ON INTERNATIONAL IMAGINATION
The word "irreal" occurs in the English language, as it
does in Spanish, French, Czech and others, but it is no more
common in English than the fiction we use it to describe.
Webster's Third International Dictionary gives the simple
definition, "not real," and, equally succinctly, you could
say that irreal fiction is non-realistic. That, however,
does nothing to distinguish an irreal story from a sword and
sorcery tale or a ghost story.
In The Art of Fiction John Gardner uses the term
irreal, along with the terms Kafkaesque expressionism and
surrealism, to describe types of
non-realistic literature. He says that irrealism, in
particular, describes the formalist work of writers like
Borges and Barthelme. In all of the forms of non-realistic
literature, however, Gardner sees a tendency to translate
"details of psychological reality into physical reality."
Further, he says that the type of reality imitated in these
non-realistic forms is that of our dreams. Because the term
surrealism is, at least where literature is concerned,
associated with concepts introduced by Andre Breton (such as
automatic writing) that do not concern us directly, and
expressionism is already attached to an artistic movement
which is only tangentially related to what concerns us, we
have chosen to use the word irreal to describe works of fiction in
which physical reality reflects psychological reality in a
manner that imitates the reality of a dream. Maybe we need
to clarify.
Erich Fromm, in his book The Forgotten Language, says
that in our dreams the sensory experiences of seeing,
hearing, etc. stand for or symbolize inner experiences,
feelings and thoughts. In other words, he says that dreams
are constructed in a symbolic language in which we express
inner experiences as if they were sensory experiences, as if
they were something we were doing or something that was done
to us in the world of things. The world outside is used as
a symbol for the world inside. This symbolic language,
according to Fromm, is an international and universal
language, the only language all human beings have in common
and the language in which our dreams are created. Some of
the symbols, he says, are universal, with an intrinsic
relationship between the symbol and that which it
symbolizes, the way water is so often used to symbolize
life. This is because there is a correspondence between an
emotion or thought (say, our relief when crops grow
abundantly) and a sensory experience (say, rain on a dry
day). Such symbols occur in our dreams and also in myths,
fairy tales and symbolic works of literature. Then there
are the accidental symbols which are highly personal and in
which there is no intrinsic relationship between the symbol
and that which it symbolizes. These also occur in our
dreams, but Fromm says that accidental symbols are not
likely to be used in myths, fairy tales or symbolic works of
literature because they are so specific to the individual
and are not readily understood without lengthy comment from
the writer. However, we contend that, in irreal fiction,
the dreamlike nature of the work is sustained precisely by
the writer's use of accidental symbols without comment.
Borges' labyrinth, Kafka's bureaucratic mazes, Carrington's
horses all seem to come from intense personal experiences
but are used in fiction as they would occur in a
dream--without comment and with intense emotional and
psychological import. As a result, irreal fiction, like dreams, is both
deeply personal and truly international. Each individual
writer has a set of symbols that he or she works with, just
as each person's dreams reflect a highly individual set of
life experiences. But the symbolic language itself and the
way it is used is universal -- everyone dreams, regardless
of where she or he lives or when. So, too, the overall
rubric of irreal fiction is as recognizable in a story by
Argentinian writer Luisa Valenzuela as it is in a story by
Japanese writer Kobo Abe. What then are the qualities
irreal fiction shares?
It is, in a way, as hard to specify these qualities as
it is to relate the content of last night's dream. However,
there are a few things that are clear. First of all, irreal
fiction puzzles the reader and makes her or him think the
way a particularly arresting dream does. This fiction
challenges the reader by presenting the world, not in terms
of an exact mimetic representation of what we see everyday
but in a way that undermines our very sense of what is
real. Although it is not always apparent, dreams tell a
story, as Sartre notes in The Psychology of Imagination, and
they are not just a random jumble of images culled from the
subconscious; therefore, the conventions of storytelling,
such as character, plot and setting, are important, at least
to some extent. There is, of course, room for the absurd,
for humor and nonsense. Not all dreams make sense. Nor are
they gravely serious. Finally, ambiguity is important,
since things are not spelled out for us in dreams but must
be mulled over and learned from.
Irrealism, then, gives us highly individual stories
from widely international sources told with great
imagination by drawing on the universal language of our
dreams and the intensely personal symbols of the writer. The
Cafe Irreal hopes to find and to present irreal fiction from
around the world, so that both the word irreal and the
fiction we use it to describe will become much more
commonplace in the English language.
(aw)
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