Jeanette Winterson quotes at the beginning of her book part of a lecture on poetry (Professor Bradley: 1901. Oxford) and i loved it:
“The nature of a work of art
is to be not a part, nor yet
a copy of the real world
(as we commonly understand
that phrase)
but a world in itself
independent, complete, autonomous,
and to possess it fully
you must enter that world
conform to its laws
and ignore for the time the beliefs,
aims, and particular conditions
which belong to you
in the other world of reality”
Different worlds…it is certainly what it feels like when writing or creating a new work.
When i was first year university student, back in the early 70’s, i remember the title of one of my essays, in regard to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”. My lecturer asked “What is real and what is illusion?” i think i have lived this question ever since, never sure of ‘real’ and never sure of ‘illusion’. Perhaps our world is both, and we move from what we think is real, to illusion and back again.
walking the labyrinth...real or illusion?