Snow Crystals, Ice Palaces, and Walser...

In the beginning, I simply wanted to post some images of W. A. Bentley’s snow crystals which have fascinated me for years, but seemingly similar clouds drifted in and, well, there are other things here too…

from Snow Crystals by W.A. Bentley and W.J. Hunphreys, Dover Press
Ice Forms...

from Snow Crystals by W.A. Bentley and W.J. Hunphreys, Dover Press
Snow Crystals...

by Tarrl Morley
And a Fragile Sheet of Ice...

"Recently I dreamed I flew over a round, fragile sheet of ice, as thin and transparent as a windowpane, and curving up and down like glassy waves. Beneath the ice, spring flowers were growing. As if raised up by a spirit, I floated back and forth and was pleased by the effortless motion. In the middle of the lake was a temple which turned out to be a tavern. I went in, ordered coffee and cakes, and ate and drank and afterward smoked a cigarette. When I left and resumed my exercise, the mirror broke and I sank into the depths, among the flowers, which admitted me with a friendly welcome. How nice it is that spring follows winter every time."

-from "Winter" in Robert Walser: Selected Stories, (translated by the great Christopher Middleton), Farrar.

Wilson Alwyn Bentley (1865-1931) spent many years photographing snowflakes in Vermont; a fragile and meticulous kind of work that involved being outside in icy cold weather with a camera and a microscope for long and slow days leading into night... It seems somehow bittersweet and beautiful that Robert Walser (1878-1956) also worked with minutia while composing quite a few poems and sketches in his fragile and microscopic script (writing so small, one must practically view it under a lens) and that both of these artists died, similarly, after solitary walks in the snow... A love they both shared...

from Minor White: The Eye That Shapes, Princeton, 1989
Ritual Branch...

...While reading about the crystallography of snow, I discovered that windowpane frost develops its pattern around the unique state of the glass... forming patterns and conduits through, and by, the window's scratches, abrasions, and imperfections; creating a visual map of the glass in time, and reflecting its history in an icy crystalline topography...

from Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, Pantheon
Rock Crystals....

"Now they surmounted monstrous debris; now found themselves again on the icefield. Today in the bright sun, they were able for the first time to see what it was like. In size it was stupendous, and beyond towered yet more sombre rocks; wave after wave heaved up, as it were, and the snow-covered ice, compressed and buckling, seemed to be pushing down upon the children and threatening to flow over their very bodies..."

- from Stifter's Rock Crystal

"She ran in joy towards the ice, across the frosted ground and between the rimed birch twigs; they glittered like silver. For now it was almost light. Pale stalks stuck up, rimed and bent, with pale, broad leaves -- Unn knocked them over as she ran and the silver trickled dry as sand over her boots."

"She thought with joy about the ice: thicker and thicker; that was how the ice should be."

"It thundered at night. You would be awake, perhaps, and would think: still thicker."

- from The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas

Both Adalbert Stifter and Tarjei Vesaas write with such simple and affecting language about childhood and ice and beautiful landscapes and secrets ... fragile existences

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