The Shape of a Pocket

and died in the village of Bethany. When Jesus, who was a friend of the family, arrived in the village, Lazarus had been dead and buried for four days.
    ‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked.
    ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied.
    Jesus wept.
    Then the Jews said: ‘See how he loved him!’
    But some of them said: ‘Could not he, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man from dying?’
    Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ‘Take away the stone,’ he said.
    So they took away the stone.
    Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth round his face.
    Jesus said to them: ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’
    This was the perfect likeness. And it provoked Caiaphas, the high priest, to lay the plot for the taking of Jesus’s own life.
    Goya is going back to work in his studio.
    Now he is painting. Can you hear him? Faces appear on the canvas. Then they disappear. All have gone.
    Try turning the volume of the silence up – higher – higher. Higher still …
    [Total silence]
    Is this the silence of a likeness, of the mountains at night in south-east Mexico, or of us listening together?



Acknowledgements

    The essays in this book were first printed – sometimes with different tides and in a slightly different form – in the following publications:
Opening a Gate
The Russian Way (Opus 31)
by Pentti Sammallahti Photographic Portfolio, Finland, 1996
Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible
Das Abenteuer der Malerei (The Adventure of Painting)
, Editions Tertium, Ostfildern, Germany, 1995
Studio Talk
Miquel Barceló, Recent Paintings
, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, 1998
The Chauvet Cave
Guardian
, London, 16 November 1996
Penelope
Tages Anzeiger
, Zurich, 18 April 1997
The Fayum Portraits
El Pais
, Madrid, 20 December 1998
Degas
Die Weltwoche
, Zurich, 29 July 1993
Drawing: Correspondence with Leon Kossoff
Guardian
, London, 1 June 1996
Vincent
Aftonbladet
, Stockholm, 20 August 2000
Michelangelo
Guardian
, London, 21 November 1995
Rembrandt and the Body
Frankfurter Rundschau
, Frankfurt, 2 May 1992
A Cloth Over the Mirror
Independent
, London, 3 June 2000
Brancusi
Die Weltwoche
, Zurich, 6 June 1995
The River Po
‘du’ Die Zeitschrift der Kultur
, Zurich, November 1995
Giorgio Morandi
El Pais
, Madrid, 7 February 1997
Pull the Other Leg, It’s Got Bells On It
Guardian
, London, 3 June 1995
Frida Kahlo
Guardian
, London, 12 May 1998
A Bed
Wet Roks Seen From Above.
Paintings: Christoph Hänsli Memory/Cage Editions, Zurich, 1996
A Man with Tousled Hair
Le Monde Diplomatique
, Paris, December 1991
An Apple Orchard
Le Monde Diplomatique
, Paris, September 2000
Brushes Standing Up in Jars
Aftonbladet
, Stockholm, 5 April 1996
Against the Great Defeat of the World
Race & Class
, London, October 1998-March 1999
Correspondence with Subcomandante Marcos:
The Herons
El Pais
, Madrid, 27 April 1995
The Herons and Eagles
La Jornada
, Mexico City, 3 June 1995
How to Live with Stones
Le Monde Diplomatique
, Paris, November 1997
Will It Be a Likeness? First performed by John Berger at Das Tat Theater im Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt, 1996. Directed by Juan Munoz. Simultaneous radio broadcast: Heissischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt. BBC Radio 3, 1996. First printed
La Jornada
, Mexico City, 4 August 1996.

Copyright © 2001 by John Berger
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    Illustrations from a photograph by Peter Marlow © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
    The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:
Berger, John.
The shape of a pocket / John Berger.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49084-1
1. Art—Themes, motives. I. Title.
N7560.B47 2002 701’.18’09—dc21 2001036513
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