The Visions of Hildegarde
These brilliant, surrealist images are seen and written about by Hildegarde of Bingen in the 12th century. Caused by Hildegarde’s migraines, they feature dazzling points of light and shimmering fortification-figures that cross her field of vision. She writes: “I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding multitude of falling stars which with the star followed southwards… And suddenly they were all annihilated, being turned into black coals… and cast into the abyss so that I could see them no more” (169).
Nostalgic visions of India
In the weeks leading up to her death, Bhagawhandi P. begins experiencing vivid hallucinations of her home back in India. “At times there were people, usually her family or neighbours from her home village; sometimes there was speech, or singing, or dancing; once she was in church, once in a graveyard, but mostly there were the plains, the fields, the rice paddies near her village, and the low, sweet hills which swept up to the horizon” (154). As these images grow stronger and deeper in Bhagawhandi’s mind, she slowly loses her lucidity and eventually passes on.
The hospital garden
Described most vividly in “The Autist Artist,” this garden on the grounds of the hospital is overgrown and sunlit, with views of the sky and trees, and a “mauve and yellow carpet of clover and dandelions” (228) at José’s feet. José picks a white clover, and then a four-leaved clover, and seven different types of grass. There are also yellow dandelions, “open, all their florets flung open to the sun” (228). The image of this garden evokes a sense of hope for José’s previously bleak future. It surrounds José in lovely color and smell, reminding him of the days he used to sketch wildlife with his father.
José’s fish
Sacks is taken aback by the accuracy and exaggerated, three-dimensional character of José’s recreation of a photograph of a fish. “It was not only verisimilitude and animation that had been added but something else, something richly expressive, though not wholly fishlike: a great, cavernous, whalelike mouth; a slightly crocodilian snout; an eye, one had to say, which was distinctly human, and with altogether a positively roguish look” (218). Including a side-by-side comparison of the two images, Sacks argues that José’s image reveals his lively and distinct imagination. This fish is no mere reproduction: it is inflected with characteristics and sensibilities of a thinking, feeling artist.
