This year I have reacquainted myself with the novel. Any spare time I can get, I'll devour myself in a novel. The books I read often give me inspiration for art pieces, or themes and subjects that I wish to study.
So what book have you just read? Or are reading? And it doesn't have to be a novel to do this session.
I've been reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronté. This lady was a literary genius. For those who do not know this novel, its genre is Gothic Romantic (i.e. a mixture of the metonymy of gloom and horror, melancholy, foreboding landscapes and weather; with romance - pursuit, emotions and senses, alluring affection, conflict). It is a wild, passionate story of intense and monomaniacal* love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father.
The novel explores revenge, desire, love and insanity. Both Catherine and Heathcliff are rebellious, passionate, cruel, misanthropic, isolated, and wilful, have mysterious origins, lack family ties, reject external restrictions and control, and seek to resolve their isolation by fusing with a love object. Their love is cursed, as lovers they are cursed resulting in their insanity.
In this session you can make a double page spread collage in your journal by collecting and cutting out images depicting scenes from your novel, and descriptive words symbolising the novel's message.
For me I used words such as wild, violent, tempestuous, vengeance, revenge, love, passion, desire. Then I also used quotes of what the characters said to each other e.g. "Heathcliff is more myself than I am" and "I am Heathcliff", says Catherine of her unattainable lover. While Catherine is dying Heathcliff says to her "I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul."
Add other images to the collage such as acetate words and hearts. Also add any other material that epitomizes their end. I've used a quote from the Song of Songs (love poem in the bible). I have used a gel medium on my page so when I wrote the words I used a Sharpie pen which allowed me to write over glossy surfaces.
* When I researched a little about the novel (okay I can be a nerd at times) I uncovered that psychologists have examined its contents; and one of them describes their love as being monomaniacal. That is going to the extremes, of a singularization, uber-singleminded determination.
Further notes
Derek Traversi calls it "a thirst for religious experience". The existence of spirit - afterlife.
Dorothy van Ghant calls it "a metaphysical exploration". Mystery of the numinous.
Metaphysics is the branch of speculative inquiry which treats of the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity, etc; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing.
2 comments:
Excellent idea, i will definitely try that! :) thanks for the inspiration.
Your collage almost tells the story! I read the book a few years ago, it was quite hard going, but I remember the cruelty and I was quite surprised by it. Who would have thought Emily Bronte would write like that, apparently it was the only novel she wrote, the rest were poems.
Post a Comment