The Black Mirror of the Pupil of the Eye

The present article traces the symbols of the eye (Greek: κόρη [maiden, concubine, pupil of the eye]; Latin: pūpilla; Hebrew: īshōn bath ʿāyin ('apple of the eye' or the 'pupil of the eye' [lit. 'daughter of an eye'], i.e., the feminine divine Presence [Shĕkhīnāh]); Arabic: ʿayn; Persian: chashm) and the black pupil of the eye (Arabic: insān al-ʿayn; Persian: mardum-i chashm) in Sufism, both-in the context of Andalusian Sufism, specifically in Ibn al-ʿArabī's poem entitled 'I saw a Girl...', in whose dark pupil or abyssal blackness (Arabic: ḥawar; Hebrew: īshōn), pleasure of the gaze (naẓar) and repository of the secret (sirr), resides the Beloved-as in the medieval Persian gnosis of the followers of al-Sahykh al-Akbar-Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī and Maḥmūd Shabistarī-, and the mystical poet Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī. Ibn al-ʿArabī and Shabistarī have had an explicit influence on the work of the reputed American video artist Bill Viola (Queens, New York, 1951), specifically in his two video/sound installations-He Weeps for You (1976) and I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986), in which the common image of the mirror pupil of the eye summarizes the entire ancient Neoplatonic conception of the θεωρία (contemplatio, speculatio

Arabic · Art · Hebrew · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Mysticism · Pupil · Sufism · Theology · Byzantine Studies and History · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy · Psychology

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