Current Issue:
January 29, 2004
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News, events, features |
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Latest
scientific findings |
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The people behind the university |
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Harvard and neighbor communities |
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Scores, highlights, upcoming games |
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On Campus |
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notes, students, police log |
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Museums, concerts, theater |
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Two-week listing of upcoming events |
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Gazette headlines delivered to your desktop |
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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
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(Staff photos Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)
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Short days, long shadows
The winter sun, "a sadder light than waning moon," though its warmth is feeble and its everyday life brief, shines with a frigid clarity that creates its own hard beauty. Winter air is rarefied, that is, less dense, and so in the clear sunlight, objects are revealed in all their textured detail - outlines are harder, colors richer, shadows longer. In the Yard, in the unaltered light, leafless trees, stark statuary, and classic architecture seem pared down, truer, more themselves.
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The weak winter sun casts its coldly beautiful light on the Yard, the flag, a brisk passerby, and the ever-patient statue of John Harvard.
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A Sever Hall archway creates a blue dome filled with leafless trees.
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