Çise Korkut

“Paradiso, XXXI,108
Diodorus Siculus tells the story of a god that
is cut into pieces and scattered over the earth.
Which of us, walking through the twilight or
retracing some day in our past, has never felt
that we have lost some infinite thing?
Mankind has lost a face, an irrecoverable
face, and all men wish they could be that
pilgrim (dreamed in the empyrean, under the
Rose) who goes to Rome and looks upon the
veil of St. Veronica and murmurs in belief: My
Lord Jesus Christ, very God, is this, indeed,
Thy likeness in such fashion wrought?*
There is a face in stone beside a path, and an
inscription that reads The True Portrait of the
Holy Face of the Christ of Jaén. If we really
knew what that face looked like, we would
possess the key to the parables, and know
whether the son of the carpenter was also the
Son of God.
Paul saw the face as a light that struck him to
the ground; John, as the sun when it shines
forth in all its strength; Teresa de Jesús, many
times, bathed in serene light, although she
could never say with certainty what the color of
its eyes was.
Those features are lost to us, as a magical
number created from our customary digits can
be lost, as the image in a kaleidoscope is lost
forever. We can see them and yet not grasp
them. A Jew's profile in the subway might be
the profile of Christ; the hands that give us back
change at a ticket booth may mirror those that
soldiers nailed one day to the cross.
Some feature of the crucified face may lurk in
every mirror; perhaps the face died, faded away,
so that God might be all faces.
Who knows but that tonight we may see it in
the labyrinths of dream, and not know
tomorrow that we saw it.”
― Jorge Luis Borges