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| George Steiner |
God is always present in a
good work of art, literature and music.
George Steiner says that in his book, Real Presences. That God
enters our being and asks us to change ourselves.
Good literature, art and
music have the power to change us. They
touch our souls, in other words.
Psychology tells us that a lot of our attitudes and behaviour are
determined by our subconscious mind. The
subconscious mind is the seat of all the suppressed emotions which can take the
shape of the devil at times – when we
lose our cool, for example. It is this subconscious mind that good literature
touches, that good music soothes or good art cools. The suppressed feelings undergo
transformation under the influence of good art, literature or music. That transformative power is God, in Steiner’s
words. Aristotle gave it a more secular name: catharsis.
The process of writing is
also deeply related to the subconscious mind.
Our themes and imagery, our style and diction, they all have their
origin in that powerhouse called the subconscious mind. Let us take three Jewish prophets, for
example, who found their place in the
Bible and stayed there for centuries. Isaiah
viewed Yahweh as a King because the prophet came from a royal family. For Amos, Yahweh was full of empathy for His
people. The fact is that Amos himself
possessed that empathy. Hosea described
Yahweh as a jilted husband because his own wife, Gomer, was unfaithful to him. Each one created Yahweh in his own image.
We will like the God of Isaiah
or Amos or Hosea depending on the needs of our own subconscious mind.
The author of sentences
like “There is no love of life without despair about life” (Albert Camus) appealed
to me much because that love as well as the despair was part of my subconscious
mind. The twilight of uncertainty in
Kafka’s novels, the hopeless hope in them, has been an integral part of my own
psyche.
God can be found not only
in the holy books or the dark corners of temples but also in the novels and
poems of good writers. Of course, God can be found in the rose in your garden
or the pine on the mountain. In the
gurgle of the brook or the murmur of the breeze. In the pages of a novel or the lines of a
poem. It all depends on the nature and
needs of your subconscious mind.
The ideal would be each
person finding his/her own God. That is
the only real God. The rest are others’
gods and they turn inevitably bloodthirsty.
The other man’s subconscious is not mine. Its devils are his. Hence his gods can’t be mine.
Like they say, God is within us. Insightful reads, soulful music and other artistic forms only help to discover that peace and contentment within us. Thank you for the post!
ReplyDeleteGod is the harmony within. Good literature and similar things help us discover or attain or at least move towards that harmony.
Delete'Harmony' - you rightly put it.
DeleteLately, God has entered into my conversations with my son who keeps asking me who created God? To be precise, he asks me who gave birth to God. I tell him that humans did. Although he is little and unable to understand the implications of what I say, he wonders. I also tell him that God is in every good thing. I tell him that to be godly means to be good. God is 'goodness' principle. And that good principle is in literature, in art, in aesthetic sensitivities of probing 'hearts'. Can God be 'found'? I think he can only be 'felt' - on the pages, in the breezes, or the fountains, or the gentle touch of loving hearts.
ReplyDeleteThat 'feeling' is also a kind of 'finding', isn't it? Inner harmony is both a feeling and a discovery. Discovery in the sense that we have to make a conscious effort to arrive at it, to get that feeling, to set the house in order.
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