7thriv

From my fourth-floor inland Brooklyn apartment, I see the Statue of Liberty as I lie in bed without even lifting my head from the pillow — though for only six months of the year. When I first took the apartment, upon moving here from London in 2007, the statue didn’t seem an important factor; it was remote. I wondered if I should place the bed to face Lower Manhattan, a dramatic image looming large. Those skyscrapers are a cliff face; Liberty is a mere comma.

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Yet I chose to face her, a heroic human figure forever holding up that torch. I am a dance critic, devoting much of my life to looking at bodies in statuesque poses. I love spending time with the Classical statues in archaeological museums; my apartment is decorated with dance imagery from different cultures and centuries.

Liberty connects. Over the years she has become an obsession.

Between late May and late November, however, I can’t see her from home. Lush leaves intervene. And so in summer and autumn, missing my view of Liberty, I take walks that bring her back into sight. I often visit the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which is less than 10 minutes from my place. But I also love to draw a little nearer. So I walk down to Red Hook or cross over to Manhattan and stroll in Battery Park.

Closer, though not too close. Over 20 years ago, while I was still in London, I did the tourist thing, heading to Liberty Island and climbing up into the crown. More recently I’ve sailed around New York Harbor and near the statue with friends in a small yacht. For me, the statue in proximity is something else: marvelous but actually less wonderful. What I’ve come to cherish is to see it on the horizon.

The space between Liberty and me brings to mind Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse.” In that novel the remoteness of the lighthouse matters more than the arrival there. It reminds me of a visit to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1994, when I became riveted by the poetry of a white-and-blue domed church on the skyline. Finally, when I reached it, I found it disappointing inside and even at close quarters outside. From far away it remained my epitome of the magical light, color and shape of that city’s outline.

Psychological symbolism is certainly involved here: I’m stirred by the ardent celebration of freedom that the Statue of Liberty represents, but I’m also responding to that poignant physical gap. By loving the remote view of the statue on the harbor skyline more than being near it, I’m approaching St. Augustine’s sentiment, “Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.” Liberty, make me free, one day.

Yet many other factors and feelings are involved in gazing across the water. I don’t like to sit close to dancing in theaters: I have to feel the whole stage space around and above the dancers. It matters to me how even tiny effects of dancing can register in the depths and heights of a vast space. The marvel of Liberty is that her stance and her gesture radiate for miles.

The emotion she generates keeps changing, according to angle, distance, time of day, weather and light. Sky and water create their own drama around her. The early morning light makes her shine. She is a silhouette at sunset. And at twilight her torch is illuminated, a star above the horizon.

From afar most of the statue is simply a single, vertical thrust. But then the shoulder, the arm and the torch create a second line, subtly diagonal, up and forward into the air. When I e-mailed a photo of my apartment’s view to a London friend, she replied, “From that angle, she looks as if she’s trying to hail a cab.”

That’s not what Liberty fans want to hear, yet it catches an essential point: urgency. Especially seen in profile from across the water, Liberty’s shoulder and raised arm project a striking tension. She is always both vigilant and proclamatory.

In winter and spring I love seeing her best at dawn from my bedroom. It’s wonderful, too, to view her at night. Like the city, she never sleeps. In summer, though, I love her most from Red Hook. The look of New York Harbor there is wonderfully broad and dramatic, but Liberty is strikingly isolated. Her pedestal is barely visible, and none of her features can be made out in detail.

The sky at sunset behind her glows red and gold. The ripples of the water are dappled with the same hues. Distant planes, like tiny flies, pass over her. And there she is with that soaring arm, unsleeping, motionless but moving, a fixed image amid the elements of surrounding nature and urban civilization.