Even when hope is reduced to a single strand, hold fast

By Dr. Heather Bozant Witcher, Young Adults
Clarion Herald

In 1886, George Frederic Watts completed his first version of the painting ‘Hope,” which is now housed in a private collection. The second version – on display at the Tate in London – depicts, at first glance, a rather melancholy scene.

A blindfolded Hope sits atop a globe, holding a broken lyre. All of the strings, except one, are snapped. Hope leans forward, closely, straining to hear the faint chord.

Painted just after his daughter’s death, “Hope” depicts the painter’s grief and desolation, but it also provides a more realistic vision of the reality of hope. For when hope is needed most, it is in times of strife. Despite the fading music and the loss of sight, Hope still clings to optimism, ever-yearning for the sound remaining.

These past years have been ones of hardship. We’ve all found ourselves uttering words of optimism and cautiously hoping that 2022 will be a better year. We, like Watts’ allegorical Hope, strain to hear the sounds of a better future.

Of course, we’re blind to what is to come. Only God knows what has been planned, what is written for us. And yet, we maintain our hope.

Too often we think of hope as that feeling of expectation – our desire for something to happen. Each January, we form resolutions and goals in anticipation of our hope for the new year. But hope ­– as Watts depicted it – is not only this feeling of desire.

It is a feeling of trust.

Unseeing and surrounded by desolation, the allegorical Hope trusts that the single string will hold, will continue to pour forth sound – however faint – into the world around her. Watts eventually commented upon the figure’s blindness, saying “I made Hope blind so expecting nothing.”

What might this mean? Part of the difficulty comes from our understanding of hope as anticipation and desire. But Watts pointedly denies that aspect in his painting, choosing instead to depict trust.

We, too, are like Hope. As Catholics, we trust that God will provide for us. We trust in his protection. We trust, like Noah waiting in his ark, that we will be spared and given salvation.

With trust, we lose expectation. Instead, we find resolve and a sense of certainty.

With God, all things are possible. This, too, is the message that “Hope” grants its viewers: the possibility of beauty, the possibility of sound – of art – in a desolate world.

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