Mosaics

Byatt opens the novel with this quote: “These similitudes are charming and entertaining, and who does not enjoy playing with analogies?” (Goethe).  Why play with analogy? Why not use a direct comparison to relate similarities? Would this not be the most efficient use of words and time? The answer seems to always be a variation of: because art can contain greater truth than reality alone. Somehow, out of a mishmash conglomerate of lies, distorted experience, stolen ideas and facts we can derive “greater truth” as well as that enigmatic “essence”. How is this possible?

After our last class discussion and reading Bizz’s blog, I went back to look at the passage about mosaics. Nanson writes that the great makers raided previous art for tesserae to rework into new images, to catch “different light at different angles” and make “transparent what had been a brilliant reflective surface”. Mosaics then are a collection of thoughts and perceptions (both the maker and past makers’) rearranged—ordered—in a way that allows what had previously been reflected through the transparent finished piece. In other words, mosaics crafters seem to be employing a forced order through the use of glue and a hammer—to create greater meaning from random shards of glass. This passage reminded me of our discussions about imposing rather than discovering. All writing is essentially about the writer’s experience, just as a reader (especially in the initial stages of reading) finds it is easier to see connections to his own life before delving into the actual essence of the work. Maybe works of art always are constantly in transition from mirror mosaics to transparency, to make what was previously impenetrable with the face of our own image clear. That somehow, through the raiding of the “great makers” thoughts and careful gathering of perceptions, we can force order upon this chaos of gathered experience and derive a greater truth. However, as the line referring to “rage” in Key West suggests, we compromise something in the end. We destroy for order. To fit a mosaic into a new image, we must pull shards out of their original context, take the hammer and damage glass.  

However, seeing as how all glass’s form and substance is originally inspired by Nature and crafted from bits of melted sand, it’s pretty miraculous that it exists at all.