Brain Food #533
Imagination as self-sustenance
Thoughts of the day
Good morning.
On Imagination by Mary Ruefle is a tiny treatise on the workings of the mind, exploring the interaction of diverse imaginations, and how one’s imagination is at play all the time. It is a delightful little book, in which Ruefle effortlessly mixes playfulness with deep wisdom.
In a chapter, she follows the imagination of Keats and Milton, as they both imagined the creation of Eve, claiming it was inspired by a dream that Adam had the night before.
“What an imagination Keats and Milton had, that they supposed, Adam being sleeping, he was dreaming of a woman! If you are asleep and a rib is taken from you, is it likely you will be dreaming of a woman? Far more likely you will be dreaming of something being taken from deep inside you. It was, of course, something Adam needed, as he was exhausted from naming all the animals, from being a poet as many have pointed out, and he had no help, he needed some help.
But it is the final lines that stand out, when Ruefle herself imagines how the creation of Eve, the way Adam had imagined it - or the way Keats and Milton had imagined Adam had imagined it - was essentially an act of self-help. A reminder of our enduring self-sustenance, which at the darkest of moments can be our fuel for persevering; if only we imagine it so.
Help came in the form of a rib taken from the depths of his own body—in other words, what he needed was somewhere deep inside himself, something deep inside himself came to his aid. How astonishing, that help come from so deep within. ”
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