed so little over the centuries that an old building can be remade authentically.Identity is preserved not by the matter of the wood but by shape, once invented and then reembodied from time to time. Struggling with his Is and rs, the young Japanese insurance agent filled out our applicationform, describing our house as "wooden dwelling covered with mortal." The stage of the Kabuki-za Theater in Tokyo occupies the long side of the house. Long and low, it can display crowd action without crowding. Figures can be distanced from each other by generous intervals without losing contact. Even when only one or two actors perform, they do not seem lost, because all distances are in accord with the dimensions of the stage. I saw a prince in a long conversation with the ghost of his dead retainer throughout which the two actors were separated by a distance of about one-third of the stage. They seemed close enough, 2 PARABLES OF SUN LIGHT and the total expanse looked appropriate, even though the prince was supposed to be held prisoner in a temple. Sometimes a ceremonious scene fills the entire breadth of the stage, but the stage can also be divided into more than one setting. An interior and an outside garden may be shown in juxtaposition so that the garden is not merely a background espied through a window or door but serves to counterpoint the scene as the coordinated partner of the interior. 18 October Pasternak's novel would be a better book without Dr. Zhivago himself, who is not really made to exist. In a work of art, a figure comes to acquire presence by the function it fulfills. There would be no chess game if the knight were not defined by his moves, the bishop by his. Dr. Zhivago is given no such function. His withholding himself has no effect upon the total setting. In fact, that setting itself is no more than a patchwork of scenes— magnificent scenes sometimes, because Pasternak is a gifted miniaturist. But a collection of scenes is no novel. The principal failure of the book, however, is the absence of history. Never does his story resound with that most momentous happening of our times. It is as though an American during our Revolution would complain, "All this dreadful shooting, and the brutality, and...