Tuesday 11 March 2014

A feast of holograms Part2:Guess the fictional one

Desponded but with a pitcher of Ardbeg in my hand, I was mumbling on Granpa’s revelations. Now, image I’m sitting with you where you are. What’s wrong in my train of thought? We have Pinocchio, my grandfather and some very good, inspiring beings, including a guy who pretends to be: the son of god, your brother and god. Either we are experiencing some logical holiday, or it is a poetic expression to say that we are all brother and all divine, or the Catholic theology is right and THIS bread IS really MEAT.


Well, divinities can be substantial entity, they can weight and talk and sweat ( and swear).
Or they are projections. Ah, projections. In Sri Lanka I was reflecting about offers on a temple's altar: they give "real" rice to their projected divinities. And who’s benefiting from this superstition? Ants, banqueting on the combined offers for Hindu gods and Buddhist deities. Oh yeah, just projections. And your offer has been physically devoured. You bring an offer in the form of a meal and that lunch is eaten.
Job done.  

OK, so projections are misallocated attributions?
I wish I could slap you so hard…Focus!
We have: Pinocchio, Jesus and my Granpa. Who is fictional? I swear I know my grandfather was a real person. I really met him, many times. I ate his chocolate, listened patiently to his rants against the government. I said farewell to him when it was time and I wasn’t there when he died. But he was a real person.

Now for Pinocchio. Pinocchio is real as Nikolay Stavrogin is. I’m very fond of the writings of Dostoevsky. I know his characters, their psychology. What I mean it’s not just that I have knowledge of their lines in the books, their role in the plot, their fictional function. I know them as persons. “Impossible”. Slap.
I immersed myself in the Dostoevsky world. He was a genius in giving impressions and feeling. He made more than an effort to be comprehensible. Actually he dug very deep in human nature, in YOUR human nature, so that your deep, petty feelings, your ridiculous ambitions, but also your great heart or your unconditioned love, could be in tune with the story. He was trailing YOUR thought so you could pulse with his story. 

That is why his characters are not living on the moon: they are figures of real persons. Do I know everything of what Stavrogin did when it is not told in the book? No. But the same stands for my friends, my relatives, my love. After vodka, myself. I know enough Stavrogin to know him personally, to know the depth of his psychology as I would for a person I meet in the real world. But Stavrogin is a fictional character, is “bi-dimensional”! He is just a string of deeds and lines. Double slap.
No.

(to be continued...) 

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