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‘The void of lucidity’
Author(s) -
McNamee Brendan
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12160
Subject(s) - soul , rationality , literature , phrase , philosophy , the void , id, ego and super ego , impulse (physics) , hesiod , aesthetics , art , epistemology , psychoanalysis , linguistics , psychology , poetry , physics , quantum mechanics
The essay is an attempt to elucidate the religious themes and language of O'Connor's two novels in a way that secular readers might find enlightening. Through the motifs of vision (in Wise Blood ) and rationality (in The Violent Bear It Away ), the novels are read as playing out a philosophical conflict centring on different readings of the word ‘mystery’, that is to say, mystery as a not‐yet‐established fact as opposed to mystery as an experience, something to be lived rather than known. This conflict is examined under the headings of ‘ego’ versus ‘soul’, and ‘imaginative’ versus ‘factual’ truth, using E. M. Cioran's phrase, ‘the void of lucidity’ as a touchstone. The essay concludes that religious and artistic aspirations are different expressions of the same ineffable impulse.