The Human Face

: Image by Pink Sherbet Photography via Flickr

Chris posted on facial recognition and the value of using images of faces on our blogs. It’s a fascinating subject and brings me to share the fruit of a book that proved the most difficult treasure I’ve ever hunted down: “The Human Face” by Max Picard. Within, it contains twenty-two essays on what he called the spiritual envelope that is the human face.

“Two human faces look upon each other. A silence ensues. A silence that does not arise from the earth, but from eternity. Two faces look upon each other, and for a moment time ceases and stands still. And all the hours that are hidden away in time begin to strike together, and as they strike, a marvelous tone dwells in the air, and, in this loud silence of the hours, eternity enters. Thus does time call up eternity.”

Do you have a book that was difficult to find? Or maybe it jumped off the shelf of an old used book store at you? Perhaps it is a bit rare, perhaps completely unknown, but none the less, you treasure it? Would you share a passage of it with us?

Adriel Hampton

Was at my parent's house, which is almost like a museum after all their garage sale explorations, during the holidays and happened across an original copy of "The Simple Life," by Charles Wagner. Written in 1901, it's very applicable today:

“And if we pass from the world of talent to spheres which the mediocre exploit, there, in a pell-mell of confusion, we see those who think that we are in the world to talk and hear others talk — the great and hopeless rout of babblers, of everything that prates, bawls, and perorates and, after all, finds that there isn’t talking enough. They all forget that those who make the least noise do the most work. An engine that expends all its steam in whistling, has nothing left with which to turn wheels. Then let us cultivate silence. All that we can save in noise we gain in power.”

<abbr>Adriel Hampton´s last blog post..People Who Can’t Self-Censor: Bashing the Boss</abbr>

Richard Reeve

Adriel,
That's a beautiful passage. What's really neat is that Picard also wrote amazingly about silence and his whole philosophy of language takes silence as a revered base.

Mary H Ruth

Oh my. I'm so grateful you persevered and found that book. This post (with no small thanks, as well, to the picture) has inspired tomorrow morning's blog for me. Thanks, Richard!

<abbr>Mary H Ruth´s last blog post..Tribes</abbr>

Richard Reeve

Tremendous Mary,
I'll be over to absorb what you do with it. Can't wait!

Luis Andrade

Seems we are missing something…

I share some of the art historians theories in that regard. They speculate--and I believe they are on target--that medieval iconography were the books of the people of the time. That the peasantry, utterly illiterate for the most part, were able to "read" the art produced by the artists of their era, the same way we today read books. All that iconography, chock full of symbols and almost alien and obscure to our contemporary eyes, were brimful with meaning. Their world was a giant castle furnished with metaphors. Their mind was trained to seek, find and interpret metaphorical symbols. This capacity for symbolic interpretation was gradually lost--and will continue its decline--as "writing" was popularized and democratized. Human brains are lazy and economic and in seek of shortcuts. The quest for "written meaning" has led us to a stage where "more is just more" and metaphors are lost in the sidewalk of that path.

Which brings me to your comment about late 19th century folks with little "culture" writing some amazing works: their world was still surrounded with metaphorical meaning and, in zen-like fashion, were able to provide more meaning with less verbiage. It is that economy of words we acknowledge as striking when we cross paths.

L

<abbr>Luis Andrade´s last blog post..Extruded Ice</abbr>

Richard Reeve

Luis,
I had a similar insight experiencing the petroglyphs outside Las Vegas earlier in the month (there's a few posts about it). I approached the rock writing as symbol imagery because that's the only access I had. It turns out this writing could be read, literally read, by tribes from Alaska to Mexico and that it was related to the universal sign language those tribes used. But we all need our starting places and I'll remember these wonderful contributions that mark your starting point at Catskill Cottage Seed.

Luis Andrade

I've many websites. "Brain dropping" places, as George Carlin would call them. One of them is my old photoblog. I love photography and street photography is a favorite subject for me. I also spent my son's HS years as the "designated photographer" of his HS marching band. I've thousands of "faces" and emotions in film-and-bytes. Here are some of my "People" pictures.

As for books, my garage and basement look like something taken out of the Ninth Gate movie (based on "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Pérez Reverte) full with books I bought at auctions for selling on eBay. You find some great treasures, like a slip cased, 1949, illustrated "Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam with three different translations. I posted the first four verses in Twitter the other day:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

I've also found poetry books by late 19th to early 20th century poets that are, for the most part, unknown in our days. Little gems of feelings and command of the language.

I wish I had more time to spend writing and photographing. This "working for a living" thingy is a time black hole (and having your own biz doesn't help that one bit...) :-)

Cheers

Luis

<abbr>Luis Andrade´s last blog post..Extruded Ice</abbr>

Richard Reeve

Hello Luis,
Thank you for sharing the images as well as the quote. Your sense of the "feeling and command of language" is so true. I'm always amazed by the quality of letters written in the 19th century by rural folk with only a few years of education. Seems we are missing something...