ABSTRACT
TO-DAY I am going to ask you to consider some aspects of symbolism. We take our symbol—the rose, the tower, the lily, the moon—and allow it to suggest, both by its contextual usage, and by the pattern in which it is set, a series of indeterminate ‘penumbral’ meanings; which are on the borderline of thought and feeling, which cannot be expressed, or hinted at, in any other way; and which are justified precisely by their indeterminacy. When we deal with a symbol, it is rather as if we drew the cork from the magic bottle of the Arabian Nights. First a kind of thick and confusing smoke pours out; then strange forms take shape out of the smoke, and modify each other, perpetually shifting in the corners of our mind.
