Journeys in Poetry, Painting and Philosophy

Abstract

A SOTERIOLOGY is a system of salvation: like going to heaven, achieving enlightenment, and so on. I shall set aside the notion of human destiny which is central to it. But I shall retain two other notions which are part of its meaning. First, there is the view that it is possible and desirable to move from an unsatisfactory state of consciousness to a more satisfactory one. Second, is the view that this aspect of human affairs can be designated 'spiritual'. I will not offer a definition ofthat word here.1 What is important is that I regard poetry and painting as spiritual exercises, and that they become even more so when linked with the kind of transitional journeys which I will describe.In literature, this transition is often presented using the metaphor of a journey. Some well-known examples include Dante's poem The Divine Comedy in which the protagonist travels through Hell and Purgatory to a vision of Heaven and the unity of all things;2 John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress which portrays Christian's journey from the City of Destruction through the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and so on to the Eternal City;3 and Farid Ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds which describes the journey of the birds across seven valleys - the Valley of Love, the Valley of Understanding and so on, until they arrive in the presence of the Simurgh, the Great Bird which is a symbol of God.4Even if different symbols are sometimes used, such proposed transitions can also be found in philosophy. In the Republic, Plato imagines an educational journey from the shadowy world of the cave to the brilliant sunshine of knowledge of the Forms.5 In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes tells the story of his journey of reasoning from doubt to purported certainty.6 In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus proposes a human journey from pushing a Sisyphusian rock up a hill to a liberating revolt against the absurdity of this condition.7 The journey motif appears to be a basic part of our way of describing human experience and aspirations.The five journeys to be described here are nothing like the grand narratives, as some postmodernists may wish to call them, of Bunyan and Plato. They are small-scale soteriologies, as I insist on calling them, which are located in this life. They are mostly autobiographical in nature, and are, perhaps, a little more elaborate than Joycean epiphanies - Joyce too reached for a spiritual word to name his insight - but there is something epiphanic at their root.In each case, the poem was written before I did the accompanying painting. So it could be said that the poetic impulse was the driving force. The painting and philosophising were later developments. The paintings were not intended as illustrations of the poems, for the paintings insisted on going their own way. The poetry, painting and philosophy are free-standing concerns, but here they are in dialogue with each other.Existentialist trucksWhile travelling from Kingston to Mandeville, where I lived and worked at the time, I often found myself stuck behind trucks for long periods, especially in the evenings. This was before the new highways, and the roads were narrow and winding, so most times I would have to wait a long time before I got an opportunity to overtake. Each time I came upon one of these trucks, my first reaction was impatience and annoyance. I was usually returning from a frustrating meeting in Kingston and I was eager to get home.But gradually I relaxed and passed the time studying the passengers on the back seat who sat facing me. We studied each other, and after a while I felt I knew them a little and a bond would develop between us. I wondered who they were, where they were coming from, and where they were going. I imagined stories about them. Some came from deep rural villages and probably left home at 4:00 a.m. to take the truck to the city. They went to the markets, to visit relatives, to apply for passports and to wrestle with government departments of various kinds. …