In the corner, an old bent woman sat spinning.
Heidi went straight to her.
"Good day, Grandmother!" she said.
"Here I am to see you.
Did you think I was long in coming?" (Heidi, ch.4)
The grandmother was once a child, and the child will be a grandmother some day.
But in the story the grandmother is always a grandmother, and the child always a child.
Everything passes, but stories stay.
The old woman lifted her head and groped for the hand which Heidi held out to her.
When she had found it she held it for a while, thoughtfully.
"How can it be? Your hands are quite warm." Heidi, ch.4
There are several ways to communicate.
Touch is one of them.
But it is difficult to understand what an object is like just by touching it.
We usually need other forms of information to do so;
we need visual or verbal information, for example.
Touching seems to give us some peculiar sort of information.
Or rather it is something more than information;
it is a feeling, or a knowledge, of being connected.
-"Ah, my child," said the grandmother, "I can't see but I can hear..."
-"But can't you see the shutter banging, Grandmother?..."
- "Alas, child, I can see nothing, nothing!" lamented the grandmother. (Heidi, ch.4)
When we think of someone who can't see and try to understand how he or she percieves the world, we hurriedly stop imagining what it is like, because just imagining it panics us.
- "But if I go outside and open the shutter properly so that it is lighter, won't you see then, Grandmother?"-
"No, not even then.
Nobody can ever make it light for me."
-"But if you go outside into the white snow, then surely it will be light.
Come with me, Grandmother, and I will show you."
Heidi, beginning to feel very distressed, took the old woman's hand and tried to lead her. -(Johanna Spyri, Heidi, ch4)
Heidi thinks that if it were light in the room the grandmother would be able to see; that it is only because of the room being dark that she can't see.
And she is going to learn a terrilbe fact.
Whether it's light or dark is one thing.
Whether things are visible or not is another.
Not everyone can see flowers in their shapes and colors.
Like most of us, she has taken it for granted that because they are there, they are visible...
But unlike most of us, she takes the fact seriously, and, though deeply shocked, tries to find a way out.
-"Just let me sit, child.
It will always be dark for me."
-"But surely in summer it will be different, Grandmother," comforted Heidi, becoming more and more anxious to help.
"Surely then it will be light for you!
When the sun shines on the mountains and on the flowers and turns them all to crimson." (Heidi, ch.4)
Seeing is not touching, but seeing is in a way touching.
Every time I see in a nearby park a huge concrete ball, I shudder at the thought of a child hitting his face or hand against it.
I don't consciously try to imagine such an accident, but the instant I see the hard surface of the art object, I feel as if I myself touch it and get hurt.
The sensation is real.
It is perfectly automatic as well.
You may call it imaginary pain, but my seeing it and my sensation of touching it and feeling its hard surface occur almost simultaneously.
So couldn't we say that seeing and touching have something in common?
-"Ah, child, I shall never again see the flaming mountains nor the little golden flowers up there.
It will never again be light for me on this earth, never!"
-Suddenly, Heidi began to cry.
Full of compassion she sobbed,
"Who then can help you?
Is there no one?" - -(Heidi, ch.4)
Compassion is a mental state - not something physical such as "flaming mountains" or "golden flowers" -, so you you can't see it.
Nor can you touch it.
And yet, it can touch you.
If Heidi were not a child "full of compassion", nothing dramatic would have happened in this story.
The grandmother tried to comfort the child.
The old woman was touched to hear her sob so bitterly.
Heidi rarely cried, but when she did her grief was not easily overcome. (Heidi, ch.4)
Heidi rarely cries because she's full of life.
And when she cries her grief is not easily overcome because, again, she's full of life.
At least that's what the auther is trying to say.
She is defenselessly exposed to the joy and sorrow in life.
Is she strong?
Is she weak?
She is strong and weak.
And can't we say that she is strong because she can be weak?
At last the grandmother said,
"Come, my dear Heidi, come,
and I will explain something to you.
You see, when one can't see, one likes to hear a kind word,
and I like to hear you talking.
Come, sit here close to me,
and tell me what you have been doing up there..."(Heidi, ch.4)
Johanna Spyri, who wrote Heidi, was "one of the shyest people you could imagine," according to the introduction of the book I have been using to copy the illustrations in it.
The edition I have was published in 1960 (William Collines, Sons & Co.,Ltd.)
The introduction says:
"... she likes to walk alone...
Because of this she was taken away from school and allowed to do lessons alone with the village pastor.
... it meant the girl was able to spend hours alone on the mountainside near her home."
This is interesting when we think about why the old woman is blind and says she likes to hear Heidi talking.