Read an interesting lecture by
Italo Calvino yesterday entitled '
Cybernetics and Ghosts', regarding what I see as the
kabbalistic nature of literature. The lecture looks at the dual aspect of literature, on the one hand absolute, finite, and definable by mathematics (Calvino demonstrates how a computer could one day replace the author) but then, on the other, our gateway to the infinite, ever broadening it's range of knowledge and understanding. Much like our own consciousness. Calvino concludes on a note that perhaps, by reconciling these differences within literature, we might breach the labyrinthine confines of our own limitations.
What stuck me after reading this essay, was how this dichotomy between the known (absolute) and the unknown (infinite) finds it's way into all form human endeavour be it, art, literature, horseback riding, hunting, farming, etc. In fact, I see human beings to be the anomaly whose very existence embodies this dichotomy, and that is exactly why anything we do can be distilled into an expression of this duality, whether conscious or not. There are many ideas of how we became this way;
bicamerality, an
evolving consciousness, the
forbidden fruit, or, as implied my link earlier, the random exactitude of lightning....
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