Category: Breath in Literature & Art

Much has been written on the beginning of life and the oxygen revolution but possibly never as vibrantly as in Jeanette Winterson‘s Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles. This is the opening chapter:

“I want to tell the story again

The free man never thinks of escape.

In the beginning there was nothing. Not even space and time. You could have thrown the universe at me and I would have caught it in one hand. There was no universe. It was easy to beat.

This happy nothing ended fifteen aeons ago. It was a strange time, and what I know is told to me in radioactive whispers; that‘s all there is left of one great shout into the silence. Read More

In this podcast by the Life of Breath Project, visual artist Jayne Wilton talks about how she came to work with breathing in her artistic practice.
When she first gave workshops for patients in a hospice, Jayne Wilton discovered that the patients enjoyed experimenting with their breathing and she asked herself “what can visual art add to that?” She came up with various creative ways to record breathing and to translate the relationship “we all have with our breath in terms of how it feels viscerally to us” into art.
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In her book The Faraway Nearby, American author Rebecca Solnit reflects on “emptiness, meaninglessness and transience”. According to Rebecca Solnit, emptiness, meaninglessness and transience are philosophically and linguistically related to breathing, and, as a Zen master teaches his student, far from boring. Read More

„The age of breath“, an essay by French philosopher and feminist Luce Irigaray, opens thus: „The divine appropriate to women, the feminine divine, is first of all related to the breath. To cultivate the divine in herself, the woman, in my opinion, has to attend to her own breathing, her own breath, more even than to love.  Breathing, in fact, corresponds to the first autonomous gesture of a human living, and it is not possible to be divine without being autonomous with respect to the mother and the father, to the lover, to the child, to the others in general, women and men.“ Read More

In his poem „Orchestra or a Poeme of Dauncing“, the British lawyer and poet Sir John Davies (1569 – 1626) „judicially prooves the true observation of Time and Measure, in the authenticall and laudable use of Dauncing.“ By “dauncing” he not only refers to rhythmic movements of the body but to the movements of breath and sound in the air (in the excerpt I’ve chosen). Air is seen as a “tender nurse” that accompanies, carries, fosters and inspires the voice, as well as the wind:

“And now behold your tender Nurse the ayre
And common neighbour that ay runns around,
How many pictures and impressions faire
Within her empty regions are there found
Which to your sences Dauncing doe propound?
For what are breath, speech, Ecchos, musicke, winds,
But Dauncings of the ayre in sundry kinds? Read More

One of the most beautiful use of the rhyming of “breath” with “death” occurs in Emily Dickinson’s Poem 172. The punctuation, as always in her poems, is as telling as the words. Do try out reading her poems aloud, following the punctuation. I always find it challenging and surprising. Particularly masterful is the punctuation in the lines “:Life is but Life! And Death, but Death!/Bliss is, but bliss, and Breath but Breath!”, marking “life” and “breath” as fluid and “death” and “bliss” as somewhat separate. And yet, the rhyme occurs between “death” and “breath”, connecting them at the end of the line, at the end of life. Read More

In one of my favorite TV Shows The Good Wife, there is a “breathing scene”. The main character, lawyer Alicia Florrick, is in her office with her investigator/lover Jason Crouse. Alicia, as usual, has had a tough day and wants a drink. Jason suggests that she focus on her breathing as an alternative. Here is their dialogue:

“Alicia: Do you think I drink too much?
Jason: I don‘t know. Do you?
Alicia: I was going to break this bottle if I couldn‘t get the cork out. That might be a problem.
Jason: Then, here. (He takes the bottle and glass out of her hand.)
Alicia: Wait, no.
Jason: No, seriously, you don‘t need it. Let‘s just talk. Read More