may be illustrated in the case of Marcel Proust. Proust achieved his own mystical
mythopoeic vision of temps perdu (forgotten periods of the past) initiated by the
simple act of eating a madeleine dipped in herbal tea, after which he spent the rest
of his life pursuing his vision, locked in his cork-lined room attempting to re-create
his own past in minute detail (Carter, 2000:494). He thereby discovered his own
inner laws of creation and imagination and produced, between 1913 and 1927, a
masterpiece, I n Search of Lost Time.
What I identify as MLC is generally and erroneously identified simply as the
‘literary imagination’ that often is understood to mean a talent to write convincingly
or creatively. MLC is much more than that and is rather an awareness and
experience of an aspect of the collective unconscious. I t could well be a psycho-
spiritual state in which the mythopoeic writer experiences an intense awareness of
diverse events, personalities and realities, which resonate across time and space.
The dimension in which this occurs is the I maginal Realm which, as in the case of
Mary Renault and her uncanny knowledge of Alexander and of the places of his
time, manifests as a heightened awareness of that milieu, event, character or place.
I t can be, potentially, a numinous experience whilst in an altered state of
consciousness, similar to SC. MLC also has the potential, to facilitate the vicarious
participation of the reader, usually in a way that is instinctual and non-doctrinaire
and which results in a heightened awareness of that scene, event, character or
place. I t also, as was shown from the reader responses, can be a numinous
experience whilst the reader is in a reverie, an altered state of consciousness.
For example, Reader 3 said of reading, consciousness becomes internalised
as you cut yourself off from the sensory aspects of the physical world, whilst Reader
5 described the act of reading as one of becoming totally self-absorbed. The
consummate response, however, was given by Reader 1 who said that, ... Reading
is re-creative, just as the spirit recreates itself when we are waking and sleeping - at
conscious and unconscious levels ....She said that reading ... has a religious,
spiritual dimension that ... promotes some kind of awakening, ... reading is like
praying, opening the mind to the unknown and the soul.
As was shown from the textual research in Chapter 5, that altered state of
consciousness involved in writing with its imaginal assemblage, comprising elements
of history, biography and place-elsewhere-place, forces the mythopoeic writer and
reader to drift at a point between the knowledge of the reality of their physical
circumstances and that of the fictive milieu of the novel. I t may also consist of
ron
(Ron)
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