The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition: San Francisco, 1915Williams, Cora Lenore
Philosophy
The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition: San Francisco, 1915
Williams, Cora Lenore
Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
You visit again the galleries of the New Art, not to scoff, but in
earnest desire for enlightenment as to this thing which is so near to
consciousness and yet so far. You find yourself exclaiming:
'Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer!'
As you gaze at the portrayal so strangely weird in form and color you
ask yourself where have I felt that, seen this, before? Immediately you
are transported in memory to the midst of a crowded street. In the mad
bustle and noise you are conscious only of mechanical power; of speed -
always of speed. Your voice far away - 'The child, oh, the child!' A
swooning sensation. Men's faces as triangles and horses with countless
legs. The chaos of primal forces about youthen darkness.
As the past fuses with the present you awaken to a larger privilege of
life than man now knows. You feel yourself encompassed by truth, vital
and strong. This art, erstwhile so baffling, stands revealed as the
struggle of a superhuman entity for self-expression. The tendency toward
God has to begin anew with each round of the life-spiral - that eternal
circle which life pursues.
Now you find yourself in the Court of the Universe. Bands of
many-colored light, the white radiance of eternity, stream athwart the
sky. The illumination is of the wonder that now is. How marvelously
strange the sight of the world-consciousness passing over into a higher
thought-form! Each individual element suffering reversal to take its
proper place in the new world-order! You see positive becoming negative,
negative becoming positive, and Evolution giving place to Involution - a
process as yet uncomprehended by our narrow thought. And the secret of
the world-struggle across the sea you know; men passing their nature's
bound; new hopes and loyalties supplanting old ties and joys; the
established creeds of right and wrong as they vanish in this
immeasurable thirst for an unknown good. All these things you know to be
the travail of the world as it gives birth to some higher entity than
individual man.
'Time is past,' and as you speak a dove settles to rest upon a pediment.
Therewith you are carried away in the spirit to a great and high
mountain and you behold a new heaven and a new earth; for the first
heaven and the first earth are passed away. You see the holy city coming
down out of heaven - her light is like unto a stone most precious, as it
were a jasper stone, clear as crystal, and the walls thereof are adorned
with all manner of precious stones - and they brought the glory and the
honor of the nations into it.
Creative Evolution
(After Bergson)
Out of a sense of immediacy
Comes an intuition of things forming.
Pressed up by the vital urge,
Mind meets matter and matter mind
In mutual understanding.
That which apprehends, since by the object shaped,
A fitting instrument is for what itself has wrought.
From the same stuff,
Cut by an identical process,
Thing and intellect to congruence come,
In a space-world forever unfolding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account