Friday 17 July 2009

In the Dark

So I get home last night about 9, storm brewing outside, first patters of rain. I compile a couple of pizzas and am about to put them in the (electric) oven when suddenly - flash of lightning, whump, power gone, in the dark. Yes, a power cut, and it lasted two and a half hours (an improvement on the one last year that lasted a whole day). Not having any serious candles about the place, I was reduced to lighting decorative ones and tea lights and whatever else might give a light... A power cut brings several things home to you. One is our utter craven dependence on electricity, and how completely we take it for granted. Another is the beauty of the soft glow of candlelight in comparison to harsh incandescent light. And another - perhaps the most surprising and primally affecting to us spoilt, overlit urbanites - is the sheer overwhelming power of darkness, how suddenly and completely it invades. This great poem by Edward Thomas says it all about that power - and much else.

17 comments:

  1. When I'm in one of my more materialist moods, I often wonder whether the modern general decline in religious sensibility (and of good poetry) can be attributed, not to clever biologists and philosophers, but to the raw, intrusive glare of overhead incandescent lighting. Also central heating/air conditioning and antibiotics. Boons they all may be, but they have wrenched us away from the symmetries of life that used to inform many of our religious instincts.

    Think of a small child who cannot fall asleep in his dark bedroom because he is afraid of the monsters around him. In comes his modern mother who, like a loving Dawkins, throws on the light and says: "See Johnny, nothing there." As with many of our modern technological wonders, this calms the little one down and gives him a sense of security. For a time.

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  2. Yes indeed Peter - I think there's a lot in that. The human world feels deeply, radically different without electric light...

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  3. Don't worry, soon we'll all be plunged back into the darkness when we're forced to use energy-efficient bulbs.

    Power cuts seemed to happen all the time when I was a kid, so we were geared up for them. Candles everywhere, great fun. For a few hours, then they become a massive pain in the arse and you realise how rubbish, and necessarily drunken, winter evenings must have been in the olde days.

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  4. I love candlelight too. And I think many a baby was begot that way... People sure look a lot more attractive in candlelight! On the other hand, untended candles were a regular cause of burn-down-the-house fires back in the day. And if you've ever tried to read by one -- as Abe Lincoln is famous for in our country -- you'll realize how inefficient the light is they give for anything beyond eating and loving.

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  5. Brit, please don't disrupt my nostalgic traditionalist fantasies. Drunken? I thought the kids would gather at the feet of their parents every night to help mother spin wool while father told endless riveting stories about the herosim of their ancestors. Either that or everybody just blogged.

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  6. to Susan; Have you tried to read a book published 1890ish by candlelight. They really did look to that issue. The type lifts. Nowadays the entire page is pushed away, and sorta heels in on itself.

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  7. "Twilight, the gradual softening of the day into darkness is surely the gentlest, most natural way to prepare for sleep. And yet it is a pleasure we deny ourselves with the switch on the bedside lamp. Even the guttering of a candle or the afterglow of a paraffin lantern is less abrupt. A couple of generations ago most country people went to bed when it was dark, at least in summertime. And so we miss the time of darkling shades in which our pupils dilate by slow degrees and dreams drift in as, wide-eyed, we enter the rook-black night."

    Roger Deakin, in Wildwood. He also quotes Thoreau: "Electricity kills darkness, candlelight illuminates it".

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  8. Oh yes - Thoreau bang on the button again. Thanks Jonathan - and Vince, that's a very interesting insight. Maybe it's do do with hot metal printing and paper texture...

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  9. I used to love that about sailing at night. Just you, the dim glow of the binnacle, dark restless water and the immensity of the sky. And every pop and splash a spectral hand slithering up the side of the boat ...

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  10. yes Nige, but they cast the card for the expected light.

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  11. What a wonderful world, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo X1 moon launch and the powers in charge still can't maintain a constant supply of megawatties. For peace of mind...
    1/ backup generator
    2/ large supply of candles
    3/ coal fires or woodburning stoves
    4/ very large oil tank, at least 2500 litres
    5/ adequate supply of Bowmore or
    Bruichladdich.
    Therein lies salvation, here endeth the first lesson.
    Longest period without, about 12 years ago, 6 days, made no neverminds.

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  12. The Venerable Bede
    Ecclesiastical History, Book II

    "Such," he said, "O King, seems to me the present life of men on earth, in comparison with that time which to us is uncertain, as if when on a winter's night you sit feasting with your earldormen and brumali --- and a simple sparrow should fly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter; but yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from winter going into winter again, it is lost to our eyes."

    "Somewhat like this appears the life of man --- but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant."

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  13. Nige, I posted a link under your 'Stroke of Luck' post to a lecture transcript that may be of interest. Not sure you would notice it, on reflection.

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  14. Gaw, I opened that link and it took me to a YouTube item called Noseybonk Returns: The Fridge. Whatever that was, it wasn't Stone!

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  15. Professor Noseybonk Stone? Aargh.

    Brit, what have you done? I don't think people should mess with things like this - you never know what you might let loose. Aren't you familiar with the basic set up plot of movies in the horror genre?

    Here's the right link (I hope):

    http://www.herwigseitz.com/otw/index.php/g/a/78

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  16. Ah got it! Thanks Gaw - punchy stuff - excellent.

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