The Ever-Present Origin - Michael Goodnight - Editor

mathematician, translator of Euclid, co-worker with Pierodella Francesca,and friend of Leonardo - celebrated perspective as the eighth art; andwhen Antonio del Pollaiuolo built a memorial to perspective on one of hispapal tombs in St. Peters some ten years later (in the 1490s), he boldlyadded perspective as the eighth free art to the other seven.At the risk of exasperating many readers, we would venture to point outthat this supersession of the number seven, the heptaos, can beinterpreted as an indication of the symbolic conquest of the cavernous andvaulted heaven of unperspectivity. With the arrival of the eighth "art,"which can also be considered an eighth muse, the world of the ancientseven-planet heaven collapses; the "n-", the negation retained in thenight-sky [Nacht] of the unperspectival cavern gives way to the clarity anddiurnal brightness of the eight (acht), which lacks the negating "n". Theheptagonal cosmos of the ancients and its mystery religions are leftbehind, and man steps forth to integrate and concretize space.It is, of course, considered disreputable today to trace or uncover subtlelinguistic relationships that exist, for example, between the terms "eight"(acht) and "night" (Nacht).Eventhough language points to suchrelationships and interconnections, present-day man carefully avoidsthem, so as to keep them from bothering his conscience. Yet despite this,the things speak for themselves regardless of our attempts to denaturethem, and their roots remain as long as the word remains that holds themunder its spell. It will be necessary, for instance, to discuss in Part Two thesignificance of the pivotal and ancient word "muse," whose multifariousbackground of meanings vividly suggests a possible aperspectivity. Herewe would only point to the illumination of the nocturnal-unperspectivalworld which takes place when perspective is enthroned as the eighth art.The old, seven-fold, simple planetary cavern space is suddenly flooded bythe light of human consciousness and is rendered visible, as it were, fromoutside.This deepening of space by illumination is achieved by perspective, theeighth art. In the Western languages, the n-less "eight," an unconsciousexpression of wakefulness and illumination, stands in opposition to the n-possessing and consequently negatively-stressed "night." There arenumerous examples: German acht-Nacht; French huit-nuit; English eightnight;Italian otto-notte; Spanish ocho-noche; Latinoctonox(noctu);Greekochto-nux(nukto). By unveiling these connections we arenot giving in to mere speculation; we are only noting the plainly utteredtestimony of the words themselves. Nor are we inventing associations thatmay follow in the wake of linguistic investigation; on the contrary, only ifwe were to pursue such associations or amplifications as employed bymodern scientific psychology, notably analytical psychology, could we beaccused of irrational or non-mental thought. It would be extremelydangerous, in fact, to yield to the chain reaction of associative andamplified thought-processes that propagate capriciously in the psyche andlead to the psychic inflation from which few psychoanalysts are immune.19