Gonzalo Carbó, Antoni2023-09-062023-09-0620232077-1444https://hdl.handle.net/2445/201769The present article traces the symbols of the eye (Greek: κόρη [maiden, concubine, pupil of the eye]; Latin: pūpilla; Hebrew: īshōn bath ʿāyin ('apple of the eye' or the 'pupil of the eye' [lit. 'daughter of an eye'], i.e., the feminine divine Presence [Shĕkhīnāh]); Arabic: ʿayn; Persian: chashm) and the black pupil of the eye (Arabic: insān al-ʿayn; Persian: mardum-i chashm) in Sufism, both -in the context of Andalusian Sufism, specifically in Ibn al-ʿArabī's poem entitled 'I saw a Girl¿', in whose dark pupil or abyssal blackness (Arabic: ḥawar; Hebrew: īshōn), pleasure of the gaze (naẓar) and repository of the secret (sirr), resides the Beloved- as in the medieval Persian gnosis of the followers of al-Sahykh al-Akbar -Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī and Maḥmud Shabistarī-, and the mystical poet Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī. Ibn al-ʿArabī and Shabistarī have had an explicit influence on the work of the reputed American video artist Bill Viola (Queens, New York, 1951), specifically in his two video/sound installations -He Weeps for You (1976) and I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986)- in which the common image of the mirror-pupil of the eye summarizes the entire ancient Neoplatonic conception of the θεωρία (contemplatio, speculatio).52 p.application/pdfengcc-by (c) Gonzalo Carbó, Antoni, 2023https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/SufismeVisióSufismVisióninfo:eu-repo/semantics/article7385402023-09-06info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess