J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [125]
Smith describes his second experience as being “transcending.” It is the most blatant epiphany that any Salinger character experiences. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, he is transformed by divine revelation delivered through a blinding light. While straining away from labeling his experience as mystical, Smith stresses that the event actually occurred.
In the evening’s twilight Smith is once again drawn to the lighted display window of the orthopedic-appliance shop. Peering through the window, he becomes fascinated by the figure of a woman changing the truss on the wooden dummy. Suddenly realizing that she is being watched, the woman becomes disoriented, falling to the ground in confusion. Embarrassed but mustering nobility, she lifts herself up and resumes her task.
The girl in the window corresponds to Sister Irma. Both are devoted to a lowly calling. Yet it is actually a beautiful thing that they do because they do it with humility. Salinger made a similar point in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden and Allie were mesmerized with appreciation for the kettledrum player of Radio City Music Hall orchestra. Although the drummer struck his instrument only once or twice during the performance, he did it with such genuine dedication that Holden and Allie thought him the best drummer they had ever seen. Salinger likens this selfless dedication to spirituality when Holden comments that Jesus Himself would have liked the kettledrum player for the purity of his art.
However, the central figure in this scene is not the girl in the window or even Smith. The prop of the storefront dummy, which Smith likens to God, holds greater meaning. In the first encounter, he saw the dummy as the powerless god of a world filled with enameled urinals who ruled over his banal life of alienation as a blind, muted spectator. But the dummy changes meaning when Smith encounters it during his epiphany, and it takes on the most important message of the story—the meaning around which all other themes revolve.
Suddenly … the sun came up and sped toward the bridge of my nose at the rate of ninety-three million miles a second. Blinded and very frightened, I had to put my hand on the glass to keep my balance. When I got my sight back, the girl had gone from the window, leaving behind her a shimmering field of exquisite, twice-blessed, enamel flowers.
In a burst of light Smith experiences the revelation that beauty and value are inherent in all things, even the most lowly and untalented. Moreover, this value proclaims the presence of God. The lowly bedpans and orthopedic supplies are not just transformed into beautiful enamel flowers. They are transformed and “twice blessed.” Smith, too, is changed. He quickly reinstates his students, telling them that their previous dismissals had been an administrative mistake. He then releases Sister Irma to pursue her own destiny. “Tout le monde est une nonne,” he concludes. “Everybody is a nun.”
The end of “De Daumier–Smith’s Blue Period” contains a brief segment that returns Jean de Daumier–Smith back to ordinary but fulfilled John Smith, living in the present moment. It shows what he has learned from his experience and how his life has been stripped of phoniness and ego. In the process, Smith does not forsake his art but rather becomes his art—a more faithful rendering of the value held within self than he could have ever reproduced through his seventeen self-portraits.
Like its main character, “De Daumier–Smith” shows Salinger on the road to enlightenment, in search of spiritual direction. Consequently, despite its numerous Roman Catholic metaphors, the story is not an endorsement of Christian dogma. The experience of John Smith is basically Zen Buddhist in nature. In Zen, Smith’s epiphany is called “Satori.” A key goal of Zen Buddhism, Satori is a sudden flash of enlightenment. It is individual and intuitive and the opposite of intellectual knowledge. Often obtained through meditation, Satori