Design for Darkness

IF there had been any particular cause, such as a severe illness or an accident., my loss of sight would not have been such a direct blow of fate. There are plenty of stories of heroic acceptance of approaching blindness, especially among people who will always have the comfort of writing as a vocation and as an avocation, — Milton and Prescott wore both prolific without their sight, — but it came to me like a sudden plunge into a deep, dark abyss and has caused a similar loss of footing. The course of events has been as orderly as the acts in a well-constructed play: a cold in the face that involved the optic nerve, a sudden blindness of one eye, the sympat hetic weakness of the other eye; a kindly oculist with his dictum that in six months the scars on the cornea might heal, if given complete rest. And there I am, robbed of my work, my profession, my great joy in life! Like Orpheus crying for Eurydice, I mourn not for a lost love, but for a lost vision.

From four to ten books a week has been my reading rations for a good many years. They come to my door in a continuous stream, to be piled on the desk, perused, and docketed. Literally they have made a world for me. And in this world, indifferent to outdoor life, to society, to domestic activities, books and the people who write them have made a perfect circle. Outside it I have not cared to step.

If there is such a thing as punishment for those who view life in the wrong perspective, if there is a justice which evens up deficiencies, here is an example of its working! After all the happy and exciting years of reading voraciously, and writing with equal enthusiasm, I am bereft. The world stretches before me a dreary place with most of its activities closed for me. And, worst of all hardships, I must look at things not with a view to seeing them clearly, but with a view to saving my eyes, being careful of too strong a light, of sudden heat or cold, of any of the natural phenomena, in fact, that we take for granted. The life of external interests is definitely closed, its most engrossing occupations put in the discard. How, then, does one adjust oneself to such a change?

I look back into the past, and see that a book has not meant to me something to be delicately savored, but has been a glorious adventure to be accepted or neglected, its possibilities analyzed as a chemist analyzes a liquid. My object in reading has not been to pass the time, but rather to discover the exact status of a writer and his work. My only disappointment in this has been when I have met mediocrity.

Anyone who has that ineffable joy in life, a taste for reading, will know my state of mind when, like a man marooned on a desert island, I await the return of the rescue ship. I think of my friends, — critics, authors, librarians, — a host of finely prejudiced men and women whose scheme of life is built on books, and wonder what their reactions would be to the terrible deprivation that a loss of sight involves. I wonder, in fact, whether I shall be able to retain my reason in case this loss is ultimate, I wonder a hundred different things, all of them induced by terror, fright, and despair. I feel like a haunted character in one of O’Neill’s plays, seeking through eternity for that faculty which I most need.

Suddenly, in the midst of my recognition of possible blindness, an undreamed-of peace descends upon me, a feeling of a new life that is outside the life of the senses. For the nearness of the trees, I have not been able to see the forest. It is strange that there should be a myopic point of view when the love of an art is the basis of its cultivation. But just as a child assumes greater importance in the eyes of his parents than a stranger understands, so a beloved vocation becomes the spoiled and petted infant of the imagination. After all, it is the personality behind a book which makes the content and the style of a book. Why not, then, find the same happiness in people as in their stories? Amazing thought! I set about cultivating my friends, and I discover lovable, comical, hateful qualities in persons who had always seemed quite commonplace. Not just the Dickens characters appeal to me, but I pigeonhole men and women as Margaret Ayer Barnes, or Pearl Buck, or Ruth Suckow, or Josephine Herbst, or Virginia Woolf, or Vera Brittain has seen them. And I suddenly discover how comprehensive the types are which these modern writers have given us. For the first time in my life my family, my friends, and my enemies become as interesting as my library.

‘Work with your hands,’ the doctor said. And suddenly there is an unsuspected pleasure to be derived from plain and homely household duties which have seemed completely drab heretofore. The routine of a home can be a fascinating performance. I no longer take for granted the multifarious duties that crowd down on my small household, but take part in some of their performance, dim though that part may be. Strange that I had never realized the joy that comes with the performance of a manual task, if it be done with leisure, savoring to the fullest its place in the scheme of domestic arrangements! I look at my hands — I see them only in outline — and I direct them to linger over linen shelves and to rearrange closets and to wash china. Things feel good in my hands, and I try to remember whether such a wellspring of joy ever arose in me before; and suddenly I recognize this feeling of happiness as the same warm glow I have experienced on discovering the work, say, of some new poet, or a promising first novel, or maybe a biography that gives a new slant on a character. The memory of these tasks well done lingers with me throughout the day. I have lost my eyes, but I have found my hands.

Outside, the world seems dim and hazy, because I have always looked fearlessly on its sun-flecked or snowcovered roads; and I wonder, as I traverse the barely discernible streets, whether walking is going to be the fun it used to be. And suddenly I feel a cold rush of air on my face, and, as I turn the corner, a softer breath, and I realize that never before have I known the winds. I’ve thought of winds as they tore leaves from trees or whistled down the chimney; I’ve felt them as I’ve fought off cold or sweated beneath heat. But the varying degrees of a wind as it plays about my head I have never known before. It’s fun to walk now with the wind for company, feeling first its chill and then its warmth, and the streets of my little town become like the moors in a Hardy novel.

And my dogs, who seem to know that something strange and unforeseen has happened to me, cling close to my side. The big fellow bounds off into the snow for a moment and hurries back to see if all goes well, and the little one, that stalwart Scotchman whose mind is always on squirrels and the joyous possibilities of catching them, trots along ahead of me, eyes front. He has decided to be my guide, and, with thrifty Scotch precision, takes no more steps with his short legs than are necessary. The German mastiff, on the other hand, is my protector, and he circles about me sniffing the air with a nose that is alive for possible enemies. It is pleasant, they both seem to say, that she has decided on these morning and afternoon walks; better see to it that nothing happens to her.

There are sounds in the air, all about us, that I have never heard before. Not only the occasional notes of squirrels and sparrows that fill the winter scene, but strange soft noises that come from trees and bushes and even houses. In the night the creakings of the branches of the trees and the responses of the softly settling house are my companions, as I lie thinking of the hundreds and hundreds of books I have read while lying there with the soft rays of my night light coming over my shoulder. A squirrel scampers across the window ledge, a water spout creaks with its burden of snow or ice, trees groan gently and companionably, and in the distance a dog barks. Cars speed by on the boulevard, but their sounds I do not hear, for I have always heard them. It is the overtones that come to my ears, soft murmurs of mingled voices, the silky rustling of tree tops, the distant low hum of the great city that lies miles away. Maybe that strange whirring which is so close at hand is my garden awakening to life. And I remember that in a few weeks spring will be here, and it comes to me with a start that never before have I cared for my garden, because I always let someone else do the pruning and the planting. Now my garden must be to me as books once were, something to investigate and learn from its original sources. Beverley Nichols and Cecil Roberts found the joy of growing things in the midst of other activities, so why not I?

I listen once more to the stirrings of the earth, and I feel myself a part of the rhythm of a life which I have never known before. I sink deep into its gentle, pulsing melody. And I know that, as I am part of the earth, so also am I part of the stars in their infinite circuits of light — did I not read some new Jeans book just before this blackness descended upon me? The depths and the heights of living are clear to me, who cannot see, for I am no longer diverted by quick impressions outside me. I live now on those gentle, low, insistent sounds that come from undreamed-of places. And suddenly out of my blindness I realize that for the first time in my life I really see.

A sight that is not of the eyes has been given me, and in my need and despair there is a comfort unsuspected in that other life. Can this be the faint beginnings of confident faith, and shall the Unseen one day be seen?