From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordA limner is a painter or delineator.
- In TraherneThe fifth Century imagines infinite space as a prepared painting surface.
- In this editionPencil must retain its older brush sense.
- A place to beginThe divine painting analogy assigns the Word to the pencil and makes the spectator an inhabitant and possessor.
Meaning
A limner is a painter or delineator. Pencil here means a painter’s brush, not the modern graphite writing instrument.
Use in the book
The fifth Century imagines infinite space as a prepared painting surface. Its scale answers the maker’s intention, and leaving it bare would suggest a failure of skill, material, or purpose. Traherne assigns distinct parts of painting to divine attributes: wisdom is the art, goodness the will, the Word the pencil, and beauty and power the colours.
The analogy ends by exceeding itself. Creatures are more real than painted shadows, and the spectator lives among the works as his own possessions. The world is therefore neither a flat representation nor a spectacle from which the observer remains excluded.
Places to read
- V.5The divine painting analogy assigns the Word to the pencil and makes the spectator an inhabitant and possessor.
In this edition
Pencil must retain its older brush sense. Table in the same passage is the prepared painting support, not household furniture.
Source note
Primary text: V.5.