THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 801
are, purely in terms of painting technique, never applied in a shiny and as it were flat way, they are a relief to whose grainy elevations the bright colour simply adheres,
while the depressions, the given substance of nearness as it were, remain filled with the darkness of the priming coat or with brown varnish. From the given element of
night on the one hand, from the merely reflecting element of light on the other, stems the true rarity and preciousness of this light, its captivating brilliant gleam
superimposed on night. Corresponding to this was the complicated technique of dark­grounding and over­painting which Rembrandt followed throughout his entire
work; its first triumph, which already contains all this, is significantly in a picture of the Passion, in the Munich Entombment of Christ. People and even things stand in
solitude in the expanse of dark space, the colours come solely from a mysterious reflection of inner light in the world and behind the world, from a paradox of final light.
Thus it stems neither from the sun nor from an artificial source of light, nor is the existing world, together with any supernatural world which is believed to exist, at all
capable of dispensing this not earthly, not unearthly fight. The previous distance, the cosmically open perspective is obliterated by dark space, it creates a ring­shaped
assembly of the figures, itself almost undifferentiated. Only in secular pictures of groups and landscapes, like the Night Watch and the River Landscape with Ruins in
Cassel, is the ground criss­crossed with lances, a castle, and clouds, and scaffolding with straight lines stretches out in the Night Watch. Whereas the portraits and the
pictures with a Christian subject essentially show the undifferentiated darkness outside, the acosmic loneliness inside, indeed the late Rembrandt, who no longer painted
landscapes, frames his work completely with the powerfully concealing, sombrely sheltered dark tone which here means universe and infinity. Nevertheless, even the
darkness of this background is streaked with golden brown, the group of figures stands in a sfumato perspective of both black and gold, the light works into the
darkness, chromatizes even here, penetrates from a strangely existing Nowhere. Thus Rembrandt's paradoxical light is not to be found anywhere in the world, but nor
has it emanated, despite its continuous reflection, from any ancient metaphysics of heavenly light: it is perspective light of hope, deeply led down into nearness and
desolation, answered. The open cosmic perspective is obliterated by dark space, but the light which both contrasts with it and mysteriously breaks through from
loneliness and blackness paints the truth of hope or of the brilliance which is not there at all, in the dark­groundings of the existing world. This volatile in­shining, only
mediated by reflections,