‘The
Magdalen Reading’ by Rogier van der Weyden, circa 1435-38.
“There
are layers of silence. Van der Weyden’s Magdalen is deeply silent, but she is
reading. Her mind is active, and willed into activity. This, then, is a
mitigated silence, since we are only receptive to the thoughts of what we are
reading. The Magdalen is obviously reading the scriptures, and meditating on
what she reads, but her silence can only be between passages of reading and
will be concerned with those passages. If we do not read with intervals of
silent reflection, we will understand only in part what we read. This is a
fractured silence, good but imperfect. We all need to read, to keep our spirit
alert, to have an inner texture, as it were, that can respond to the absolutes of
pure soundlessness, but this chosen, meditative layer, is the least
significant.”
Wendy Beckett, in ‘Sister Wendy’s book of meditations’, Dorling Kindersley, 1998, pages 22-23.
No comments:
Post a Comment