Transfiguration
a metamorphosis
The etymology of the word ‘Transfiguration’ dates back to the late fourteenth century. It is a noun derived from the Latin word “transfigurationem” and its meaning is “a change of form” or “change of shape.” The word was first used in English to mean “the change in the appearance of Christ before his disciples.” The first non-Christian use of the word is recorded around the 1540s.
The Oxford Dictionary defines the verb “transfigure” as “to change the appearance of a person or thing so that they look more beautiful.” In essence, transfiguration means to change the form or shape of a person or thing into a more beautiful form.
Art transforms objects of everyday life into something more beautiful, thereby transfiguring everyday objects into works of Art. Sensations, emotions, and passions are all the content of a work of art, but all of them are transformed, and the feelings are metamorphosed aesthetically to be presented as Art.
Metamorphosis involves change, or it is a process of transformation, especially of the growth of somebody or something. Insects and amphibians, such as frogs, change from their young form to adult form in two or more separate stages. They become something completely different after the change. Caterpillars will eventually metamorphose into a butterfly.
Artists transform their material, or their medium, into works of Art. A sculptor transforms his medium, cold hard stone, into a sculpture. An illustrator studies the lines of his subject and draws the lines of paper, but he never draws them exactly as they are.
He draws them following certain rules of line drawings, such as the variation in thickness of lines, the nature of straight or curved lines, etc, and eventually makes on paper a representation of his subject which is identifiable as an image of the subject, but not quite. The image has undergone a transformation in the hands of the illustrator.
A fine arts writer takes everyday stories and converts them into works of art, using language that is more expressive and that is his own. By using a language that is his own, he makes the subject his own. No one else can write or process the story in the same way that one fine arts writer can. His writing bears his stamp of originality.
In the same way in sculpture and illustration, no one else can produce the same form and lines that the artist has come up with. An artist bears his own stamp on the piece of artwork that he creates. The stamp is a hallmark of the artist.
Artists don’t necessarily always come up with artworks more beautiful than their original subject. For example, the novel ‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka. Kafka’s subject is his protagonist Gregor Samsa, who used to be a human being, but his form changed into the form of an insect.
Everybody in Gregor’s family rejected him after his metamorphosis because they found the insect to be ugly and disagreeable to their taste. Gregor Samsa did not turn into something beautiful, and therefore did not transfigure but merely changed into an insect form.
But what is ugly to human beings is not ugly to insects. An insect of the same species and genus that Gregor had transformed into, will find Gregor Samsa as something beautiful because they are the same. In fact, those insects might revere the insect Gregor because he was human-sized, a very big insect.
The insects might appoint Gregor as their leader, even God, and consider him exceptionally beautiful because he is much larger than them, and also because he can understand the language of humans. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
The human language is special on Earth, no other organism has language the way we do. We consider ourselves an intelligent species only because we have language. Gregor Samsa, if he had lived, and if he had the opportunity to thrive in this insect community, would have begun a mass metamorphosis of insects by teaching other insects the human language but unfortunately, he dies alone in his room.
Can learning human language bring physical changes to insects’ bodies? In the book, Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa tries to control the movement of his legs by thinking about the thoughts that control the legs. He thinks that his legs need to stop moving incessantly, and he thinks about how he is going to turn his body sideways so that he can get out of bed.
If Gregor had more time, he definitely would have learned to control his legs and body movements, the way humans are able to do. He could have taught that to other insects, and over a period of generations, the insects would have gone through physical transformations, or evolution, simply because they are now able to control their body in a new way.
