Creating Spaces

Hemingway wrote in his essay The Art of the Short Story that "You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." He called this the "iceberg theory" or the "theory of omission". Hemingway very intentionally left out what was often the most important part of the story leaving it up to the reader to fill the empty niche. The effect on the reader is sometimes a sense of the surreal, mystical, or mysterious or sometimes a sense of longing or, for lack of better words, a kind of aching hunger.

Christopher Terry, an art professor at Utah State University, illustrates this concept perfectly in his painting "Interior with a Niche". When I first stumbled onto this painting, it made me crazy because I couldn't explain why I liked it so much. It has everything that I generally dislike in a painting: realism, symmetrical composition, and mundane subject matter. Why then did it haunt me? Certainly the quality of the light is alluring (it makes me sigh and grow pleasantly sleepy every time I look at it). But that wasn't enough to explain why I couldn't stop thinking about it. Finally, I realized it was that darn niche. Everything in the painting draws the eye to the niche. It's at the center of the composition, the lines in the ceiling all point right at it, and it's directly above the table almost as if the table were only there to support it. Then, after Terry does all that work to draw your eye to the niche, he leaves it empty! I love it! If there were anything at all in the niche, I wouldn't have given this painting a second glance, but by leaving it empty, Terry creates tension in the mind of the viewer. Maybe we even ask ourselves, what would I put in that niche? What belongs there? Terry, like Hemingway, seems to have very intentionally left out the most important part to make us "feel something more than we understand". There are quiet, peaceful places in the interiors of our minds, "clean, well-lighted places", that feel remarkably like this. Do we have anything important there to meditate on?

"Interior with a Niche" by Christopher Terry

It makes me think of Mary shortly after the birth of Jesus. Imagine her in a quiet moment, finally alone in the stable with her sleeping baby. A few dust motes float in the crisp morning light angling in through the door. In the distance can be heard the commotion of waking patrons in the inn, the clop of hooves in the street, a vendor calling out to passing travelers, but, despite these sounds, for Mary, the moment is quiet. Luke writes, "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." Mary had a peaceful niche in the interior of her mind where she could meditate on the most important thing of all: our Savior.

"Mary's Heart" by Liz Lemon Swindle

The highest goal of the writer and artist is to create spaces like these in the minds of our readers/viewers. Places where they can meditate on the most important and sacred things. These things are so often what's right in front of people, but "...their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed" (Acts 28:27). This is the most beautiful service a writer or artist can do: lend them our eyes so they can see and our ears so they can hear!