[Unstagram] The Cathedral Drawn Within

Expressions Born from Emotion and the Body Are Like Language
Language Reaches Imagination and the Inner World to Reveal Something Greater

In Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral," the narrator feels uneasy about the blind visitor his wife has invited. After an awkward dinner with the guest who has come from far away, the wife falls asleep first, leaving the narrator and the visitor alone in the living room. On the TV, a program about religion is showing scenes of a cathedral. The visitor asks what the cathedral looks like, but the narrator is unable to provide a proper explanation.

"It's huge, made of stone, there's marble in it too, and when people built cathedrals a long time ago, they wanted to get closer to God..." (translated by Kim Yeonsu, Munhakdongne)

The visitor, listening, suggests that the narrator try drawing the cathedral. The narrator takes a pen and draws a cathedral on a shopping bag. The visitor places his hand over the narrator’s hand, following the lines as they are drawn. In this way, the narrator traces a cathedral that has no meaning to him, while the visitor feels the shape with his hand and says it is wonderful. As the drawing nears completion, the visitor asks the narrator to try drawing with his eyes closed. The narrator closes his eyes and finishes the drawing. Even after completing the drawing, the narrator keeps his eyes shut and looks at the drawing in the same way as the visitor. Seeing the cathedral with his eyes closed?a sight he had never really paid attention to before?he is struck with awe, thinking, "This is amazing." That was the first time he truly saw the cathedral.

La Compania de Jesus Church in Arequipa, Peru. Painting by Haam Okyunhwan.

Nonverbal expressions that emerge through human emotions and the body?like music or painting?are most accurately conveyed by being directly shown or heard. However, when that is not possible, or for other reasons, we must describe them with language. In such cases, language that merely describes the pitch or intensity of sound, the texture of an instrument, or the composition or form of a painting, is inevitably limited in its effectiveness. Words can reach further and deeper than music or images themselves when they are connected to the sensations or emotions we experience through them. By speaking not of the form itself, but of its outlines or periphery, we can indirectly reveal the core or essence. Often, substance and fact are revealed more clearly by the relationships and shadows around them than by their elusive essence.

Language connects to the listener’s circuits of memory and sensation, recreating the world in consciousness and imagination. The listener’s emotions may produce images different from those of the speaker, but within these varied emotions, unique forms of inspiration can emerge.

The drawing made by the narrator in the story became another form of bodily language, transmitted through the visitor’s hand, and within him, it became a vast cathedral.