4 - Luminous Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2020
Summary
Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of a child.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Nature’ (6)I cannot cause light; the most I can do is put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (33)sunflakes falling in the sea | Beyond the outer shore
Harry Crosby, ‘Néant’, in Chariot of the Sunin luce ambulemus
The First Epistle of St John the ApostleWe are fluid, luminous beings made of fibres.
Carlos Castaneda, quoted in A Thousand Plateaus (249)That light travels over the ground, that it pools – that there is a pool of luminescence which is very ephemeral, and which takes a relaxing of Western muscles in the eyes in order to be aware of. That light-streaks come down previous to rain – splitting the air – light-like phosphorescent streaks of … something! That I call light!
Stan Brakhage on The Text of Light (quoted in Wees 1992: 101)In the light of light is the virtù | ‘sunt lumina’ said Erigena Scotus |…| all things that are are light.
Ezra Pound, The Cantos (429)Years ago you said. Fundamentally, I am a matter of Light.
Giorgos Seferis, ‘On a Ray of Winter Light (quoted on Cy Twombly's Gaeta)’Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet. And, on the other hand, it moves in a certain fixed direction, drawing with it the planets and their satellites. The thread attaching it to the rest of the universe is doubtless very tenuous. Nevertheless it is along this thread that is transmitted down to the smallest particle of the world in which we live the duration immanent to the whole of the universe.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (10–11)AS I NOTED in my introduction, the line of light that can be drawn through Deleuze's work from his early readings of Lucretius, Nietzsche and Bergson, becomes more and more distinct from the end of the 1970s onwards.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Gilles Deleuze's Luminous Philosophy , pp. 169 - 216Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020