Shadow

Use in the book

Porphyry interprets the poetic limits of the earth through the extent of its shadow, invoking mathematical astronomers who associate night with the earth’s shadow reaching the moon. The physical image supports his reading of a poetic destination. Its interpretive role should remain distinct from a measured account of the shadow’s dimensions.

Places to read

1. I.49.61.3The earth’s shadow explains the poetic expression for the earth’s limits.

Translation in this edition

“Shadow” is direct; “shade” might obscure the cosmological extent intended.

Use in the book

The physical observation about grass values shade as protection against excessive exposure. Mathematics, by contrast, operates on shadows of realities: a line is the shadow of a stretched thread, a circle that of a hoop. The image explains selective abstraction from material things. Another aphorism distinguishes beings by their shadows and God by his light. These relations give shadow positive explanatory work even when it marks distance from fullness or origin.

Places to read

1. I, p. 38–39, entry 7, ¶1Shade preserves grass from excessive exposure.
2. I, p. 242, entry 8, ¶1Mathematical figures are shadows detached from realities.
3. I, p. 440, entry 4, ¶1Shadow distinguishes ordinary beings, light the divine.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses “shade” for the botanical setting and “shadow” for abstraction and the divine contrast. The repeated figures remain concrete rather than being replaced by the generic word representation.

Use in the book

The false life of socially manufactured values is a life among shadows. Its apparent goods fail to yield the substantial enjoyment they promise. Yet a shadow is not invariably evil: the psalmic shadow of divine wings names protective nearness.

At the Cross, visible flesh is called a shade or cloud because bodily eyes cannot by themselves reveal the inward excellence of Christ’s mind and love. Removing the flesh would not solve that problem: inward excellence must be apprehended by the corresponding inward power. The passage consequently uses shadow to mark a limitation of bodily vision, not to declare the body unreal. Elsewhere the likenesses produced by an artist are shadows beside the reality of God’s creatures.

Places to read

1. III.14Mistaken values leave the speaker living among shadows.
2. I.88Christ’s visible flesh conceals an inward glory requiring inward apprehension.
3. III.76The shadow of God’s wings provides an image of trust and shelter.
4. V.5Painted shadows are contrasted with the greater reality of divine works.

In this edition

The word’s negative force in III.14 must not be transferred to the sheltering biblical use in III.76. The edition’s visible deletions of “dreams” also caution against treating every nearby image as a single finalized formula.

Use in the book

Shade first offers shelter: fragile resolutions must be kept out of the exposed world and placed in the shade of retreat. In an actual wood, shadow gives depth its majesty, while intrusive sunlight can make that depth uncanny. Darkness is therefore not simply a deficiency waiting to be corrected by light.

At the coast it changes the balance of perception. As shadow thickens, land falls quiet and the ocean’s harmony enlarges; obscured distance can still let the observer sense infinity. What cannot be fully seen need not be absent or empty.

The image becomes more desolate when Guérin says he now projects only shadow and sees opaque, apparently dead forms. This is an account of interrupted imaginative contact, distinct from restful shade or fertile nocturnal obscurity. Writing itself can also be the shadow of passing imaginings, a mobile and partial trace rather than a lifeless residue. An attentive reading must keep these several relations to visibility apart.

Places to read

1. 13 August 1832 · ¶1The shade of retreat shelters resolutions too fragile for exposure
2. 19 March 1833 · ¶1Forest shadow is majestic; a flash of light can disturb it
3. 9 December 1833 · ¶3Deepening darkness strengthens the auditory encounter with the sea
4. 10 December 1834 · ¶3Projected shadow marks the loss of perceived vitality
5. 10 December 1834 · ¶4Cloud shadows provide an analogy for thoughts passing across paper

Translation in this edition

L’ombre s’épaississait becomes the darkness thickened in the main December translation, but shadow thickened in the 1861 translation. Both represent ombre; the English distinction is not evidence of a different French condition.