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AVINOAM SHALEM
AMAZEMENT: THE SUSPENDED MOMENT OF THE GAZE
We find ourselves yet again in the situation of the alienating detected in other cities, including Jerusalem and Paris. choice. Let’s give it a radical, if not exaggerated formulation: The Jerusalem experience, which mainly involves delu- to know without seeing or to see without knowing. sions of a spiritual nature and seems to cross religious —George Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images boundaries, appearing in Jewish, Christian, as well as Muslim travelers to the city, was detected by several Is- On January 22, 1817, Marie-Henri Beyle, better known as raeli psychiatrists and could be called, in analogy to the Stendhal, described his peculiar and unexpected aes- Florentine Stendhal Syndrome, the Felix Fabri Syn- thetic experience in the city of Florence: “As I emerged drome.¸ The second one, the Paris Syndrome, seems to from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a ¨©erce a°²³ict mainly Japanese tourists.¹ palpitation of the heart (that same symptom which, in The gaze is undoubtedly something that transcends Berlin, is referred to as an attack of the nerves); the well- the biological realm of optics and de¨©es investigations spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in of purely physical matters. It a°fects one’s body and constant fear of falling to the ground.”¯ mind and in²³uences one’s behavior and, indeed, one’s This feeling of being dizzy, of tottering and almost way of thinking. The best example perhaps of the strong fainting while gazing at the beauty of Florentine master- e°fect that it can have on the body is o°fered by pornog- pieces, is recounted by numerous travelers to Florence, raphy, a visual phenomenon still largely neglected by especially those who visit the U°¨©zi. In 1979 the Italian most art historians.º psychiatrist Graziella Magherini diagnosed it as a spe- Powerful though it may sound, “the gaze” cannot be ci¨©c psychosomatic condition that tends to a°²³ict tour- discussed in terms of a monolithic experience—as “The ists exposed for the ¨©rst time to the artistic riches of Gaze.” There are indeed a multitude of gazes, and the Florence, some of them requiring ambulatory treatment visual material attests to its variety rather than its homo- in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. In La Sindrome di geneity.» During the Middle Ages and in the Muslim Stendhal (1989), she describes these patients as so im- cultural sphere at least two distinct perceptual habits mersed in speci¨©c works of art, to the point of identify- have been identi¨©ed and discussed. As early as the elev- ing with one of the represented ¨©gures, that they lose enth century, Abu ʿAli al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan Ibn al- their ability to distinguish between reality and ¨©ction, Haytham (Alhazen, d. ca. 1040), in his famous book Kitāb truth and imagination. She calls this process “personal- al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics), distinguished between izing art.”µ Magherini associates her experiences with glancing and contemplating as two di°ferent modes of patients at the hospital with Stendhal’s autobiographi- perception.¿ Interest in visual perception at the court of cal account and says: “The Stendhal Syndrome occurs the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–61) may well most frequently in Florence, because we have the great- have been generated by the court’s chief physician Abu est concentration of Renaissance art in the world.”· But Zayd Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-ʿIbadi (d. 877), who wrote a beyond Magherini’s pride in the artistic wonders of her famous treatise on the eye. His discussion clearly dem- hometown of Florence, similar syndromes have been onstrates his particular interest in the ¨©rst stage of visual
An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World DOI: 10.1163/22118993-00321P02 ISSN 0732-2992 (print version) ISSN 2211-8993 (online version) MUQJ Muqarnas Online 32-1 (2015) 3-12 Ê ÇÈ É experience, which he classi¨©es as relating to the visual balance that exists between it and the Seen. This aspect spirit. Moreover, he obviously accords precedence to they wholly failed to understand. Similarly, annulment vision over the other senses, stating, “Its [the visual of the inward and invisible meaning is the opinion of the spirit] most important service and that which ranks ¨©rst Materialists [Hashawiyya].”¹ in power and magnitude lies in the function of vision.” This division goes hand-in-hand with the aesthetic And with regard to the visual spirit he adds, “This spirit concept in medieval Islam of the perceptible, visible, of the sensitive variety, as vision is unique among the and manifested (ẓāhir), as opposed to the inner, hidden, senses, the noblest of them and the most superior in invisible, and even esoteric (bāṭin). Ẓāhir and bāṭin in quality.”¯ Interestingly, Hunayn ibn Ishaq compares the Islam are usually associated with philosophical theories various human senses to the cosmic elements, claiming of metaphysics and in particular with the idea of the that vision is ¨©ery and luminous, hearing is air-like, taste sublime beauty of God. But according to al-Ghazali is water-like, touch is earth-like, and the sense of smell these terms also apply to the human perception of the is vapor-like.µ visible world, for he says, “Prophets used to see concrete Drawing on classical writings related to mathemati- objects, and have immediate vision of the spiritual ideas cal optics or physiology, Ibn al-Haytham was able to behind them.”º particularize the entire mental activity associated with A case in point is al-Ghazali’s interpretation of the seeing, assigning central importance to the eye and the Light Sura (sura 24:35) in the Koran, which indicates a brain in processing visual knowledge gathered through desire to build a bridge between ẓāhir and the bāṭin, emitted rays of light. In distinguishing between glancing between light as a phenomenal entity and the idea of and contemplative perception, he states that while the God as an absolute concept. Moreover, a careful reading former is not yet an ascertained perception—although of this verse reveals that al-Ghazali suggests classifying he does concede that it requires previous knowledge of the idea of perceiving light—that is, knowledge—into the perceived object—the second is the result of a con- several hierarchically organized categories that range clusive, extended operation and gained through the use from a phenomenological level to a spiritual and mystical of judgmental faculties.· Ibn al-Haytham’s theory of the level. His ideas on how we acquire knowledge and wis- gaze is indeed to be understood as a major improve- dom are thus fundamentally about the human processing ment on classical treatises on optics, as it conceives of of sensuous information and making meaning. Symbo- the perceived image as something occurring also inside lically interpreting the di°ferent components of the the mind. This understanding links his ideas to the psy- parable of the Light Sura as referring to the ¨©ve hierar- chology of vision and the ways in which objects and chically organized levels of the human spirit, he ex- signs are recognized.¸ Ibn al-Haytham may thus be re- plains: the ¨©rst, the sensory spirit (al-rūḥ al-ḥassās), is garded as a medieval “Panofsky” in the history of the symbolized by the niche; the second, the imaginative visual. spirit (al-rūḥ al-khayālī), by the glass; the third, the intel- Much interested in the phenomenon and idea of light lectual spirit (al-rūḥ al-ʿaqlī), by the lamp; the fourth, the (nūr) and the human ability to gain divine knowledge, discursive spirit (al-rūḥ al-krī), by the tree; and the Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. ¨©fth, the most highly sacred prophetic spirit (al-rūḥ al- 1111) proposed an understanding of vision that is also qudsī al-nabawī), by the oil.» Al-Ghazali’s division of the based on a clear dichotomy of outer and inner eye. He human process of acquiring knowledge into ¨©ve di°fer- posits two worlds, a materialist one and a spiritualist ent stages obviously expands the entire act of gazing one, and explains that a balance between the two is re- and understanding the data gathered from the phenom- quired. In his treatise on the permanent validity of the enal world. The sensory spirit is, according to him, “the outward and visible sign he states: “The annulment of recipient of the information brought by the senses,”¿ the outward and visible sign is the tenet of the Spiritual- and “its [the phenomenal world’s] lights, you observe, ists [Batinniyya], who looked, utterly one-sidedly, at one come through several apertures, the eye, ears, nostrils, world, the Unseen, and were grossly ignorant of the etc.”¯Â The imaginative spirit is the recorder of the