The image of blindness, actual physical blindness, appears in literature from the earliest times to our days. When we confront the image, a bewildering array of possible interpretations leads into seemingly different directions. On the surface, blindness, like any other physical or mental impairment, has a negative meaning. Yet, on closer examination, another, positive, side appears and, in turn, suggests an ambivalent, two-sided structure of the symbol. It is perhaps the richness of allusive meanings which accounts for the fascination it holds for writers and which makes it a most appropriate symbol for our times. (p. 671)

For the writer Siegfried Lenz art is responsibility and commitment and the artist … cannot shed his obligation to make these problems of his fellow men his own…. (p. 689)

Light as the symbol of intellectual clearsightedness and mastery is stressed as being a positive quality. Blindness in such a context can have only...