Margaret Atwood. ‘-artistic impulses are hard-wired into our brains’ -
‘The Metro’ is a daily freesheet handed to commuters as they board suburban trains into London. Lurid accounts of the previous day’s bodycount, and how much Amy Winehouse has had to drink, occupies the mind though Grove Park tunnel, but interest wanes long before the approach to Hither Green.
One day last week, however, an article held the attention almost to Lewisham Station.
‘THE BOOK INTERVIEW’ proclaimed the headline and Margaret Atwood is on the loose promoting her latest novel.
Perhaps Margaret Atwood wishes to add technophiles to her audience? The interviewer provided a precis of her speech. ‘The idea that religious and artistic impulses could be hard-wired into our brains - and that we probably couldn’t have one without the other - fascinates her.’
That the brain needs to understand itself, and express this search, is surely an argument for philosophy? But is Atwood saying anything more than Keats? Fingers are hovering above the ‘abort’ button, I can tell, and my laptop is coming out in sympathy, but is Margaret Atwood saying anything more than Keats who speaks of poetry being a ‘Priest-like Task?”
It is possible that academics have usurped this ‘priest-like task’; though they might argue that their relationship with artists is symbiotic. Writers produce gnostic scripts that require scholarly exegesis and the verdict is passed down to mere mortals. Most mortals have responded by abandoning the church for the music hall.
But what does Keats mean? What did he mean by ‘high romance?’ Is there a romantic ‘credo[’ in a sacred sense?
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
Academics will draw attention to subtexts and refer mere mortals to earlier scripts, to Shalkespeare - to the Bible - no, I will use the the word ‘sacred’ or the ‘numinous - or to the ancient Greeks.
But did Keats really mean this? Perhaps he meant ‘Word Cloud?”
(This seems a good point to stop.)
4 Comments
Dawkins, as with many bright folk, has some glaringly bizarre blind-spots, as well as managing to come across as a smug little shit.
The "lucid vicar" was Richard Coles BTW (ex-pop musician).
And it was Atwood who brought up the concept of "evolved adaptation" with reference to religion. Dawkins agreed with that and did not reply to her dig about evolutionary biologists having a quasi-religious taint.
Her assertation that animals don't philosophise was not challenged, to my surprise.
Dawkins does rather a prophet of a movement that exhibits some of the traits of what he rejects.
Over poetry and what Keats said. Perhaps Shelley makes the point in a defense of poetry.? I read it ages ago.
Margaret Atwood seemed to make a link between writing and religious impulses and suggests that the process is innate, I have posted on this matter before. Art being the search for ideal beauty etc
I didn't watch the Newsnight progam but I did go to a London talk on the future of the book. The star of the show had been Margaret Atwood.
I did queue up afterwards to buy a signed copy of he book and asked about the future of libraries. She made no comment and directed me to one of he aids, But I suspect she had no time.
Off to work
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