Fog is not a curtain in front of the landscape but a transformation of vision itself. Through precise sensory observation, an everyday phenomenon becomes a philosophical discovery.
“Night-and-fog operations” [Nacht-und-Nebel-Aktion] (as covert actions are called in German) are presumably so named because they are meant to be safeguarded from the open, all-revealing view of daylight, and hence from witnesses. Not invisible, but hidden, covered, concealed. We associate night and fog with the deprivation of sight. When there’s fog, we can no longer see the world. But, actually, we see perfectly fine—just differently. We don’t see as we see by day, with a clear view. But then, what do we see in the fog?
In general, we experience fog like this: in between an objective world of things out there (supposedly given, in and of itself) and me, as the subjective observer, fog rolls in. Between the tree and me, the fog creeps in like a wall blocking my view. But does the eye see the fog like this? Let’s call on the painters to be our eyewitnesses. With color and brush, they produce an image on the canvas in just the same way as the great “painter of the world” paints an image before our eyes. Granted, we can walk through the latter image. But, for seeing, there really is no difference between these two works of art—between the canvas and the visible world we walk through. In both cases—indeed, in all cases—sight does not really include distance. What do I mean? The painter’s canvas is a flat surface. He has no way of first building up houses, trees, and mountains on it, one behind the other, and then, in a second step, painting fog between them.
In terms of painting, a technique that perhaps comes close would be to first paint a landscape in total clarity and then apply a semi-transparent, whitish-gray layer of paint on top. Whether that would give the impression of a fog within the picture—rather than fog in front of the picture—is an open question. Fog appears to us on the canvas when the painter applies colors other than those he would use to paint a clear view (e.g., more muted, paler, and whitened). For the view to appear foggy, the painter uses the colors of the fog, not the colors of the clear view. Whoever has tried to put the colors of nature that he sees before him onto a canvas without relying on previous mental pictures knows how difficult this is. To do so, one must retrain their vision; they must turn away from mental pictures and turn toward seeing real colors—the eye’s true core function.
Fog does not enter the world as a partition but rather as a change in what appears to the senses. These changes then make up the experience ‘fog’: the sensory phenomena of the fog-free view are withdrawn, transfigured, drained of color, disembodied, and finally dissolved. Fog is a completely different situation than the clear view. We are dealing with a transformation of our entire view of the landscape. It’s similar to the differences between the seasons. Winter is not just snow settling onto our summer world; instead, everything becomes winter, everything is transformed; summer is no longer there at all, only winter. Snow needs frost to stick and comes with a cold, windswept, desolate landscape. Just as no covered-over summer landscape is found beneath the winter, so too the fog does not slide in front of our clear view. Seeing the fog then is something we have to learn to do. The following reflections are devoted to learning to see fog. What does fog do to our vision?
Clouds and Fog
Scientific understanding says that fog is actually a low-lying cloud. But is that how I experience it? Do I not see clouds as formed, towering, airy-white, sunlit appearances in the blue sky? And isn’t fog what makes everything appear without a sky? Confines us to the earthly world? Even threatens to extinguish that as well? Clouds have forms and shapes. Fog cannot be grasped as a form. It flows, billows in, and veils the world like a cold breath. Clouds are objects at a distance. Fog is something I must pass through; that makes it immersive. It takes away the horizon. As a result, there is no longer a dividing line between above and below, between sky and earth. The difference blurs in the hazy sea of fog. While, with a clear view, things are and remain arranged in perspective leading toward the horizon; in fog, we lose this orientation. The farther away from me the façade of a house is, the more it simply dissolves in the fog, which gives a rather ghostly impression. Film works with this effect; for instance, when a sweeping bridge doesn’t reach the far bank but instead—with its railing, its suspension cables, its roadway, and even the people on it—is swallowed up by fog. It’s all gone, absorbed by the fog, sucked into nothingness. Fortunately, though, not sucked into the black nothingness of a dark abyss, but, instead, into the airy, dissolving nothingness that comes from the other shore—from the beyond. Whatever enters fog enters nothingness, nirvana. That is unsettling. We almost fear that soon the ground beneath our feet will also succumb to nothingness.
As fog rolls in, distance vanishes. What could still be seen in the distance with a clear view is handed over to nothingness. In fog, the world consists only of proximity. And this proximity takes on a heightened sense of presence. It appears sharper, more present, more here and now; it affects us more deeply. When we move forward in the fog, we don’t see what’s coming toward us. The goal, which otherwise gives the journey meaning and significance, is missing. We see neither where we came from nor where we’re going. What otherwise defines the immediate surroundings as a vast context full of meaning—the landscape embraced by a distant horizon—is taken away from us in a fog. By depriving us of the horizon and the meaning-giving periphery, fog deprives us of inner and outer orientation. Anyone who has ever been caught in thick fog on a mountain hike will likely have a tale or two to tell about it. Fog throws us back upon ourselves by depriving us of visual perception. What remains is ourselves, surrounded by the closeness that belongs to us.
A Fairytale World
Whoever surrenders to the fog—that is, anyone in the fog—finds themselves in a fairytale world. They experience themselves as if enveloped in an inner space, as if in a private room, where closeness suddenly seems more alive with being than in the clear view of sober daylight. Think of the enchantment of a snow-covered winter forest as wisps of fog drift in, or of the legendary charm of lichen-draped larch branches in a foggy forest. The world still visible through the fog seems hyperreal—or, for that very reason, less real, too—more otherworldly. This is clearly evident in the world of sound as well. On the whole, everything seems more subdued, quieter. Distant sounds drift toward us from nowhere, like messages from the beyond. Sounds nearby surprise us by their clarity. They sound as though they were right by us, on us, with us. The image of the bridge disappearing into the fog makes it clear: fog appears to come toward us from beyond. Fog is a magician. With each step we take toward it or into it, it slips away from us. Again and again, it creates a close-up space of the visible things around us. People walking some distance away experience the same thing; the fog keeps slipping away from them, continuously receding. Fog dissolves our mental picture of the given world. It underscores the individual, the personal character of the world of appearances. Each person has their own fog-bounded world.
Fog Belongs to the Air
Air is, in and of itself, transparent. In the fog, it becomes turbid and gives up the selflessness through which it otherwise steps back to let the world appear. It becomes denser, colder, imposes itself upon us, covers the world. Whatever enters the fog loses its earthly solidity. The contours become softer, more cottony; the colors muted; finally, only a grayish-white silhouette remains before everything dissolves into fog—that is, into a cloudlike, airy look and feel. Fog elevates things from the solid state of matter into the airy state. It sublimates (Lat. sublimare, to lift up, to raise, to ennoble, to improve). For this to occur, the otherwise reticent air must itself become more earthly.
Fog is an offspring of the air. In its finest droplets, which can leave the world dripping wet, it shows its closeness to the watery element. In its rapid response to light, flaring up into whiteness, it shows its closeness to light. Warmth does not really have anything to do with fog. Fog is akin to the cold, to condensation. An icy chill often moves into this side of the world along with the fog. Fog is a cool and moist being of air. By day, with the sun, it brightens everything into a radiant white; there is then something promising about it. But the glare can also intensify to the point of complete disorientation. In the evening, especially in autumn, an uncomfortable chill comes with fog—a death-like atmosphere. In the fog at night, we see nothing; darkness closes in—better to not take another step; rather, stay here, rest—best to just fall asleep. Fog in sunlight speaks more to the upper human being: glare, disorientation, brightness, over-wakefulness, confusion, panic. Loss of orientation sets in. Fog at night lets us sink into the sleep of the metabolic-limb pole. In this case, it is less the loss of orientation than the loss of view, of outlook, of hope that paralyzes us.
Three basic experiences of fog can be distinguished. More in the direction of thinking: fog and sun. More in the direction of feeling: the private space around me, which seems now larger, now more narrowly bounded; it pulsates with me. More in the direction of willing: fog at night. Fog, night, and winter are alike in that they withdraw the sensory appearances. The end of this sequence is all-extinguishing death. But, as long as we are still alive, it’s worth checking in on the fog now and then as it goes about its work.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Photo Gilda Bartel
