These journal entries comprise two volumes of selections
(1973-1982, 1983-2003). Volume I includes an Introduction and some
biographical memories.
As Stephane Mallarme considered literature the antithesis of
journalism, a journal is often the antithesis of a diary. It is of
less interest to record moods and events, or barriers to
self-realization, than to have ideas and insights about these. As a
journal-keeper, I am generally disinterested in diurnal details,
unless these form the compost of deeper exploration or revelation,
seeking insight into my condition, not simply its description.
A journal, therefore, is often more complex and difficult than a
diary, far less personal in depictions of daily fortune, using
everyday experiences as a stepstool (at the least) to peer beyond
the walls of psychological enclosure. I did not choose the journal
form to mask the personal, to belittle or avoid it, but to reflect
my most intimate assessment of the personal as contributing to
something greater: comprehension.
It is not enough merely to record the frustrations, joys or
barriers of living, without appraising these for what they
represent and suggest, where we learn not merely reiterate. The
ideal criteria of selection and discrimination apply not only to
ones journal, but to life as well, adding a mythological drama and
perspective that immersion alone does not permit.
In some ways, journalizing is similar in impulse to the pastoral
ethos or motif familiar in contemplative writing from Virgil to
Thoreau: one withdraws from active society, toward natural or rural
settings, in search of some form of respite, then returns to tell
of their discoveries. Some critics have seen this as the organizing
design of most North American fables--in fact, as the American
mythology, seeking to heal the serious schism between our natural
psyche and its more devastated environment; that is, a search for a
middle ground (or via media) between the primitive and the
technologically complex.
This volume of journal selections resembles that motif, focusing
on the withdrawal phase of a generally recuperative metaphysical
cycle. Such solitude is intentional, a critical phase in the
live/withdraw/live-again cycle of spiritual refreshment. A
recuperative isolation can be experienced daily, if one is
discriminating in how their time is spent, but is usually gained
more intensely over long, purposefully reclusive periods.
The motivations for my withdrawal were several, perhaps the
strongest a propensity (as described of another Irish writer) for
being nearly overcome by the variety of life. If not overcome,
certainly fatigued by events in and of themselves. A reflective
silence seemed essential to examine the roots of this propensity.
An ideal of pure time, free of most distractions (human or
otherwise), was also necessary for writing of the sort that
interested me, the personally contemplative or mystical. Only
through such reflection could I ever achieve a meaningful
connection with the more active life that surrounded me.
The predominant experience of solitude--especially in a society
where the value of withdrawal is suspect or sporadic--is the
figurative isolation one experiences throughout the entire cycle of
withdrawal and re-emergence. It is generally difficult for lovers
of action to comprehend this attraction to non-doing. One of the
aims of solitude is to reunite philosophy and religion, or rather
philosophy and awe, to not accept the social impoverishment of
these universal needs for knowledge and worship.
The asceticism of retreat was not solely the traditional and
philosophical appeal of simplicity, but the freedom from
income-producing and time-consuming work it permitted. For the
solitary, however, an ideal of pure time must be united with an
ideal of intimate association, if the mystical quest is to be
emotionally as well as spiritually and intellectua
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