One of the most outstanding examples of the expression of MLC may be
seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827). Poet, painter, engraver,
philosopher, prophet and mystic, his exploration of the human psyche was almost
equivalent to that of Carl Jung. This is evident particularly in his series of
engravings, I llustrations to the Book of Job (1821), which are not merely twenty
two illustrations but also a commentary, a radical interpretation of the Old
Testament story, an interpretation that is profoundly humanistic, existential and
transpersonal. Blake was a severe critic of mere reason and the post-Enlightenment
age and he, instead, emphasised the creative imagination and its role in spiritual
unfoldment.
This process of spiritual unfoldment is at the basis of mythopoeic writers, for
example, in what I termed Thomas Keneally’s European literature and its similarity
to the genre of Catholic novels (Hartley, 1985:iii, 101). The same spiritual
unfoldment is manifest in what I have described as the alchemical approach of
Colleen McCullough and is also obviously present in David Malouf’s corpus. For
example, in his autobiographical 12 Edmonstone Street, Malouf describes his
changed consciousness, an unfolding of the essential nature of place, in many
places but particularly in the village of Campagnacio. A tangible example is
presented again in his chapter, A Place in Tuscany, where Richard Tipping and his
film production crew are seen to be in the same physical place as Malouf but their
perception of it is entirely different, they are at a different level of consciousness, a
more egoic level of superficiality and hurriedness. Their presence, in fact, almost
affects the natural order of Malouf’s place, literally causing it to become snowbound.
I t is only when they leave that the effect of their intrusion will be reversed:
By tomorrow or the day after, the snow will be gone; the
transformation will be reversed and become a story that some
child in the village ... will tie his life to across fifty years ... and we
have it on film. You can see me taking a walk in it, from nowhere
to nowhere ... When I turn around again the room is being
restored to normal ... I t is as if a life-film were being wound
backwards (Malouf, 1985:102).
Embedded spirituality is also present in the corpus of W.B. Yeats who
perceived an archetypal, numinous, almost shamanic force at work in the daily
revelations of life when he wrote:
... I know that revelation is from the self, but from that age-long
memorized self, that shapes the mollusc and the child in the
womb, that teaches the birds to make their nest, and that genius
is a crisis that joins that buried self for certain moments to our