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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: The Eyes

Shadows

04/02/2018

The Eyes

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, The Eyes

Michael Symmons Roberts reflects on the vulnerability and power of the human eye.

Poet Michael Symmons Roberts reflects on the importance of sight, both metaphorically and spiritually, as we glimpse the brightness of heaven and the darkness of night.

The poet Michael Symmons Roberts reflects on the importance of sight. Eyes "seem so vulnerable, so exposed, yet so central to the way most of us receive and interact with the world around us," he observes as he explores the deep metaphorical associations of vision and blindness, light and darkness, with truth and ignorance, good and evil.

Many great writers and thinkers have lost their sight and used their blindness to provide fresh insights on faith and God. Roberts quotes the academic John Hull, who went blind in middle age: "God is indifferent alike to both light and darkness. He does not need the light in order to know and the darkness cannot prevent him from knowing".

We also hear the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, who practised "Custody of the Eyes", keeping his gaze fixed on the ground for months on end, in order to deepen his appreciation and understanding of the world and the gift of sight. 

Music from Shostakovich, Handel and Etta James helps Michael contrast physical and inner sight, and he goes on to discuss forms of technological seeing that bypass the human eye entirely.

Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.

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