Meyrink’s Visions of Thought
I had the feeling that that
sometimes you can fan the flame of your thoughts so vigorously that they give
off a spray of sparks that fly to the brain of the person standing next to you.[1]
Sometimes in the middle of a book which is
otherwise irrelevant to the topic at hand one finds a sentence or a figure of
speech that fits with themes slowly developing in one’s mind. There is no use trying to work out how the
passage works in its own context as part of a novel or a short story or a drama
or some other genre. The words by
themselves seem to shoot out from the original place and illuminate the space
in your own brain where ideas are trying to form themselves into new concepts,
new ways to see into world.
We have seen already how the natural phenomena
associated with phosphorescence in the sea, chemical glows in organic creatures
and memories of old folktales and legends seem to hint towards ideas about
thought itself, cognitive and affective, that is, about systems of knowledge,
memory, speculation and interpersonal sharing of these processes, whether in
some magical or mystical way (which I doubt) or through some stimulation and
simulation triggered by electrical, chemical and visual clues. We know that animals, birds and insects
communicate to each other when they swarm, as when birds form into vast clouds
of flying bodies, either to swirl over the landscape or to follow ancient
instinctive routes in their migration.
They signal to one another through impulse-reactions set off by hormonal
activities, shifting colours in their wings or eyes, sounds and smells emitted,
and patterns of movement.
These natural modes of symbolic
communication—non-contiguous sparking of emotional and cognitive signals—are
not perfect. Some creatures fail to
receive or interpret the signals correctly and fall out of the group, easy prey
to predators or inclement weather. Some
defy their own instincts and set off alone, usually also to perish soon without
the support of the whole flock or herd.
Roles of leadership, scouting, and succour shift through the period of
swarming, although some individuals may be prone to one or other of these
places in the order of participation. On
the whole, however, the large group maintains its integrity, even though on
occasion it may subdivide into several smaller groups that mimic one another
but explore new territory or unfamiliar conditions. They do not form into virtual multi-cellular
creatures, as when jellyfish conglomerate, or even when certain insects develop
interdependent occupations in a hive or nest; such evolutionary developments
tend to reduce the original individuality of the single creatures to near
nil.
Human beings are separate persons, to be sure,
but they also interact in more cohesive ways, often bonding for longer or
shorter periods as though they were operating through a shared emotional and
intellectual process of engaging with the world. Infants and mothers (or other close and
continuous care-givers) do more than communicate emotional bonding through
their shared gazes; they trigger in one another neuronal events, the child’s
brain being formed through stimulation and inhibition of nerve connectors and
the establishment of primary patterns of what will later be recognized as
cultural response, the adult’s mind seeking and often finding completion of
developments interrupted or distorted during its own ontogenetic development. Small
groups, domestic households and nuclear families, interact by short-circuiting
complex signalling systems through mimetic experience, to be sure, but also
through shared reactions to sub-verbal recognition patterns. Studies on twins showed these mimetic and
short-circuit events may occur over long distances, even many years, based not
only on shared foetal environments and genetically-linked physiological
structures, but on mutual playing and learning over lengthy periods of
growth. Other sibling and cousinship
relationships may not attain to such a degree of mimesis, but sufficient to
enhance conscious behaviour and thought.
It might be said that what distinguishes humans
from other animals is that animals never lie, but this is certainly not true. Various birds, insects, and other living
beings disguise themselves to elude predators, play dead or wounded, and make
sounds that disorientate their would-be killers; such disguises are not always
limited to colours, shapes and behaviour that has been genetically evolved in
the course of generations through natural selection, but are traits learned
from parents and occasionally invented to meet new situations. Nevertheless, it is the more consistent and
varying techniques of deception, simulation, dissimulation, and trickery that
mark the human species and lead, in the first instance, towards the development
of language and ritual actions, and, in the second, towards symbolic languages—words,
drawings, gestures, structures—that permit the imagining of alternatives to
nature in general and environmental factors in particular.
Whereas long-term transformations in so-called
human nature may be brought about through two modes of epigenesis, one in the expression
of genes brought on and passed through stress, ford intake, climate change and
disorientation through war and natural disaster, the other in the shaping of neuronal
growth mentioned above in regard to mother-infant gazing, shorter and medium length
influences come about through child-rearing patters (abuse, neglect,
abandonment, interfering, caring and supporting), crowd-induced trances,
self-induced trances in response to intense reading, prolonged and continuous theatrical
performances. In these special
transformative states of consciousness (of not unconsciousness) interpersonal
communications may be shaped by unrecognized coordination of feelings and
thoughts.
Of course, Meyerink did not mean all of the
above. Still, his metaphoric depiction
of the mind fanning the flames of its own activity to the point where sparks
fly off and ignite mirror-like responses or rejections of these signals takes
us a little but further along the path of discovery we are now on.
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