But when the door shuts on us, all that
vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house
themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and
there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of
perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is
in winter! It is at once revealed and obscured. Here vaguely one can trace
symmetrical straight avenues of doors and windows; here under the lamps are
floating islands of pale light through which pass quickly bright men and women,
who, for all their poverty and shabbiness, wear a certain look of unreality, an
air of triumph, as if they had given life the slip, so that life, deceived of
her prey, blunders on without them. But, after all, we are only gliding
smoothly on the surface. The eye is not a miner, not a diver, not a seeker
after buried treasure. It floats us smoothly down a stream; resting, pausing,
the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks.
"Street Haunting"
No comments:
Post a Comment