Shame
The Unseen
Social threat from an interior breach. The turned-away face. Shame is about what one is, where guilt is about what one did, and that is the entire difference between them.
The word
Old English scamu, from a Germanic root usually traced to an older word meaning to cover. The etymology is the phenomenology: shame is the impulse to hide made into a noun. Nearly every language pairs it with the same gestures, the lowered eyes, the turned-away face.
The feeling
Heat that wants darkness. The eyes drop on their own, the body folds inward a fraction, and the self is suddenly an object, seen from outside and found wanting. It generalizes instantly: not that was bad but I am. Under it, speech becomes difficult, which is part of its cruelty; the state that most needs saying aloud is the one that closes the throat.
Against its neighbours
Guilt attaches to an act and can be discharged by repair; shame attaches to the self, and no single repair addresses a self. Embarrassment is exposure without a verdict; shame is the verdict.
In the work
A figure withholding its front. The composition offers a body and refuses the face, and the refusal is the subject.
No work carries Shame yet. The element is named and the table is not finished.