Pliny and the Light of Desire

An irate teacher reprimands a class at the Utrecht Technical School, demanding the name of the person who drew his caricature. The scapegoat turns out to be Wilhelm Röntgen, who is immediately expelled.

Fair? He always denied being the author of the drawing. His claim of innocence was not enough, however, and he was forced to continue his studies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The move proved decisive because it was there that he met August Kundt, a professor who awakened in him a passion for the study of light.

One afternoon, Röntgen—then twenty-one years old and an assistant to that physics professor—stopped at the Zum Grünen Glas bar for coffee, unaware that there he would meet the woman who would steal his heart. Anna Ludwig, twenty-seven, was tall, dark-haired, and perfectly formed. She served in her father's café, which is why so many students flocked there. After three years of drinking coffee, Wilhelm proposed to his beloved and offered her an engagement ring, despite the opposition of Friederich Röntgen, who wanted his son to find a woman of equal standing and no older than himself. He tried to break Wilhelm's will by suspending his allowance. It was a hard blow for the groom, accustomed to living comfortably, but he did not give up on love. They only married in 1872, six years after they met and three after their engagement.

Pliny tells us in his Natural History , XXX: a young woman holds a flame in her left hand. In her right, a piece of coal. Before her stands the young man she loves. But Butades' daughter does not look at her beloved as he sets off for battle; she leans over his head to draw the line that the shadow of his hair traces on the wall. Butades' daughter is afflicted with desiderium .

Perhaps a second text would be helpful to understand the myth Pliny refers to. In Tusculanae Quaestiones IV, Cicero defines desire : "Desiderium est libido videndi eius qui non adsit " ( desire is the libido to see someone who is not there). Desideratio is perceived as the joy of seeing the absent person, despite their absence. The word " desiderium" can be translated by the words "remembrance" or "regret ." And also, of course, by the word "desire" from which it originated. If we break it down, within the "de-siderium ," within the absent star, lies a return of what was lost and reappears despite its loss.

Love seeks something that isn't there. The young woman "seems absent" to the one she loves, even though he's right in front of her. But while he's before her eyes, she anticipates his departure; imagines his death; even in his presence, she misses him: she desires the man who is there.

Let us unravel, behind desideratio , another Latin word: consideratio – in Latin, it consisted of discovering how the stars come together to form a constellation in the night sky. How, depending on the seasons, they arrange themselves and their influence, on fixed dates, falls upon people, animals, plants, river flow, lake level, or tides. In Latin, the stars are called sidera . The sidera bring the seasons; they haunt, for they govern their appearance and disappearance. They mark the rise and fall of beings. Their absence ( de-sideratio ) was lamented according to the time of the month or the season. The Portuguese word "desire" derives relief from this desideratio ( the regret of an absence in the night sky). For the stars return to their hiding place with the salmon at their origin.

Let us consider , then, the mysterious scene of the potter's daughter who forgets a man and contemplates a shadow: the young woman does not hold her lover in her arms. With her right hand, she holds an unlit ember. With her left hand, in the darkness of the night, she moves an oil lamp. Suddenly, she raises the flame above her eyes, so that it projects the shadow of what she sees behind what she sees. She does not caress the shadow or press the bulk of her body against it.

With charcoal, he carefully outlines the outline of that obscure reflection on the wall's surface. He doesn't enjoy it; he doesn't take advantage of its presence; he's no longer even with it; he looks at it absently; he misses it; he desires that man; he dreams of him.

The young Greek woman clings to the edge of the shadow of a man preparing to depart. The man departed. He died—and Pliny's commentators add that the young man, throwing himself against the enemy ranks, died so gloriously that his name was praised by the city at the end of the campaign. They commissioned a stele from a potter.

The potter was Butades, the young woman's father. He recreates the silhouette his daughter drew on the wall with a piece of charcoal, transforming the "shadow outline" into an "earth relief" that is immediately fired in the kiln. And how does the father light the kiln? By lighting the piece of charcoal his daughter held in her hand on the night of her departure.

Röntgen was appointed rector of the University of Würzburg in 1894, but he continued to dedicate himself to research with the same enthusiasm as ever. On November 8, 1895, in the darkness of his laboratory, he discovered that the cathode rays he was working with seemed to pass through certain objects. He began experimenting with them under different conditions, and the greatest surprise came when he passed his hand through them: he could see his bones.

Aware of the importance of what he had discovered, he thought of a way to photograph it. On December 22nd, he took the first X-ray in history: a hand, the hand of Anna, whom he had proposed to in 1869. And on this light-sensitive film, the engagement ring he had given her appears, black, as if drawn in charcoal.

Röntgen received the Nobel Prize in 1900. He donated the money to the University, reserving the right to name his discovery, because everyone called it Röntgenstrahlen (Röntgen's ray) and he preferred another name. Because they were unknown, he called them X-rays .

Love does not simply love the absent – it illuminates and redeems them.