maelstrom

One night in 1945, on a Navy vessel in Pacific storm, my relief on bow watch, seasick, failed to appear, and I was alone for eight hours in a maelstrom of wind and water, noise and iron; again and again, waves crashed across the deck, until water, air, and iron became one. Overwhelmed, exhausted, all thought and emotion beaten out of me, I lost my sense of self, the heartbeat I heard was the heart of the world, I breathed with the mighty risings and declines of earth, and this evanescence seemed less frightening then exalting. Afterwards, there was a pain of loss - loss of what, I wondered, understanding nothing.
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1979), p48 (Harvill HarperCollins 1989)

'the armour of the I'

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)

light - the darker side of the sphere

She seemed to be falling asleep; so then he leaned over her and kissed her gently at the edge of her large mouth. Morena, he whispered, which is the word for dark one. Instantly the long bony arms flung about him an embrace which took his breath. She pressed their faces painfully together, her Indian cheekbones bruising his softer flesh. Scalding tears and the pressure of those gaunt arms broke finally all the way through the encrusted shell of his ego, which had never before been broken all the way through, and he was released. He was let out of the small but apparently rather light and comfortable room of his known self into a space that lacked the comfort of limits. He entered a space of bewildering dark and immensity, and yet not dark, of which light is really the darker side of the sphere. He was not at home in it. It gave him unbearable fright, and so he crawled back.
from: Rubio y Morena by Tennessee Williams, Hard Candy, p142 (New Directions Paperbook) 

Sie schien einzuschlafen, da beugte er sich über sie und küsste sie zart auf den Mund. Morena, flüsterte er, was die Dunkle heißt. Augenblicklich umschlangen ihn lange, knochige Arme zu einer Umarmung, die ihm die Luft nahm. Schmerzhaft presste sie ihre beiden Gesichter aneinander, und ihre indianischen Backenknochen zerdrückten fast seine zartere Haut. Heiße Tränen und der Druck der mageren Arme durchbohrten endgültig die harte Schale seines Ichs, die noch nie aufgebrochen worden war, und er war erlöst. Er war aus dem engen, aber anscheinend hellen und bequemen Gehäuse seines bewussten Ichs in einen Raum entlassen, welcher der Annehmlichkeit von Grenzen entbehrt. Er betrat eine Sphäre verwirrender Dunkelheit und Unendlichkeit, die dennoch nicht schwarz ist, weil Licht in Wirklichkeit die dunkle Seite des Weltraumes ist. Hier war er noch nicht zu Hause, empfand unerträgliche Furcht und wich zurück.
aus: Glasporträt eines Mädchens, S. 102/103 (Aufbau-Verlag Berlin und Weimar 1976), Deutsch von Paridam von  dem Knesebeck

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The picture of Dorian Gray by O. Wilde, first lines of preface