#m.c. Escher

[catsofyore]

White Cat I. 1919. Source.

[random-brushstrokes]

M.C. Escher - Rind (1955)

[surqrised]

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.

M.C. Escher

[disease]

M.C. ESCHER // 1925 "THE SECOND DAY OF CREATION: THE DIVISION OF THE WATERS" [woodcut printed on china paper | 329 x 428 mm.]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Eye Colour by M.C. Escher, 1946

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Eye

beautiful words with "eye" to try to include in your poem/story

Bird's-eye - any of numerous plants with small bright-colored flowers; an allover pattern for textiles consisting of a small diamond with a center dot; having or involving a bird's-eye view

Deadeye - a rounded wood block encircled by a rope or an iron band and having holes to receive the lanyard that is used especially to set up shrouds and stays; an unerring marksman

Eye-beam - archaic: a radiant glance of the eye

Eye-opener - a drink intended to wake one up; something startling, surprising, or enlightening

Eyeable - archaic: that may be seen; visually attractive

Eyeberry - partridgeberry; wintergreen

Eyebright - any of a genus (Euphrasia) of semiparasitic herbs of the snapdragon family with spikelike racemes

Eyecup - a small oval cup with a rim curved to fit the orbit of the eye used for applying liquid remedies to the eyes

Eyedness - preference for the use of one eye instead of the other (as in using a monocular microscope)

Eyeful - a full or completely satisfying view; one that is visually attractive

Eyelet - a small hole designed to receive a cord or used for decoration (as in embroidery); peephole, loophole

Eyen - archaic plural of eye

Eyeroot - goldenseal (i.e., a perennial North American herb (Hydrastis canadensis) of the buttercup family with large leaves and a thick knotted yellow rhizome sometimes used medicinally)

Eyeshade - a visor that shields the eyes from strong light and is fastened on with a headband

Eyeshine - reflection of light from the inner surface of an eye through the pupil so that the eye has a luminous appearance (as in a cat)

Eyespot - a usually small spot of color (as on the wing of a butterfly) that resembles an eye

Eyestalk - one of the movable peduncles bearing an eye at the tip in a decapod crustacean

Eyestrain - weariness or a strained state of the eye

Eyestrings - obsolete: organic eye attachments formerly believed to break at death or blindness

Eyetooth - a canine tooth of the upper jaw

Eyewash - an eye lotion; misleading or deceptive statements, actions, or procedures

Eyewater - archaic: tears; aqueous humor

Eyewink - look, glance

Fish-eye - being, having, or produced by a wide-angle photographic lens that has a highly curved protruding front, that covers an angle of about 180 degrees, and that gives a circular image

Goldeneye - either of two diving ducks (genus Bucephala) with small yellow eyes; especially: a large-headed swift-flying Holarctic diving duck (B. clangula) with the male having a green head and striking black-and-white markings

Hawkeyed - having keen sight

Mooneye - a silvery North American freshwater bony fish (Hiodon tergisus of the family Hiodontidae)

Oxeye - any of several composite plants (as of the genera Chrysanthemum or Heliopsis) having heads with both disk and ray flowers

Shut-eye - sleep

Tigereye - a usually yellowish to brown chatoyant stone that consists of silicified crocidolite and is much used for ornament

Walleye - an eye with a whitish or bluish-white iris

If any of these words inspire your writing, do tag me or send me a link. I'd love to read your work!

More: Word Lists

[thehopefulquotes]

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.

M.C. Escher

[thoughtkick]

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.

M.C. Escher

[stay-close]

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.

M.C. Escher

[funstealer]

The Drowned Cathedral (1929) by M.C. Escher

[cosmonautroger]

M.C. Escher

[catsofyore]

White Cat I. 1919. Source.

[fromthedust]

M.C. Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972)

The 2nd Day of Creation - woodcut - 1925

[resqectable]

Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.

M.C. Escher

[disease]

"THREE SPHERES: I" M.C. ESCHER // 1945 [wood engraving on paper | 278 x 168 mm.]

[atamascolily]

I was trying to write out my thoughts about Homura and Walpurgisnacht's relationship, but I think what best encapsulates them at the moment is actually an image: the M.C. Escher lithograph Drawing Hands (1948).

Drawing Hands is first and foremost a paradox, with each hand rising out of a two-dimensional world to create the other and no beginning or end. In his book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Essential Golden Braid, Douglas Hofsteader uses it to represent the concept of a strange loop: a system (like consciousness or a musical fugue) that moves through multiple iterations, only to finally return to its starting point.

I first encounter this image juxtaposed with the Jorge Luis Borges micro-story, "Borges and I", which is--among many other things--a doppelganger story dealing with questions of identity and the boundaries between one person and another. The story ends with a confession: "I do not know which of us has written this page." The question that I ask now is, does it even matter? Is it truly either/or, or both/and?

The story of Madoka Magica is ultimately circular in nature. This is true of individual installments (here taking the anime episodes collectively as a unit), and I suspect it will ultimately be true on a collective level as well. I fully expect that the last shot of the final installment--whether Walpurgis no Kaiten or some other sequel--to end with the same imagery we saw in the "Prologue in Heaven" that opens the first episode of the anime. The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning--except that everything has changed as a result of the story that has been told; we now have the fully context to appreciate it for what it was all along.

In the anime, Walpurgisnacht created Homura by showing up in that first timeline and killing Madoka, thus inspiring Homura to make a contract and become a magical girl to save her. Thus it would be narratively fitting if Homura's actions--whether directly or indirectly, intentional or unintentional--lead to the creation of Walpurgisnacht, each of them giving rise to the other in turn.

After all, this is the same relationship between magical girls and witches in general--one creates the other in a never-ending loop, at least until Madoka wishes to change the cycle. Even here, the cycle remains a cycle--as evidenced by the name "Law of Cycles": the nature of the loop changes but not its structure.

The shape created by the hands in Drawing Hands is eerily reminiscent of the twofold tomoe, a Shinto symbol composed of two looping swirls, which itself is similar to the Chinese ying and yang symbol. A similar design appears in both Walpurgisnacht's mandala and Homura's shield--just as they are united in their shared motifs of cogs and gears, they are also linked by their connections to the cycle of creation and destruction.

Drawing Hands is also a good metaphor for Madoka Magica in that it involves transcending two dimensions, just as Madoka Magica's animation incorporates three-dimensional objects on a regular basis. It also suggests at the possibility of a world outside of the narrative presented in the story, that everything we've witnessed on screen is in fact a tale unfolding in-universe as well. It's also an excellent metaphor for Rebellion in particular, which explicitly incorporates Homura's floating hands ("blue-screened" to indicate they are visible only to the audience) actively puppeting the Nightmares and building the "stage" in her labyrinth upon which the entire psychodrama takes place.

Oh, and I'd be lying if Drawing Hands didn't make me think of this shot from the original series, too, although both the position and the underlying symbolism are different:

(something something Madoka's wish to save all magical girls with her own hands something something--look, there's a lot of hand imagery in this show, okay?)

That said, given Homura's salamander/lizard motif, perhaps a different M.C. Escher drawing, Reptiles (1943) will prove to be an equally fitting representation of her journey in the end.

We've already seen the salamander representing the "Dark Orb" move from two to three dimensions (and become a phone!) in the trailer for Walpurgis no Kaiten, so who knows what the movie has in store for us?