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Through a glass, darkly.
What is its significance? What Keanu Reeves movie has a title inspired by this phrase?
Find out the answers to these questions and more by listening to the CultureCast above (by pressing the little blue play botton), or by clicking through and checking out the transcript and further sources.
Through a Glass, Darkly (CultureCast #031)
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Transcript
Hello CultureCrew, Joshua Hwang here, reflecting another 90 Seconds to Culture podcast.
Through a glass, darkly
This popular little blurb from the Bible has been used in books, films, poems, and much more. A very contemporary is the movie A Scanner Darkly (yes with Keanu Reeves), which was adapted from a book of the same name by Philip K Dick.
Why is this phrase so popular? At the very least, from where does it come and what does it mean?
“Through a glass, darkly” is only a portion of a phrase used by the apostle Paul, in his first letter to the people of Corinth, the Corinthians. (In the bible, this book is often referred to as First Corinthians.) The whole phrase from the King James Version is, “For now we see through a glass, darkly…”
The glass is not some sort of window, but a mirror. This phrase is interpreted to mean that humans cannot perceive reality perfectly. Paul later describes how perfect perception comes when meeting with God.
Artists have used the phrase “through a glass, darkly” to describe altered perception due to drugs, alcohol, mental disease and much more.
Interestingly, this 13th chapter of First Corinthians also contains many other popular phrases, such as “without love, I am nothing” and “when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Go check it out in the further readings section of the associated post.
Sources / Further Reading:
Wikipedia: 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13 - The chapter of the bible from which this quote is derived.
Wikipedia: First Epistle to the Corinthians - Similar to the above, but now the whole book from which this quote was derived.
Wikipedia: Through a Glass, Darkly
New International Version and King James Version of this chapter.
[tags]literature, religion, bible, corinthians, glass darkly, culture, podcast[/tags]
(image from b3ni via flickr)
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