Compare the wild, free paintings of the child with the stiff, pinched
"pictures" these become as the painter notices the painting and tries to
portray "reality" as others see it; self-conscious now, he steps out of
his own painting and, finding himself apart from things, notices the
silence all around and becomes alarmed by the vast signification of
Creation. The armour of the "I" begins to form, the construction and
desperate assertion of separate identity, the loneliness: "Man has
closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of
his cavern." William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
[...] memories would come on wings of light [...]
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1979), p47 (Harvill HarperCollins 1989)
