DAILY PHOTO: Viru Gate in Light & Shadow, Tallinn
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Tag Archives: Shadow
Dancing Shadows[Haiku]
a barren tree
paints dancing shadows
on the sandy canyon.
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DAILY PHOTO: Anker Palota in the Light & Shadow of a Winter Afternoon
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Stalking Tiger [Free Verse]
A giant tiger stalks,
baring teeth, tensing claws,
closing the distance
in deep shadows that exist
entirely within the man's mind.
While others, from safe distances,
can see the fearsome beast clearly.
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Five Wise Lines from In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
Have you never felt a sort of fear in the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and gray?
But our thoughts do not travel to what we cannot see. The unseen for us does not exist.
This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.
I wonder if my readers know the color of that ‘darkness seen by candlelight.’ It was different in quality from darkness on the road at night. It was a repletion, a pregnancy of tiny particles like fire ashes, each particle luminous as a rainbow.
Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of light and shadow.
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BOOKS: In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō TanizakiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Tanizaki’s essay on Japanese aesthetics doesn’t just show the reader the simple, rustic, and weathered traits of Japanese beauty, it fully submerges them in an otherworldly place ruled by different principles of seeing. So enamored with this pre-modern Japanese aesthetic was Tanizaki that we are convinced he would give up all present-day conveniences to see the world this way (but, alas, he recognizes the impossibility of maintaining a household or business in today’s world that way.)
While the book is principally a tour of this Japanese shadow world, moving from architecture to toilets to lacquerware to Noh plays to skin tones to hotels (with other stops along the way,) it is also a critique of modernity, and particularly a modernity shaped by the West by virtue of Western countries building a lead in a number of key technologies. The most crucial of these technologies, and the one Tanizaki most decries, is electric lighting, which does away with the artistic beauty that derives from the interplay of varied toned shadows (and occasionally a little bit of light.) [I should say, he’s not bashing the Western technology or ways, but rather how poorly they work with maintaining Japanese aesthetic ways.]
I’d highly recommend this book for all readers. If you’re interested in aesthetics, art, architecture, culture, or “things Japanese,” then all the more so, but I can’t remember the last time description pulled me into a book as hard as this one. The essay can be a bit rambling and shifts from euphoria to rant and back, rapidly, but that is part of its magic.
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DAILY PHOTO: Light & Shadow on a Midwinter Afternoon
Drinking Alone by Moonlight by Li Bai [w/ Audio]
A pot of wine, under blossoms. I drink alone, no friends in sight. I raise a cup to lustrous Moon: Me, Moon, and Shadow will make three. But Moon is a teetotaler. And Shadow just skulks at my feet. Still, Moon & Shadow are my chums. We need a bash before Spring's end. But my singing makes Moon recoil. And Shadow flops hard when I dance. At first, we have a grand old time, But we part ways when I drift off. We should keep this epic friendship rolling, and meet again in the River of Stars.
NOTE: I produced this “translation” / arrangement, using translations by Arthur Waley, Ezra Pound, and that of “The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry” [ed. by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping] to get varied takes on the source poem.
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Shadow Valley [Haiku]
from valley shadow, the sun-warmed mountain glows more brightly.
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Shape Shift [Haiku]
in waning sunlight, the shapes of shadows shift as boats drift.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 