
“Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Context: Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light. Primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. And derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. A primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall.
“Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.”
“Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.”
The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)
Context: Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark
That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.
Context: Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark
That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.
How should you walk in that space and know
Nothing of the madness of space,
Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand
Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.
Section 1 : The Meaning of Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond.
We are here — no matter who put us here, or how we came here — to fulfil a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged.
“Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Context: Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. Shadow is of the nature of darkness. Light is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade