A DIALOGUE WITH W. H. AUDEN
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encyclopedia the biologic evolution of the eye, how it started as local
receptivity to light. Through generations, that developed into pig–
ment-patches growing responsive to white light, to blue, etc. And
gradually the stained skin differentiated into a clear lens on the
surface of a ball filled with crystalline jelly with on the back of its
interior the nerve. In the human embryo the eye appears first as
a line in the skin, then a fold, thence the instrument as we know it.
Animals have eyes that range from just local sensibility to light to
the complex, multi-faceted eye of the bee. In the evolution of the
senses, one can read the moral of the slowness, the patience, the up–
ward trend of nature.
A:
Perhaps. I am interested in the way a lost sense may be bal–
anced
.by
super-receptivity in another area. Milton was blind. J oyce
half-blind. Both evinced a greater grasp of auditory rather than visual
effects. Why do you think Homer is spoken of as blind?
I: To indicate symbolically that he lived above visual temptation.
It is, I think, a way of saying he was proof to the seductiveness of
outer beauty.
A:
Beethoven's case is instructive.-Practically all his life he was
open to spirituality. Why was it necessary to deprive him of hearing?
I:
As
a matter of fact, Beethoven was in danger of becoming
merely an excellent conductor. He needed his ear trouble; it grad–
ually turned him toward true creative work.
A:
An
interesting parallel can be drawn between the W. H.-Shake–
speare and the Alcibiades-Socrates relationship.
I: Except that Socrates did not try to control Alcibiades, to mold
him.
Alcibiades wished to be his pupil but Socrates saw in his friend
an
incapacity to master himself.
A:
Yes, this situation with W. H. seems to be the one thing
Shakespeare cannot be objective about. The plays as distinct from
the sonnets neatly illustrate the difference between
speaking
and
speaking out.
That people have found it needful to use the tautology
"speaking out" shows that speech instead of affording a medium
of communication has become- largely-a device of strategy and
evasion. Much conversation has fallen to the plane of the sales talk
or the newspaper paragraph. On the rare times when people try to
find words for what they feel, we say that they
speak out.
In the
