A particular light, a moment's radiance, a sunset – any of these might set them off.
But I love the Byzantine splendour of his Symphony of Psalms, the austere radiance of the Mass or the kaleidoscopic stylistic play of Agon – products of the 1930s, 40s and 50s – just as much as this epoch-making evocation of the archaic rituals of Russian spring.
"You can't possess radiance," it warned.
He thinks Princess Diana fancies him ("there was something about her eyes that went beyond radiance", he writes, reviving the skills he honed in another former job, as a writer for a pornographic magazine).
As her six children recall, she returned in a state of "radiance and exhilaration", thrilled to have accomplished the pilgrimage for three years in a row.
Although the image is familiar from reproductions, the radiance of the painting is surprising.
In fact, it comes from the Bhagavad Gita (11 12): "If the light of a thousand suns suddenly arose in the sky, that splendor might be compared to the radiance of the Supreme Spirit" (translation by Juan Mascaró).
Her protagonist is both a fan of science and its victim.Born in Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers first rose towards the sun, Ray Foster or "Fos", as if short for "phosphorescence"—is fascinated by radiance.
As a child, wandering in May on a forest path above Baden in a year he had forgotten, he had suddenly been filled with such a sense of the radiance and oneness of creation that he thought the vision would last for ever.
Illumination may express itself in actual radiance.
The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.
