The Eyes
Poet Michael Symmons Roberts reflects on the importance of sight, both metaphorically and spiritually, as we glimpse the brightness of heaven and the darkness of night.
The poet Michael Symmons Roberts reflects on the importance of sight. Eyes "seem so vulnerable, so exposed, yet so central to the way most of us receive and interact with the world around us," he observes as he explores the deep metaphorical associations of vision and blindness, light and darkness, with truth and ignorance, good and evil.
Many great writers and thinkers have lost their sight and used their blindness to provide fresh insights on faith and God. Roberts quotes the academic John Hull, who went blind in middle age: "God is indifferent alike to both light and darkness. He does not need the light in order to know and the darkness cannot prevent him from knowing".
We also hear the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, who practised "Custody of the Eyes", keeping his gaze fixed on the ground for months on end, in order to deepen his appreciation and understanding of the world and the gift of sight.
Music from Shostakovich, Handel and Etta James helps Michael contrast physical and inner sight, and he goes on to discuss forms of technological seeing that bypass the human eye entirely.
Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Last on
Music Played
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Michael Tippett
The Windhover
Performer: BBC Singers.![]()
John Rutter
I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes
Performer: The Cambridge Singers.![]()
George Frideric Handel
Messiah, Hwv 56/Part 1 - The People That Walked In Darkness
Performer: London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Fact Sheet
Readings
Title: Paradise Lost
Author: John Milton
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Title: Scales Taken From The Eyes (Sermon No. 3205)
Author: CH Spurgeon
Publisher: Delmarva Publications
Title: Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness
Author: John Hull
Publisher: SPCK Classics
Title: The Windhover
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Title: The Fish
Author: Elizabeth Bishop
Publisher: Macmillan
Title: The Vision Machine
Author: Paul Virilio
Publisher: British Film Institute
Title: How Forensic Scientists Once Tried To 'See' a Dead Person's Last Sight
Author: Marissa Fessenden
Publisher: Smithsonian Magazine
Title: On Photography
Author: Susan Sontag
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Title: They Are All Gone In To The World Of Light!
Author: Henry Vaughan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Broadcasts
- Sun 4 Feb 201806:05BBC Radio 4
- Sun 4 Feb 201823:30BBC Radio 4
