|
"Entering into us, the painting, the sonata, the poem brings us into reach of our own nativity of consciousness. It does so at a depth inaccessible in any other way. Literature and the arts are the perceptible witness to that freedom of coming into being of which history can give us no account. Hence the utterly arresting congruence between Aristotle’s assertion in the Poetics that fiction is 'truer and more universal than history' and Jung’s inference of archetypes, of inherited figurations and narrative icons, at the roots of human consciousness. I find this congruence seductive. But there is, I repeat, no external evidence for it whatever. It may be pure fantastication."
— Steiner, George. Real Presences (p. 182). |
See also "divine universals" in this journal
and a "three coins" meditation from 2003 . . .
From Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle :
Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy?
What are we supposed to learn?”
“You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,”
Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing.
“Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with
holes in the center. “I generally use these.”
This suggests … The Man in the High Tower —
[Actually “The Gorge” script by Zach Dean.]
Cue the Bernstein.