Sightedness

 

~by David Aiken~

Life’s melodies play themselves out through the song-lines of a spirited tango, weaving their airs for the benefit of dancers shrouded in blindness. This is a fundamental reality about Men in their World, and we must each of us attend to this challenge as we may.

           

So, what does it mean to be sighted or blind? It is, after all, a rather famous question pointedly put to us all from the Jewish Son of Man: "Having eyes, do you not see? and having ears, do you not hear?" (Mark 8:18), which couples nicely with his idea of the seemingly natural blindness of the self with respect to itself: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Mt. 7:3-4).

But Jesus is not here singling out just the unwashed All & Sundry. We are obviously not alone in this lowly world of blind men and blindness in men. For there is an important instance of blindness in the life of Paul, as well, before he was the least of the apostles. He was on his way to persecute Christians in Damascus:

3 As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; 4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" […] 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. 9 And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

At the end of the three days Paul recovers his sight and gets baptized into the new faith.

It remains up to the reader to determine how much of this story belongs to the world of metaphor, and how much to phenomenal history.

In another instance of blindness from the New Testament, the author of the Book of Revelation puts a slightly different, more mystical and epistemological spin on the idea of blindness, using Hearing instead of Seeing to speak to the idea of our Receptivity—not literal, but rational. John, the author, tells us, or perhaps it is more truly an admonishment, that although the speech or meaning might be veiled to the Many, it is because they are “blind” and hear not: “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:17).

            Neil Gaiman cleverly chose to mix these metaphors in his 2001 religio-fantastic novel, American Gods, when he wrote: “There's none so blind as those who will not listen.”

Is it not a familiar trope of poets that among the sighted “There is none so blind as he who will not see…?“ Yet, occasionally, it is with the ‘blind’, after the fashion of the sightless seer, Tireseas, that they are in fact gifted with sight—they just visualize their clarity differently. Similarly, in The Attainment of Happiness the Persian philosopher Alfarabi (c. 872-950/951) astutely reminds us about the wise man, the true philosopher, in his relationship to the state, that he cannot be faulted for those around him who simply will not be receptive to True Philosophy, who just will not see—“If after reaching this stage [of true philosophy] no use is made of [the wise man], the fact that he is of no use to others is not his fault but the fault of those who either do not listen or are not of the opinion that they should listen to him.”

§ Various Types of Non-Receptivity, and Famous Blind People in Western Literature.

            In his novel, The Trial, which was published in 1925, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) depicts his protagonist, Joseph K., as intelligent, but ignorant of, or blind to, the irrational nature, the truth, of his reality. One morning, totally ignorant both of his crime and of his accusers, Josef K. was put under arrest. But K. could not grasp the idea that he was really under arrest; he was sure that the officers who had been sent to his home had simply made a mistake, because he was absolutely unaware of ever having committed any crime, and he was ignorant of what charges might have been brought against him, and by whom those charges might have been filed.

            Accused, judged and condemned, although remaining ignorant of the crime that he could have committed, or must have committed, K. had to be punished -executed- in order that the rightful demands of Law should be propitiated. And yet, as is the case with every innocent man who must finally come to grips with the reality of his condemnation and the inevitability of his punishment, the night before his execution, and filled with perhaps a metaphysical, but otherwise incomprehensible consolation, K.'s last plea of innocence would be to reach out impulsively, blindly, to the heavens.

            In the character of Josef K., Kafka reminds us that we are each and every one of us an Everyman who is judged, condemned and executed without ever having learned the nature of our crime or the identity of our accusers. This is a story by which Kafka clearly means to exemplify the type of moral guilt that constitutes the heart and soul of the Judeo-Christian ethic in the modern world; for in the Christianized world, Everyman K. is held accountable for a crime that he inherited as an Adamic birthright. He stands as a man stands before an Avenging God: guilty of an obscure moral trespass in the person of an Edenic Adam.

In the Seventh Book of his 1850 poem, The Prelude, English romantic poet, William Wordsworth (1770-1850), tells the tale of a poet who, “smitten” by the sight of a blind beggar, puzzles through the various layers of sightedness and blindness, both in narrative- and real-life.

                        As the black storm upon the mountain top

          Sets off the sunbeam in the valley, so                     620

          That huge fermenting mass of human-kind

          Serves as a solemn back-ground, or relief,

          To single forms and objects, whence they draw,

          For feeling and contemplative regard,

          More than inherent liveliness and power.

          How oft, amid those overflowing streets,

          Have I gone forward with the crowd, and said

          Unto myself, "The face of every one

          That passes by me is a mystery!"

          Thus have I looked, nor ceased to look, oppressed          630

          By thoughts of what and whither, when and how,

          Until the shapes before my eyes became

          A second-sight procession, such as glides

          Over still mountains, or appears in dreams;

          And once, far-travelled in such mood, beyond

          The reach of common indication, lost

          Amid the moving pageant, I was smitten

          Abruptly, with the view (a sight not rare)

          Of a blind Beggar, who, with upright face,

          Stood, propped against a wall, upon his chest              640

          Wearing a written paper, to explain

          His story, whence he came, and who he was.

          Caught by the spectacle my mind turned round

          As with the might of waters; and apt type

          This label seemed of the utmost we can know,

          Both of ourselves and of the universe;

          And, on the shape of that unmoving man,

          His steadfast face and sightless eyes, I gazed,

          As if admonished from another world.

Likewise, Shakespeare provides us with a similar illustration of blindness, from the perspective of Elizabethan England, in the Macbeth, which is, obviously, a theatrical treatise on the psychological effects that accompany the sentiment of moral guilt. In the person of Macbeth Shakespeare sketches the portrait of jealous desire; and the tragic action of the narration is born of a fatal meeting in which Macbeth's slumbering ambition is aroused and spurred by certain ambiguous prophecies that are proffered by the Weird Sisters. The Weird Sisters foster a deliberate equivocation between the real extent of the meaning of their prophecies, and the meaning that Macbeth, now borne up by his over-weaning ambition, erroneously attributes to those prophecies; because it is the witches' intention, led by Hecate, to cause Macbeth to be carried away by the criminal consequences of his blind ambitious desire.

            More than a simple exercise in morality, however, Macbeth is also a study in the different types of ambiguities that exist, or that can exist, in a world in which gods and knowledge touching upon gods are hidden behind an impenetrable cloak of obscurity. This is, after all, precisely the difficulty in the worldview presented by the religious mind: that knowledge has been replaced by belief; and, at best, belief is subject to any All and Sundry’s uninformed, blind, interpretation.

            So, when Macbeth arrives at the fatal rendezvous, he receives three predictions from the Weird Sisters. The first: "beware Macduff; beware the Thane of Fife"; the second: "Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth"; and the third: "Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him" (Act IV, Scene I, lns. 70ff, p. 781).  And just as Hecate had foreseen, once Macbeth was fully reassured by the apparent invulnerability "guaranteed" him by the prophecies, all the suspicion and doubt that had been tormenting him concerning the throne he had coveted and Banquo's royal offspring, vanished from his mind. In his faith Macbeth became completely blind.

            Confident that he was protected, if not blessed, by the hidden Powers of the world, Macbeth became as Macduff was later to describe him: "Not in the legions of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd in evils to top Macbeth" (Act IV, Scene III, lns. 55-56); for although the witches had assured him that he was shrouded in the "divine" garments of invincibility, Macbeth nevertheless took the precaution of having Macduff's family murdered (as per the oracle: "beware Macduff; beware the Thane of Fife,") in order both to ensure destiny's fidelity and his continued sovereignty.

            Macbeth believes he is protected by destiny's promise that he shall be invincible, "till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane," an occurrence that Macbeth naturally holds for impossible; so it is with astonishment and the beginnings of a profound sense of foreboding, that Macbeth receives a report that the impossible has in fact happened. For in a guard's account to the king:  "As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, the wood began to move" (Act V, Scene IV, lns. 33-35).

            Macbeth listened to the guard's narration with a mixture of misbelief and suspicion; and in spite of a dawning mistrust concerning the absolute truth of the prophecies, he remains firm in the conviction of his "heaven-sent" invincibility. Because even if the other two prophecies should prove to be false, Macbeth is absolutely convinced that it is impossible to misinterpret the third prediction of the Weird Sisters, the prediction that guarantees that Macbeth shall not die from the hand of one born of a woman. Thus, when, in the course of the battle between Duncan's generals and the new king, Macbeth is at last trapped and forced into combat, he is brazen in his conviction that he shall be victorious: "They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, but bear-like I must fight the course. What's he that was not born of woman?  Such a one am I to fear, or none" (Act V, Scene VII, lns. 1-3). Girding himself up by this assurance, when he comes face to face with his foe, Macduff, Macbeth cries out: "Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born." And then, lo and behold, he receives Macduff's fatal response: "Despair they charm; and let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd" (lns. 43-45). Then the "impossible" at last becomes reality: Macbeth is finally and irresistibly confronted with the ultimate truth concerning the correct manner in which to interpret cryptic prophecies. From his blindness he finally becomes sighted—he “beholds,” and dies.

Perhaps the most interesting example of the sighted blind in Western literature is the seer Tiresias; and there are several different narrative traditions that surround him. In book XI of the Odyssey, Homer has Odysseus call up the blind prophet from the underworld to drink of the blood of the sacrifice in order that he might learn from him how to win again to his homeland to see the day of his homecoming. And indeed, Tiresias is so sighted that, even blind and dead, he recognizes Odysseus before drinking the blood, a feat that not even Odysseus’ own dead mother could rival.

            In a more modern version of the Tiresias character, in The Waste Land T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) translates, almost literally and exactly, into London life of the early 20th-century the ancient poet/prophet of old.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back            215

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits       

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,         

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,    

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see    

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives   220

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights 

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread         

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,  225

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)  

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.  

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs      

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—         

I too awaited the expected guest.    230

In another recasting of the Tiresias character, in their 2000 film, O Brother, Where Are Thou? the Coen Brothers repackage in their own inimitable style many of these ancient symbols and metaphors, and their human characterizations. Everett, Pete, and Delmar, escaping from a chain gang, hitch a ride on a railroad handcar that just “happens” along the tracks, being pumped by a blind man—a Negro seer who, although sightless, sees their up-coming perils and fortunes. This is a New World, southern translation of Tiresias: a blind man who has the “sight.” In the Coen Brothers retelling of Odysseus’ Nostos, or homecoming, our fleeing felons, in need of financing, introduce themselves as a singing group to a blind man who works at a radio station, and who will pay them $10 per person to record their song in “a box.” The blind man does not see that there is a black man in the group, nor that their group does not have quite as many members as Everett represents. Then they journey on and run across Big Dan Teague, the one-eyed Polyphemous disguised as a ruffian traveling Bible salesman and highwayman, who will beat and rob them, much like Homer’s version does to the Odysseus of old.

Tiresias, the blind seer, was also deeply implicated in the Oedipus King story, which brings us back to the most completely and tragically blinded intelligence in the Western literary tradition: Oedipus, who became king.

            In Sophocles' rendition, Oedipus, when he was yet the king of Thebes, calls upon the yet living Tiresias to help in determining the truth surrounding the death of the previous king of Thebes, Laius.

Teiresias, seer who comprehendest all,
Lore of the wise and hidden mysteries,
High things of heaven and low things of the earth,
Thou knowest, though thy blinded eyes see naught,
What plague infects our city; and we turn
To thee, O seer, our one defense and shield.

Tiresias at first refuses to help, and tells Oedipus that this is truly an “inconvenient truth”; but Oedipus, the blind king insists and the prophet speaks out doom.

Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared
To twit me with my blindness--thou hast eyes,
Yet see'st not in what misery thou art fallen,
Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate.
Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know'st it not,
And all unwitting art a double foe
To thine own kin, the living and the dead;
Aye and the dogging curse of mother and sire
One day shall drive thee, like a two-edged sword,
Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now
See clear shall henceforward endless night.

In the original, pagan model of the Christian ecce homo, Tiresias charges Oedipus, the man who had saved the City with his intelligence and courage and whom the City had rewarded by making him king, with the crime of morally polluting the very City he had sought to save and to see thrive—so Tiresias:

            Then I charge thee to abide
By thine own proclamation; from this day
Speak not to these or me. Thou art the man,
Thou the accursed polluter of this land.

So when he is then finally able to “hear” that truth from the blind prophet, Oedipus pricks out his eyes, punishing them for their blindness. And with this act he teaches us about sightedness (1370ff).

CHORUS LEADER:                   I do not believe
      what you did to yourself is for the best.
      Better to be dead than alive and blind.

OEDIPUS: Don’t tell me what I’ve done is not the best.
      And from now on spare me your advice.                                             [1370]
      If I could see, I don’t know how my eyes
      could look at my own father when I come
      to Hades or could see my wretched mother.
      Against those two I have committed acts                                 1620
      so vile that even if I hanged myself
      that would not be sufficient punishment.
      Perhaps you think the sight of my own children
      might give me joy? No! Look how they were born!
      They could never bring delight to eyes of mine.
      Nor could the city or its massive walls,
      or the sacred images of its gods.
      I am the most abhorred of men, I,
      the finest one of all those bred in Thebes,                                           [1380]
      I have condemned myself, telling everyone                               1630
      they had to banish for impiety
      the man the gods have now exposed
      as sacrilegious—a son of Laius, too.
      With such polluting stains upon me,
      could I set eyes on you and hold your gaze?
      No. And if I could somehow block my ears
      and kill my hearing, I would not hold back.
      I’d make a dungeon of this wretched body,
      so I would never see or hear again.

In Oedipus we can learn both the lessons of hearing and sightedness, that these are not just material body-acts, as we can learn about the will to Hear and the will to See.

There are many other wonderful stories of old that hinge on the idea of sightedness and blindness—the Greeks loved the point-counterpoint play between light and dark. There is, for example, Sophocles’ rendition of Ajax, the great young hero who fights with the Greeks in the war against Troy. For reasons that Odysseus seeks to discover, Ajax has slaughtered all the flocks of captured beasts of the Greeks, as well as the guards who were watching over them—surely an act of folly. And Odysseus discovers, in a conversation with Athena, that

ATHENA
             I threw down into his eyes
      an overwhelming sense of murderous joy
      and turned his rage against the sheep and cattle
      and those protecting them—the common herd
      which so far has not been divided up.*
      He launched his attack against those animals                      70
      and kept on chopping down and slaughtering
      the ones with horns by slicing through their spines,
      until they made a circle all around him.
      At one point he thought he was butchering
      both sons of Atreus—he had them in his hands.*
      Then he went at some other general
      and then another. As he charged around
      in his sick frenzy, I kept encouraging him,
      kept pushing him into those fatal nets.                                             [60]
      And then, when he took a rest from killing,                         80
      he tied up the sheep and cattle still alive
      and led them home, as if he had captured
      human prisoners and not just animals.
      Now he keeps them tied up in his hut
      and tortures them. I’ll let you see his madness—
      in plain view here—so you can witness it
      and then report to all the Argives.

Odysseus responds with compassion as he hears Athena describe how she brought upon Ajax a blinding madness in payment for his arrogance to the Gods, his impiety.

ODYSSEUS
            […]

      All the same, although he despises me,
      I pity his misfortune under that yoke
      of catastrophic madness. It makes me think                         160
      not just of his fate but my own as well.
      I see that in our lives we are no more
      than phantoms, insubstantial shadows.

This type of deceptive blindness, which is sent from the gods, occurs quite frequently in the Greek world, and is certainly already apparent and common in Homer (Iliad, Bk. 5).

As Diomedes prayed, Pallas Athena heard.
She put fresh strength into his legs and upper arms.                                140
Standing close by, she spoke. Her words had wings.

“Take courage, Diomedes, in this fight with Trojans.
I’ve put your father’s strength into your chest,
that shield-bearing horseman’s fearless power.
And I’ve removed the filter from your eyes
which covered them before, so now,
you’ll easily distinguish gods from men.
If a god comes here and stands against you,
don’t offer to fight any deathless one,                                                         [130]
except for Aphrodite, Zeus’ daughter.                                                         [150]
If she fights, cut her with your sharp bronze.”

Similarly, in the Prometheus Bound Aeschylus has the Chorus respond to Prometheus' boast that he has helped mortal men by stealing the abiding fire from Zeus and giving it to desperate humans:

[545] Come, my friend, […] Tell me, what kind of help is there in creatures of a day? What aid? Did you not see the helpless infirmity, no better than a dream, in which the blind generation of men is shackled? Never shall the counsels of mortal men transgress the ordering of Zeus.

Illustrations of this blinding phenomenon abound. So, let him with ears, hear, and eyes, see.

(Original essay reprised and reworked from Phrontisterion, January 2014)