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“But your bruises... ,” she protested.“Those marks. They’re terrible.”“I can’t feel them.”(Logan recently severely beaten by the villains)“I felt nothing indeed except the rare sort of excitement that came with revelation.”(This mental ecstasy- from ‘artistic revelation’ - foundation of this book.)“I’d burned myself often enough on liquid glass and not felt it. That Sunday night the concept of one detective darkly achieving insight into the sins of others, and then the possibility that good could rise above sin and fly, these drifting thoughts set up in me in effect a mental anesthesia, so that I could bleed and suffer on one level and feel it only later after the flame of imagination had done its stuff.”(‘Flame of imagination’ is ‘mental anesthesia’!)“Sometimes in the disengagement from this sort of thing, the vision had shrunk to disappointment and ash, and when that happened I would leave the no-good piece on the marver table and not handle it carefully into an annealing oven. After a while, its unresolved internal strains would cause it to self-destruct, to come to pieces dramatically with a cracking noise; to splinter, to fragment... to shatter.”(The shattering of the glass figurines serves as the metaphor for the shattering of the internal character of the villains.)“It could be for onlookers an unnerving experience, to see an apparently solid object disintegrate for no visible reason. For me the splitting apart symbolized merely the fading and insufficiency of the original thought.”“That night I made Catherine Dodd in three pieces that later I would join together. I made not a literal lifelike sculpture of her head, but an abstract of her daily occupation. I made it basically as a soaring upward spread of wings, black and shining at the base, rising through a black, white and clear center to a high rising pinion with streaks of gold shining to the top.”This ability to create an ‘abstraction’ of concrete reality sets Logan apart. His apprentice can’t . . . just . . . can’t do it. Envy dives his heart against his teacher. He proclaims viscously . . .“I wish we had broken your wrists.”(For a professional glassblower - devastating!)“You and your fancy ways and your condescending comments about my work. I hate you and this workshop. I’m a damn good glassblower and I deserve more recognition.”“He raised his chin and sneered.”“One day,” he went on, “John Hickory will be a name worth knowing and people will smash Logan Glass to get to mine.”Such a shame, I thought. He really did have some talent but, I suspected, it would never be allowed to develop as it should. Arrogance and a belief in skills he didn’t have would smother those he did.”The importance, the need of humility to reach the highest artistic level, is another theme.“Glassblowers were commonly arrogant people, chiefly because the skill was so difficult to learn. Hickory already showed signs of arrogance but if he became a notable expert he would have to be forgiven. As for myself, my uncle (as arrogant as they came) had insisted that I learn humility first, second and third, and had refused to let me near his furnace until I’d shed every sign of what he called “cockiness.”“Cockiness” had broken out regularly after his death, humbling me when I recognized it. It had taken perhaps ten years before I had it licked, but vigilance would be necessary for life.”Great!Another is the ‘internal strain that shatters the villain’.“She hates you. Have you noticed?” I told him I had indeed noticed.“But I don’t know why.”(This analysis of envious hatred serves to explain reason for the story.)“You’d want a psychiatrist to explain it properly, but I’ll tell you for zilch what I’ve learned. You’re a man, you’re strong, you look OK, you’re successful at your job and you’re not afraid of her; and I could go on, but that’s for starters. Then she has you roughed up, doesn’t she, and here you are looking as good as new, even if you aren’t feeling it, and sticking the finger up in her face, more or less, and believe me, I‘d’ve chucked a rival down the stairs for less, if they as much as yawned in my presence.”‘I listened to Worthington’s wisdom, but I said, “I haven’t done her any harm.”(Jealousy implies wanting what another has. Envy means wanting to destroy what another has, or the person.)“You threaten her. You’re too much for her. You’ll win the tennis match. So maybe she’ll have you killed first. She won’t kill you herself. And don’t ignore what I’m telling you. There are people who really have killed for hate. People who’ve wanted to win.”As always in Francis work, the title has multiple meanings. The concrete, physical (glass) used to illustrate the abstract, psychological (mind).Astounding!This work, at the end of Francis life, does seem to be a personal revelation. But not in the sense of explanation of his activity, but like Logan, an abstract drawing of Francis. His ‘mental fire’ from artistic revelation. His lifelong focus on the basis of real hatred - viscous, cruel, implacable envy.And then, the courage, the will, the nerve to resist, conquer the evil.Fantastic!(The 1914 work “Ressentiment” by the famous scholar - Max Scheler, provides a marvelous analysis/synthesis of envy.)
