‘Negative’ Epiphany

Abstract

The instances of epiphany given in the last chapter — instances, that is, of the manifestation of the supernatural in or through the natural world — are either directly paradisiac or Edenic (as de la Mare asserts), or at least assimilable to a vision of Paradise — a ‘small paradise’ of primeval, mythic freshness and beauty. This type of epiphany could be called an ‘affirmative’ epiphany, since it opens up a world in which things are affirmed as supernaturally valuable or meaningful, and in turn the Spirit — the infinite and eternal — is affirmed through the details of the natural world. But there is another type of epiphany — in which natural details are the vehicle for a glimpse into a terrible emptiness and dread, which similarly involves transcendence of any given thing in this world (in this case, issuing in negation); and if certain examples provide only a faint glimpse of this ‘negativity’, others disclose it with chilling power.