review kunsbulletin (ger)

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Absolution the young boy Rudolph Miller is introduced to a metaphor during a conversation with the local priest:

"Did you ever see an amusement park?"
"No, Father."
"Well, go and see an amusement park." ... "It's a thing like a fair, only much more glittering. Go to one at night and stand a little way off from it in a dark place--under dark trees. You'll see a big wheel made of lights turning in the air, and a long slide shooting boats down into the water. A band playing somewhere, and a smell of peanuts--and everything will twinkle. But it won't remind you of anything, you see. It will all just hang out there in the night like a colored balloon--like a big yellow lantern on a pole."/... /

He sat there, half terrified, his beautiful eyes open wide and staring at Father Schwartz. But underneath his terror he felt that his own inner convictions were confirmed. There was something ineffably gorgeous somewhere that had nothing to do with God.
Absolution by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1926)

An Island consists of an abstraction of Gröna Lund in Stockholm. The amusement park is seen from afar by night. Its illuminations silhouette an elusive scenario, a something which can only be fully experienced from a distance. If we go too close reality will interfere and the apparition will turn into nothingness. The contrast between light and darkness and their inherent relationship can here be seen as a parallel to Wittgenstein.

Text from Katarina Löfström's web page. https://www.katarinalofstrom.com/article/90/an-island