The Imaginative Type And Association Of Ideas
I have questioned a very great number of imaginative persons, well known
to me as such, and have chosen preferably those who, not making a
profession of creating, let their fancy wander as it wills, without
professional care. In all the mechanism is the same, differing scarcely
more than temperament and degree of culture. Here are two examples.
B......, forty-six years of age, is acquainted with a large part of
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Europe, North America, Oceania, Hindoostan, Indo-China, and North
Africa, and has not passed through these countries on the run, but,
because of his duties, resided there some time. It is worthy of remark,
as will be seen from the following observation, that the remembrance of
such various countries does not have first place in this brilliant,
fanciful personage--which fact is an argument in favor of the very
personal character of the creative imagination.
"In a general way, imagination, very lively in me, functions by
association of ideas. Memory or the outer world furnishes me some data.
On this data there is not always, though there should be, imaginative
work proper, and then things remain as they are, without end.
"But when I meet a construction--it matters little whether ancient or in
the course of erection--the formula, 'That ought to be fixed,' is one
that rises mechanically to my mind in such a case; often it happens that
I think aloud and say it, although alone. When going away from the
architectural subject under consideration, I make up infinite
variations upon it, one after another. Sometimes the things start from a
reflex...."
After having noted his preference for the architecture of the Middle
Ages, B...... adds (here he touches on the unconscious factor):
"Were I to explain or attempt to explain how the Middle Ages have such
an attraction for my mind, I should see therein an atavistic
accumulation of religious feeling fixed in my family, on the female side
no doubt, and of religiousness in ecclesiastical architecture--these
touch.
"Another example illustrating the role of association of ideas in the
same matter. One Sunday night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr.
F...... who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from there. At the
moment of our arrival the doctor asked what time it was. 'Half-past
two,' I said, looking at my watch. As we stopped in the convent court
in front of the chapel I heard the lusty conclusion of a psalm. 'They
are singing vespers,' I remarked to the doctor. He commenced to laugh.
'What time are vespers sung in your town?' 'At half-past two,' I
answered. I opened the chapel door in order to show the doctor that
vespers had just been held: the chapel was vacant. As I stood there,
somewhat non-plussed, the doctor remarked, 'Cerebral automatism.'
"I may add here, by association of ideas. The doctor had seen through
me, and had with fine insight perceived why I had heard the end of
the psalm. The incident made a great impression on me, all the more as
ever since the age of eight my memory testifies to a like hallucination,
but of sight in place of hearing. It was at L...... that on Good Friday
they rang at the cathedral with all their might. It was the very moment
before the bells remain silent for three days, and it is known that this
silence, ordained in the liturgy, is explained to children by telling
them that during these two days the bells have flown to Rome. Naturally
I was treated to this little tale, and as they finished telling it, I
saw a bell flying at an angle that I could still describe.
"But this transforming power of my imagination is not present in me to
the same extent as regards all things. It is much more operative in
relation to Romano-Gothic architecture, mystic literature, and
sociological knowledge than in relation, for instance, to my memories of
travels. When I see again, in the mind's eye, the Isle of Bourbon,
Niagara, Tahiti, Calcutta, Melbourne, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, the
graphic representation is intellectually perfect. The objects live again
in all their external surroundings. I feel the Khamsinn, the desert
wind that scorched me at the foot of Pompey's Column; I hear the sea
breaking into foam on the barrier reef of Tahiti. But the image does not
lead to evocation of related or parallel ideas.
"When, on the other hand, I take a walk over the Comburg moor, the
castle weighs upon me in all its massiveness; the recollections of the
Memoires d'Outre-tombe besiege me like living pictures. I see, like
Chateaubriand himself, the family of great famished lords in their
feudal castle. With Chateaubriand I return in the twinkling of an eye to
the Niagara that we have both seen. In the fall of the waters I find the
deep and melancholy note that he himself found; and after that I think
of that dark cathedral of Dol that evidently suggested to the author his
Genie du Christianisme.
"In literature, things are very unequally suggestive to me. Classic
literature has only few paths outwards for me--Tacitus, Lucretius,
Juvenal, Homer, and Saint-Simon excepted. I read the other authors of
this class partly for themselves, without making a comparison. On the
other hand, the reading of Dante, Shakespeare, St. Jerome's compact
verses on the Hebrew, and Middle Age prose excites within me a whole
world of ideas, like Wagner's music, canto-fermo, and Beethoven.
Certain things form a link for me from one order of ideas to another.
For example, Michaelangelo and the Bible, Rembrandt and Balzac, Puvis de
Chavannes and the Merovingian narratives.
"To sum up: There are in me certain milieux especially favorable to
imagination. When any circumstance brings me into one of them, it is
rare that an imaginative network does not occur; and, if one is
produced, association of ideas will perform the work. When I give myself
up to serious work, I have to mistrust myself: and in this connection I
shall surprise people when I say that in the class of ideas above
indicated the subject exciting the most ideas in me is sociology."
M......, sixty years of age, artistic temperament. Because of the
necessities of life, he has followed a profession entirely opposite to
his bent. He has given me his "confession" in the form of fragmentary
notes made day by day. Many are moral remarks on the subject of his
imagination--I leave them out. I note especially the unconquerable
tendency to make up little romances and some details in regard to visual
representation, and a dislike for numbers.
"It happens that I experience sharp regret when I see the photograph of
a monument, e.g., the Pantheon, the proportions of which I have
constructed according to the descriptions of the monument and the idea
that I had of the life of the Greeks. The photograph mars my dream.
"From the seen to the unknown. In the S. G. library. A slender young
woman, smartly dressed--spotless black gloves--between her fingers a
small pencil and a tiny note-book. What business has this affectation
this morning in a classic and dull building, in a common environment of
poor workmen? She is not a servant-maid, and not a teacher. Now for the
solution of the unknown. I follow the woman to her family, into her
home, and it is quite a task.
"In the same library. I want to get an address from the Almanach
Bottin. A young man, perhaps a student, has borrowed the ridiculous
volume. Bent over it, his hands in his hair, he turns the leaves with
the sage leisure of a scholar looking for a commentary. From the empty
dictionary he often draws out a letter. He must have received this
letter this morning from the country. His family advises him to apply to
so-and-so. It is a question of money and employment. He must locate the
people who, provincial ignorance said, are near him. And so goes the
wandering imagination.
"When I feel myself drawn to anyone, I prefer seeing images or portraits
rather than the reality. That is how I avoid making unforeseen
discoveries that would spoil my model.
"If I make numerical calculations, in the absence of concrete factors,
the imagination goes afield, and the figures group themselves
mechanically, harkening to an inner voice that arranges them in order to
get the sense.
"There may be an imagination devoted to arithmetical
calculations--forms, beings intrude, even the outline of the figure 3,
for example; and then the addition or any other calculation is ruined.
"I revert to the impossibility of making an addition without a swerve of
imagination, because plastic figures are always ready before the
calculator. The man of imagination is always constructing by means of
plastic images. Life possesses him, intoxicates him, so he never
gets tired."