As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
I'm interested in the conversations that have been taking place in class as well as on the blogs in regards to imagination. There seems to be an insecurity when it comes to literature and "saying smart things." Our discussion of the imagination interested me. Professor Sexson said that there are no correct interpretations of anything, but just two kinds of misreadings, or levels of thinking... which doesn't make me feel much better about not saying smart things. And then we looked at Coleridges definition:
The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
So as "imaginers,"we are usually drawing from what has already been created and the original is so brilliant and so inspired that we spend our time trying to make sense of the divine essence of the primary Imagination. We mimic that essence through words and paintings and notes of music, but those objects remain fixed and dead. I like that Coleridge uses the verb struggle to describe this process of the imagination. I falls right into Shakespeare's description of "giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." This is the process we experience as Lit majors that many other people never get to experience!
I've struggled with it. I hate those times when I have nothing to say. I think there is a correlation there with the rude mechanicals. I feel like Bottom, bumbling along without much to contribute to the world.
And I blog on... :)
This struggle we have with imagination sounds much like how we struggle with our memory, or is a direct result of our struggle with memory. It seems the primary is what we experience either consciously or unconsciously and the secondary is our recollection of that experience. In a graduate course I took from Dr. Sexson on memory and imagination, we investigated this struggle thoroughly. This may serve as a brief introduction into that discussion: http://gogonzojournal.com/entertainment/love-through-magic-confidence-through-faith-divinity-through-memory
ReplyDeleteOur discussion of dreams and our inability to recollect them mirrors this struggle with imagination because the imagination we attempt to share is actually our memory, our secondary imagination. Throughout human history we've tried to achieve primary imagination (see Bruno's memory theater, print media, recorded media, the web, consciousness upload), but the primary will forever be just beyond our grasp, and we'll be forced, as we always have been, to rely on memory.