I have a reproduction of this painting pinned up in my room. It shows a peaceful English country scene at night. The glowing candlelit windows of a church and a distant house betray the presence of human life. Above the idyll the star-lit sky is illuminated by the brilliant streak of the Great Meteor of October 1868, a meteor as bright as the moon and, it is said, with a trail which hung around for several minutes. If you have ever seen a bright meteor you may at first be a little taken aback by the noiselessness of this celestial firework. Intrinsically, of course, meteor strikes are very violent affairs as are most events in the heavens. But for the distant and detached ground observer they are as ethereal and silent as a passing wraith.
The painting of the Great Meteor of 1868 will always remind me of Jonathan's Benison's learned commentary in my copy of H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" where Benison writes:
"Wells' time traveler .... has to learn to accept his limitations as a human being and to become perceptive to the cosmic perspective, the view of human reality that an impartial external judge might have"
Benison is commenting on the fact that in spite of the dire straights in which the Time Traveller found himself 800,000 years into the future he is not so distracted that he is unable wonder at the procession of the equinoxes and the changed star configurations of the constellations. The Traveller also notices a fossil megatharium he finds falling into decay in an abandoned museum. Both the stars and the fossil speak of the vastness of space and depths of time far greater than even the 800,000 years through which the Time Machine has taken the Traveller. It is reflections like this which Benison refers to as being perceptive to the the cosmic perspective.
The painting of the Great Meteor of 1868 will always remind me of Jonathan's Benison's learned commentary in my copy of H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" where Benison writes:
"Wells' time traveler .... has to learn to accept his limitations as a human being and to become perceptive to the cosmic perspective, the view of human reality that an impartial external judge might have"
Benison is commenting on the fact that in spite of the dire straights in which the Time Traveller found himself 800,000 years into the future he is not so distracted that he is unable wonder at the procession of the equinoxes and the changed star configurations of the constellations. The Traveller also notices a fossil megatharium he finds falling into decay in an abandoned museum. Both the stars and the fossil speak of the vastness of space and depths of time far greater than even the 800,000 years through which the Time Machine has taken the Traveller. It is reflections like this which Benison refers to as being perceptive to the the cosmic perspective.
The painting, which is by an unknown artist, juxtaposes the glow-worm like evidence of human life with the spectacular display of the 1868 meteor. In those Victorian days (The same days in which Wells was writing) people had started to understand the very physical nature of heavens; it no longer seemed to (wo)men to be a sacred stage specially prepared for the centrality of the Earth. As the Victorian Wells wrote:
"Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that this light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still."
Of course as a Christian that is not how I read science. Something of my reaction is recorded here and here, although I endeavour to understand the atheist's position: The incongruity of a tranquil and introverted English village scene set against a cosmic event with its potential for catastrophe may have appealed to the artist: I'm sure it would have appealed to Wells.
The primeval object shown entering the Earth's atmosphere was likely ending its long journey in space, a journey far longer in duration than the time traversed by HG Wells' Traveller. Here was an object which, after travelling for perhaps billions of Earth years and many light years, had just noiselessly dissolved into an ephemeral streak of light. Did the people behind those apparently safe cosily glowing windows care or even know?
"Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that this light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still."Of course as a Christian that is not how I read science. Something of my reaction is recorded here and here, although I endeavour to understand the atheist's position: The incongruity of a tranquil and introverted English village scene set against a cosmic event with its potential for catastrophe may have appealed to the artist: I'm sure it would have appealed to Wells.
The primeval object shown entering the Earth's atmosphere was likely ending its long journey in space, a journey far longer in duration than the time traversed by HG Wells' Traveller. Here was an object which, after travelling for perhaps billions of Earth years and many light years, had just noiselessly dissolved into an ephemeral streak of light. Did the people behind those apparently safe cosily glowing windows care or even know?
No comments:
Post a Comment