7 Mar 2023

Jack B
Bedell

Full Moon

Mar 21st

Feb 20th

Ruskin and
‘The Walls of Lucerne’

Only one swath of light, stretched

from just inside the wall

across the near tower, held

any interest for him.

Its harsh white brought to life

small patches of vines and

crawlers he could tender

with the thinnest of strokes

and washed the tower’s walls

clean against the sky’s indigo

frown. Beyond this easy contrast,

the rest of the scene shrugged

against his canvas, all color

and smear. What bored him

in the near at hand—windows,

balconies, the beginnings of stairs

leading nowhere—did not even

deserve the waste of paint.

Behind the poem...

From the first time I saw John Ruskin’s The Walls of Lucerne, I felt it was a perfect representation of human consciousness as the artist understood it. Ruskin structures the piece around a central band of light filled with focus, clarity and pristine detail. Outside of this focus, he builds a landscape of increasingly blurred, half-formed shapes and colors, trailing off into bare canvas. I wouldn’t blame anyone for seeing this – or any of Ruskin’s works – as unfinished. But I’d counter that its completeness is less valuable than its accuracy, always.