Iris and Hawthorn

I happen to be reading Iris Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil and came across the passage cited below. A priest (who confesses to being an atheist) is arguing with a philosopher (who has an uncompromising belief in the truth of rationality). They pass a hawthorn…

They were just passing a hawthorn bush, it could scarcely be called a tree, which was putting out, amid its healthy shining thorns, sharp little vivid green buds.

‘The beauty of the world,’ said John Robert. ‘Unfortunately I am insensitive to it. Though it might have point as contrast to art. Art is certainly the devil’s work, the magic that joins good and evil together, the magic place where they joyfully run together. Plato was right about art.’

‘You enjoy no art form?’

‘No.’

Murdoch inverts Proust’s hawthorn scene: In the absence of art the hawthorn is all thorns, a ragged bush.

To leave on a positive note, here is a detail of a scan of a glad:

Scan of a gladiolus