Thursday, March 18, 2021

bereft of wonder we never know anything ever

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Above
Roy R. Behrens, Wondering Eye (© 2021). Digital montage.

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Raphael Soyer (American painter, referring to his identical twin brother, the painter Moses Soyer) in Kathryn McLaughlin Abbe and Frances McLaughlin Gill, Twins on Twins (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1980), p. 53—

We looked exactly alike. People would greet me and say, “Hello, Moses,” and Moses would be greeted with “Hello, Raphael.” And I remember, a long time ago, I was walking along Fifth Avenue very briskly, and then I see Moses walking along too, and I was astounded. I mean, I didn't expect Moses to be there at that time. But it turned out to be myself, my reflection in the mirror, from far away.

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Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis (New York: Basic Books, 1959)—

Education and learning, while on the one hand furthering this process of discovery, on the other hand gradually brake and finally stop it completely. There are relatively few adults who are fortunate enough to have retained something of the child’s curiosity, his capacity for questioning and wondering. The average adult “knows all the answers,” which is exactly why he will never know even a single answer. He has ceased to wonder, to discover. He knows his way around, and it is indeed a way around and around the same conventional pattern, in which everything is familiar and nothing cause for wonder. It is this adult who answers the child’s questions and, in answering, fails to answer them but instead acquaints the child with the conventional patterns of his civilization, which effectively close up the asking mouth and shut the wondering eye.