Mind of the miniature, but girding things all too grandiose.
Today I found myself thinking small. I re-read a few Bachelard quotations that are particularly important for two different projects I am trying to pull together.
Of course, in describing the phenomenology of the man with the magnifying glass, I was not thinking of the laboratory worker. A scientific worker has a discipline of objectivity that precludes all daydreams of the imagination. He has already seen what he observes in the microscope and, paradoxically, one might say that he never sees anything for the first time. In any case, in the domain of scientific observation that is absolutely objective, the “first time” doesn’t count. Observation, then, belongs in the domain of “several times.” In scientific work, we have first to digest our surprise psychologically. What scholars observe is well defined in a body of thoughts and experiments. It is not, then, on the level of problems of scientific experiment that I shall make my comments when we study the imagination. When we have forgotten all our habits of scientific objectivity, we look for the images of the first time. If we were to consult psychological documents in the history of science—since the objection may well be raised that, in this history, there is quite a store of “first times”—we should find that the first microscopic observations were legends about small objects, and when the object was endowed with life, legends of life (156).
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).
What I need at the moment is a means to talk about perception. Robert Harbison, in several texts of which I have read only selections, comes to suggest that certain kinds of objects, in his case ruins, are ways of seeing in that they are so susceptible to the gaze of the observer that the object itself becomes a point of view. A fascinating implication of Harbison’s idea that I have seen in working with the Amadís manuscript is that in constituting the object, certain ways of seeing actually destroy the materiality of the object; that is to say, the constitution, that which is made from the gaze is an idea detached from the physical, as though after, or as a result of the first look, the object disappears. Would this material destroying perception, if indeed it is such a thing, be akin to an inability to see the manuscript for the first time? By extension, would this mean that it is only in the first time, that doesn’t actually count as Bachelard suggests, that our imagination really works and that we go beyond thinking that the manuscript is a poor subject and relatively hopeless generator of questions?
All small things must evolve slowly, and certainly a long period of leisure, in a quiet room, was needed to miniaturize the world. Also one must love space to describe it as minutely as though there were world molecules, to enclose an entire spectacle in a molecule of drawing. In this feat there is an important dialectics of the intuition—which always sees big—and work, which is hostile to flights of fancy. Intuitionists, in fact, take in everything at one glance, while details reveal themselves and patiently take their places, one after the other, with the discursive impishness of the clever miniaturist. It is as though the miniaturist challenged the intuitionist philosopher’s lazy contemplation, as though he said to him: “You would not have seen that! Take the time needed to see all these little things that cannot be seen all together.” In looking at a miniature, unflagging attention is required to integrate all the detail (159).
I am not entirely sure that small things always evolve in a space of leisure. Yet it is also possible that there are different sorts of miniatures. As Bachelard remarks of one of his own examples, a miniature can be composed of big pieces. It seems that this big piece miniatures do not allow for the same sort of escape into detail that the miniscule made of miniscule do.
It is true that hand gestures, the position of feet, the presence of certain birds, receptacles and costume can carry certain connotations and a history of use. At the same time, however, I wonder: can we study details, bearing in mind their histories and past appearances of which we are aware and also intuit, right then, there and very presently, about specific images? Are these activities incongruent, or, alternatively, does an emphasis on what we preceive as symbols end up rendering the miniature parts big pieces? In thinking about the Libro de ajedrez, it is provocative that in many studies about the images, that the images often are secondary. Working primarily in code and comparison, or alternatively, in assuming a working relationship between text and image, an aesthetic experience is easily missed, which, on the other hand, seems to have been one of the obvious reasons for having included the images.
Today I found myself thinking small. I re-read a few Bachelard quotations that are particularly important for two different projects I am trying to pull together.
Of course, in describing the phenomenology of the man with the magnifying glass, I was not thinking of the laboratory worker. A scientific worker has a discipline of objectivity that precludes all daydreams of the imagination. He has already seen what he observes in the microscope and, paradoxically, one might say that he never sees anything for the first time. In any case, in the domain of scientific observation that is absolutely objective, the “first time” doesn’t count. Observation, then, belongs in the domain of “several times.” In scientific work, we have first to digest our surprise psychologically. What scholars observe is well defined in a body of thoughts and experiments. It is not, then, on the level of problems of scientific experiment that I shall make my comments when we study the imagination. When we have forgotten all our habits of scientific objectivity, we look for the images of the first time. If we were to consult psychological documents in the history of science—since the objection may well be raised that, in this history, there is quite a store of “first times”—we should find that the first microscopic observations were legends about small objects, and when the object was endowed with life, legends of life (156).
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).
What I need at the moment is a means to talk about perception. Robert Harbison, in several texts of which I have read only selections, comes to suggest that certain kinds of objects, in his case ruins, are ways of seeing in that they are so susceptible to the gaze of the observer that the object itself becomes a point of view. A fascinating implication of Harbison’s idea that I have seen in working with the Amadís manuscript is that in constituting the object, certain ways of seeing actually destroy the materiality of the object; that is to say, the constitution, that which is made from the gaze is an idea detached from the physical, as though after, or as a result of the first look, the object disappears. Would this material destroying perception, if indeed it is such a thing, be akin to an inability to see the manuscript for the first time? By extension, would this mean that it is only in the first time, that doesn’t actually count as Bachelard suggests, that our imagination really works and that we go beyond thinking that the manuscript is a poor subject and relatively hopeless generator of questions?
All small things must evolve slowly, and certainly a long period of leisure, in a quiet room, was needed to miniaturize the world. Also one must love space to describe it as minutely as though there were world molecules, to enclose an entire spectacle in a molecule of drawing. In this feat there is an important dialectics of the intuition—which always sees big—and work, which is hostile to flights of fancy. Intuitionists, in fact, take in everything at one glance, while details reveal themselves and patiently take their places, one after the other, with the discursive impishness of the clever miniaturist. It is as though the miniaturist challenged the intuitionist philosopher’s lazy contemplation, as though he said to him: “You would not have seen that! Take the time needed to see all these little things that cannot be seen all together.” In looking at a miniature, unflagging attention is required to integrate all the detail (159).
I am not entirely sure that small things always evolve in a space of leisure. Yet it is also possible that there are different sorts of miniatures. As Bachelard remarks of one of his own examples, a miniature can be composed of big pieces. It seems that this big piece miniatures do not allow for the same sort of escape into detail that the miniscule made of miniscule do.
It is true that hand gestures, the position of feet, the presence of certain birds, receptacles and costume can carry certain connotations and a history of use. At the same time, however, I wonder: can we study details, bearing in mind their histories and past appearances of which we are aware and also intuit, right then, there and very presently, about specific images? Are these activities incongruent, or, alternatively, does an emphasis on what we preceive as symbols end up rendering the miniature parts big pieces? In thinking about the Libro de ajedrez, it is provocative that in many studies about the images, that the images often are secondary. Working primarily in code and comparison, or alternatively, in assuming a working relationship between text and image, an aesthetic experience is easily missed, which, on the other hand, seems to have been one of the obvious reasons for having included the images.
0 comments:
Post a Comment