I am looking at his face. I am looking at his eyes. I am looking at someone I do not know, never could have known, since he died long before I was born. I look at his eyes, which seem small to me, too small, like the eyes of an animal, and then I wonder how or why eye-size ever came to represent levels of humanness, or compassion (the unusually large eyes of elephants and horses and whales are said 'to have soul,' whereas small eyes, 'beady eyes,' are often considered non-human or even non-mammalian – reptilian, cold). I'm trying to look at his eyes, and I am trying to write about looking at his eyes. I am doing two things, it seems, at once. Or three things. Since this is an image of a writer, I am seeing him – seeing in him – what I've read of and about him. I am seeing his image as a word, I am seeing words in his image (his words, the words of others). And then, fourthly, I am measuring what I know of these words against his face. In this sense I am reading him endlessly, and each time I am reading what I see, one of many, possible sights.
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