The Delight of Knowing
Telling people about the meaning was a delightful experience for both sender and receiver.
Again from The Mental Life of Modernism. There are several things to notice in this quote: (1) People pass by this "puzzle" for months or even years without caring about it. (2) The observer's prior knowledge allowed him to decipher the sculpture’s meaning. (3) Once he (thought he) figured it out, only then was he motivated to learn more. (4) Telling people about the meaning was a delightful experience for both sender and receiver. (5) You will feel the same delight when you read the last sentence of this post (after reading all the other sentences). (6) He still had to check with the sculptor to validate his interpretation.
I was listening to Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past while I gazed idly at a nearby sculpture by the renowned American sculptor John Safer.
Although I had sat next to this sculpture day after day for several months, I never saw it as anything other than three abstract shapes—blobs, if you will. This particular morning, out of the blue, I realized that the upward-arcing forward edge of the blob on the right resembled a medieval executioner's ax. Suddenly, the entire sculpture snapped into focus. The middle shape was an executioner's block; the shape to the left, an executioner's masking headgear. That was an aha moment if ever there was one. The sculpture had been a problem and I had solved it to my immense pleasure. My excitement was palpable. Only then did I think to see if the sculpture was titled. Indeed, it was. On one corner of the platform, a plaque bore the word Judgment.
For a time I was like the Ancient Mariner, "who stoppeth one of three." I would ask passersby if they had ever lingered long enough to actually look at that sculpture. One woman, who worked in a nearby building, told me she had passed it for 11 years. She had no idea what it was. She was delighted to know. I did that on several occasions until I realized that maybe I was becoming a nuisance. That was the measure of my joy at having solved the problem of Judgment.
At my wife's suggestion, I wrote to a gallery that represented Mr. Safer, describing my experience and asking if my interpretation was correct. Much to my surprise, John responded personally. He said that I was absolutely correct and that the intent of the sculpture, originally given to the Harvard Law School by John's class, was to show that the law is a weapon as well as a shield and that lawyers should never forget that.
