I recently read a wonderful book by Marilynne Robinson entitled Housekeeping. Marilynne Robinson incants a book of poetry in prose that explores the tenuous relationship between perception and “reality” and thus addresses the major theme of my work. The faithful, transcendental Ruth who is the protagonist of the story is contrasted with Lucille, her sister who chooses to be grounded in the “real world.” Ruth, however, tells a tale in which her consciousness speaks directly to us and merges her experience of natural life into the deeper mystery of things much as a primitive might when confronted with a dark woods or deep lake—pantheistically.
We cannot know the natural world directly, but only indirectly through our senses as organized by the software of our brain. This inescapably means that we are simultaneously observer and part of the reality that we are observing. Ruth loses herself in this process, but her loss is our gain because her narrative poetically communicates her deep feeling for the mystery of existence. Consider this passage:
For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it?
Ruth realizes that need is more intense than fulfillment because our mental perception of the thing is more intense than the thing itself. The berry in our mouth has only the physical sensations a berry gives and is limited to an event in time; our mental image of enjoying the berry contains that plus all the other thoughts and sensations associated with it, e.g., a mother’s blueberry pie, a daughter’s purple smile, the thrill of stealing the neighbor’s berries as a child, the best blueberry we ever ate.
This is the power of Art; it leverages our imagination to better appreciate the mystery of our existence. It creates an emotional response in our mind; it creates new thoughts and feelings about the subject and sometimes about art itself; it creates a deeper appreciation of beauty in all its forms. Housekeeping is a homeward looking work of loving, transcendent beauty.
No. 47 Housekeeping
I recently read a wonderful book by Marilynne Robinson entitled Housekeeping. Marilynne Robinson incants a book of poetry in prose that explores the tenuous relationship between perception and “reality” and thus addresses the major theme of my work. The faithful, transcendental Ruth who is the protagonist of the story is contrasted with Lucille, her sister who chooses to be grounded in the “real world.” Ruth, however, tells a tale in which her consciousness speaks directly to us and merges her experience of natural life into the deeper mystery of things much as a primitive might when confronted with a dark woods or deep lake—pantheistically.
We cannot know the natural world directly, but only indirectly through our senses as organized by the software of our brain. This inescapably means that we are simultaneously observer and part of the reality that we are observing. Ruth loses herself in this process, but her loss is our gain because her narrative poetically communicates her deep feeling for the mystery of existence. Consider this passage:
For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it?
Ruth realizes that need is more intense than fulfillment because our mental perception of the thing is more intense than the thing itself. The berry in our mouth has only the physical sensations a berry gives and is limited to an event in time; our mental image of enjoying the berry contains that plus all the other thoughts and sensations associated with it, e.g., a mother’s blueberry pie, a daughter’s purple smile, the thrill of stealing the neighbor’s berries as a child, the best blueberry we ever ate.
This is the power of Art; it leverages our imagination to better appreciate the mystery of our existence. It creates an emotional response in our mind; it creates new thoughts and feelings about the subject and sometimes about art itself; it creates a deeper appreciation of beauty in all its forms. Housekeeping is a homeward looking work of loving, transcendent beauty.