The Metaphysics of Mirrors

[Freyasfire]

I can't think of a story more fitting to this theme than "One Thing About the Night" by Terry Dowling. It involves quite eerie metaphysical examinations in a hexagonal room made entirely of mirrors. I found the story quite masterful and haunting. It is available in both Ellen Datlow's anthology The Dark and also in Dowling's collection Basic Black.

[bendk]

I can't remember if Stoker used the whole vampires can't see themselves in the mirror or not. It has been a long time since I read it. It would be interesting to see where that bit of folklore came about.There was some mirror gazing in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the classic lines of "Mirror, mirror, on the wall..." from Snow White might be worth a look. Some of those fables might fall within the genre, witches and all.

And I will second DoktorH's recommendation for the movie The Broken. Good flick, even though it has one gratuitous gore scene.

[gveranon]

Another Borges passage:

"From the remote depths of the corridor, the mirror spied upon us. We discovered (such a discovery is inevitable in the late hours of the night) that mirrors have something monstrous about them. Then Bioy Cesares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had declared that mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men."

-- from "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (trans. James E. Irby)

[Michael]

I tend to think of this concept (the metaphysics of mirrors) and dopplegangers as linked. I don't know if that's a possible avenue for stories but it seems like a strong connection.

Also, related to Acutely Decayed's post, Brian Greene's relatively recent book "The Hidden Reality" seems to describe some of the concepts of actual "mirror universes"/mirror realities. I really think your idea of the Metaphysics of Mirrors is a fascinating one and is a powerful metaphor for the fractured nature of reality. To me it is as powerful an image/concept as Ligotti's use of the marionette as a metaphor for human existence.

[gveranon]

Quote

so – metaphysics wise or physics wise …I get confused – the stars we see may actually be multiple images of the same originator whose light has travelled either directly or around one or more times the tubular (or other shaped) space-time we inhabit. The upshot is we actually may not be seeing very much (relatively) – but what we see is multiplied by the shape of space – the direct analogy of a room with mirror walls is used. How many of the stars we see may be “ghosts/reflections” is unclear…. since the light travels different distances many images would appear different ages… reflecting stale infinities…. Phenomenally a crystal lattice repeated across our field of view was another analogy used – taking things to extremes there is some real potential for claustrophobic horror here I think

This reminds me of the following passage of astral claustrophobia. It is probably not a mirror passage, unless the first sentence can be read as implying such.

"It is difficult to explain, then, how the old town also conveyed an impression of endlessness, of proliferating unseen dimensions, at the same time that it served as the very image of a claustrophobe's nightmare. Even the nights above the great roofs of the town seemed merely the uppermost level of an earthbound estate, at most an old attic in which the stars were useless heirlooms and the moon a dusty trunk of dreams. And this paradox was precisely the source of the town's enchantment. I imagined the heavens themselves as part of an essentially interior decor. By day: heaps of clouds like dust balls floated across the empty rooms of the sky. By night: a fluorescent map of the cosmos was painted upon a great black ceiling. . . ."

-- Thomas Ligotti, "The Sect of the Idiot"

[Gray House]

"The Trap", by Lovecraft and Henry S. Whitehead.

"Puppets Holding Mirrors", by Thomas Wiloch, included in Mr. Templeton's Toyshop. Quotes from it:

"The puppets hold mirrors in their little wooden hands. The mirrors are mnemonic weapons to startle us into ourselves. We look in the mirrors. We see our own reflections. Our eyes brighten. A smile crosses our lips. We are suddenly within our own bodies again, breathing crystal air."

"There are puppets and men in this world. The puppets sit on shelves with mirrors in their hands. Look in here, they seem to say. Look in the mirror. It is very easy to forget your face, your own name. The puppets and the mirrors remind us of ourselves. They define our limited dimensions."

In film, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness.

[MagnusTC]

Robert Smithson about the Ultraist architecture (and fiction: H. G. Wells, Borges, ...) of the 1930's:

"Tarnished reflections are all that remain of the 'thirties. An infinite multiplication of looking-glass interiors, that could only spell doom to the naturalist. The 'thirties recover that much hated Gnostic idea that the universe is a mirror reflection of the celestial order - a monstrous system of mirrored mazes. The 'thirties become a decade fabricated out of crystal and prisms, a world heavy with illusion. Never has the phantasmal appeared so solid. The mirror promises so much and gives so little, it is a pool of swarming ideas or neoplatonic archetypes and repulsive to the realist. It is a vain trap, an abyss, nevertheless the cold distant people of the Ultramoderne installed themselves in many versions of the Hall of Mirrors. They lived in interiors of gloss and glass, in luminous skyscrapers, in rooms of rarefied atmospheres and airless delights. The overuse of the mirror turned buildings, no matter how solid and immobile, into emblems of nothingness. Building exteriors were massive and windows were often surrounded by tomb-like mouldings and casements, but the interior mirrors multiplied and divided 'reality' into perplexing, impenetrable, uninhabitable regions."

[Draugen]

Mise en Abyme by Quentin S Crisp. I haven't read it for a while but this story is springing to mind!

[The New Nonsense]

Somewhat related... You may be interested in checking out Arnaud Maillet's, The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art.

Amazon.com: The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art (9781890951481): Arnaud Maillet, Jeff Fort: Books

 

Amazon.com: The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art (9781890951481): Arnaud Maillet, Jeff Fort: Books

[Acutely decayed]

Quote Originally Posted by Michael

Brian Greene's relatively recent book "The Hidden Reality"

I have read about half of this (it got recalled to the library by another reader, and I hope to complete it sometime) - but I was enjoying it more than his other books - maybe because it had more of a science-fiction feel.

Some of the models in this gave a feeling of really infinite possibilities where everything that could happen will be happening somewhere (maybe even an infinite number of somewheres) - when i read Luminet soon after the model he was proposing seemed somehow both more likely and much less appealing...

I just pick at these books between fiction reading - so I usually only finish them over a timescale of months to years.....