Thom Gunn and Caravaggio's Conversion of St. Paul

The action of the poem progresses with visual images—“I see,” “I see,” “the painter saw”—which provide a striking contrast to Saul's blindness. And the poet's turning in the last stanza is set against Paul's etymologically related conversion. The poem also moves from darkness and light in the chapel and painting to dimness in the church while subtly suggesting parallels between the biblical Saul's encounter with God and the modern poet's encounter with the Baroque picture. Unlike Saul, another hard case, Gunn does not accept religious belief. In this account of the poet's celebration of aesthetic pleasure, rejection of religious illusion and acceptance of doubt, the solitary modern man reaches out both to embrace and resist nothingness. It is no accident—in this work of sight and insight, mystery and revelation--that the next poem in the book is suggestively called “The Annihilation of Nothing” and begins with the devastating word “Nothing.”