\nAlthough, the modest silver lining is of course stumbling upon it again and thinking well, there could<\/em> be a place for that\u2026<\/p>\n
While we live in a self-proclaimed world of images, and experts remind us how we are constantly solicited by and bombarded with imagery of all sorts, I often wonder if our pretended inability to digest them all is because their language has become in a way a foreign one, a background noise not inviting a reply, or even thoughts. We need to learn how to articulate our imagery, and how to tell stories again. Images were magic once. They adorned the walls of deep caverns, propitiated, evoking victory over creatures dangerous and necessary for survival. In that way, man possessed the essence of those creatures as well as their nourishing flesh.<\/p>\n Images were language once. The earliest letters, long after the earliest hieroglyphs (the meaning of \u201chieroglyph\u201d is \u201csacred carving\u201d), evoked creatures and elements. They summed up, or conjured, or invoked those things they named, and gradually gathered meanings as they grew more abstract and distanced from imagery.<\/p>\n Images were true once. Stories of ogres, dragons, princesses and knights grew in the minds of those harkening to the storytellers the Brothers Grimm patiently listened to as well. The same kinds of stories were sung and told through countless generations, before their penning by scribes. Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Jason, Arthur, and countless more, before we invented fiction as we know it, possessed images that were real in the minds of those who knew the stories.<\/p>\n Now images are no longer magic, no longer language, no longer necessarily true. They are used, abused, manipulated, commercialized and bought and sold like other commodities. We take them for granted. We associate them with immaturity \u2013 we believe \u201cserious\u201d imagery deals with life, not with things imagined.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, fantasy art is the inheritor of that magic, language and truth that once only it communicated. Fantasy is the realm of archetype, meaningless only if art itself were to disappear from the face of the earth. If I could claim as my own words written more than a century ago, it would be these: (\u201cThe truth is, when the period at which a man of talent is condemned to live is dull and stupid, the artist is, unconsciously to himself, haunted by a sensation of morbid yearning for another century\u2026 In some cases, it is a return to past ages, to vanished civilizations, to dead centuries; in others, it is an impulse towards the fantastic, the land of dreams, it is a vision more or less vivid of a time to come whose images reproduce, without his being aware, as a result of atavism, that of by-gone epochs.\u201d ~ J. K. Huysmans, \u201cAgainst the Grain\u201d, published in English in 1926.)<\/em>
\nIMAGES WERE MAGIC ONCE<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n\u201cEn effet, lorsque l\u2019\u00e9poque o\u00f9 un homme de talent est oblig\u00e9 de vivre, est plate et b\u00eate, l\u2019artiste est, \u00e0 son insu m\u00eame, hant\u00e9 par la nostalgie d\u2019un autre si\u00e8cle.\u2028.. Chez les uns, c\u2019est un retour aux \u00e2ges consomm\u00e9s, aux civilisations disparues, aux temps morts; chez les autres, c\u2019est un \u00e9lancement vers la fantastique et vers le r\u00eave\u2026\u201d ~ J. K. Huysmans (1848-1907), \u201c\u00c0 Rebours\u201d, 1884.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThe resonance of fantasy is as pertinent as ever, but fantasy is a master of disguises, and always reappears where we least expect it. The magic and the truth remain; it is up to us to learn the language again.<\/p>\n\n\n
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/the_headland.jpg\" "\\"The")
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