I
maintain my strong interest in the relationship between the imaginary and the
external world, despite the fact that it may seem unimportant in the scheme of
things. This is the place where I like
to discuss this topic, given that this blog is, after all, named, in honor of
Novalis, after his famous collection of ideas.
The imagination was certainly a subject of interest to Novalis—Novalis
who said,
Phantasie nur gar zu gern nach den Grenzen
sich begibt, und übermütig das Unsinnliche, Übermäßige zu ergreifen und
auszusprechen sucht. (Imagination is
only too happy to push the limits, and exuberantly seeks to grasp and proclaim
the nonsensical and excessive.) Heinrich von Ofterdingen
Here we are not talking about the
“practical imagination,” that helps us to dream up new machines and new ways of
cheating death and new ways of making money.
No, we are speaking of imagination that allows us to experience what is
possible only in dreams: to fly under our own power, to visit cities out of the
lost, distant past, to walk hand in hand with the spirit of a tree, or to speak
in the languages of wolves and bears.
How are we able to experience the products of our imagination (or of the
imagination of others—through mere words), so vividly? Why are these experiences so much like the
experience of external reality? One
could certainly argue that it is because we also “imagine” the outside world,
we experience external reality through the mirror of our idea of it. The mental tools that allow us to
perceive and comprehend the external world are the same ones that we use in
constructing the imaginary (or summoning forth memory). While this might be true, it doesn’t explain
why we are able to actually experience something that doesn’t incorporate direct
sensory input, and experience it so completely.
I understand that this could be considered a philosophical question, a
psychological or general neuroscience issue, or even a subject for cognitive
linguistics or cognitive anthropology.
But my interest in this question is motivated by something very simple:
a real eagerness to improve the status and position of the imaginary in all of
our manifold human affairs.
