The end of Raymond Carver's "The Cathedral" was strange, inviting, and mesmerizing all at once. It felt that way to me as a reader, but more so it felt that way as I placed myself in the narrator's mind, hearing his voice and feeling his hands on the blind man's hands - just as he himself felt the way the blind man did. The tangible nature of drawing something from sight is remarkable in itself, drawing from memory (as the narrator did) is another skill altogether - being able to visually recall the shape and look of something and then translating it onto paper. Yet, the blind man's understanding of the Cathedral seems to be the inversion of drawing; it is translating spatial understanding alone to create a mental image.
Carver's story called to mind a video I saw many years ago on the Discovery Channel of a blind Turkish painter. Esref Armagan was born blind, yet he is able to accurately draw perspective and color by "seeing the world with his fingertips." In the Discovery Channel video, a neurology team from Harvard asks Esref to draw the Duomo Cathedral in Florence, the very building which allowed Brunelleschi to bring forth the notion of perspective. After feeling his way around the Duomo, Esref is able to accurately depict what he's felt onto paper.
I am attaching a link to the video.
http://www.wimp.com/blindpaint/
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