Roughness, slime and mistiness

Meaning

The starting body is described through a tightly grouped visual and tactile vocabulary: earthly and heavy, rough, tenacious, slimy, and mistily watery. These qualities explain the contrast with a later, more delightful and penetrating condition. They do not identify a particular mineral, ore, or bodily fluid. The phrase translated “mistily watery” is especially descriptive rather than classificatory. The accompanying dark shadow belongs to the same account of obscured inward qualities, so the passage concerns what is to become manifest as well as what is to be removed.