Yes, there is something spiritual about a murmuration that grabs all who witness it. I'm reminded of Marianne Targovnik's book PRIMITIVE PASSIONS. Her analysis, as a professor of literature, explores a thesis about participation in life, not as the individual self, but as a part of something bigger. The archetypal neumenousness of it can be staggering. Targovnik made me understand what Freud termed "the death wish," i.e., the human urge to become one with everything. Not the urge to die, per se, but the urge to sublimate ego as the dominant mode of human existence. Ernest Becker approached it with archetypal symbolism in Eros vs. Agape, the latter being the urge to perfect unity and Eros representing the urge toward separation and perfect individuality.
Mr. Ramsey was obsessed by the fear that his philosophical writings would fade into obscurity. He sought personal immortality through his publications. But there is a problem with that sort of immortality: It can go on too long. Virginia Woolf famously said elsewhere about essayists, "We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print." Mrs. Ramsey, in contrast, raises children and smooths the way for everyone around her. The dinner party that she rescued brought people together, and it was a thing of ephemeral beauty. Although she dies halfway through the book, she remains a significant figure to the very end. So, I think you can see Becker's Eros/Agape dichotomy exemplified in the elder Ramseys. In reading To the Lighthouse, we can ask ourselves which immortality is worth having. And we can wonder if those are the only options. Which makes the character of the unmarried Lily Briscoe especially interesting, as she has no ambition either for herself or for her painting, beyond getting the painting right.
Murmuration is a lovely and fitting analogy. I will ponder it.
Yes, there is something spiritual about a murmuration that grabs all who witness it. I'm reminded of Marianne Targovnik's book PRIMITIVE PASSIONS. Her analysis, as a professor of literature, explores a thesis about participation in life, not as the individual self, but as a part of something bigger. The archetypal neumenousness of it can be staggering. Targovnik made me understand what Freud termed "the death wish," i.e., the human urge to become one with everything. Not the urge to die, per se, but the urge to sublimate ego as the dominant mode of human existence. Ernest Becker approached it with archetypal symbolism in Eros vs. Agape, the latter being the urge to perfect unity and Eros representing the urge toward separation and perfect individuality.
Mr. Ramsey was obsessed by the fear that his philosophical writings would fade into obscurity. He sought personal immortality through his publications. But there is a problem with that sort of immortality: It can go on too long. Virginia Woolf famously said elsewhere about essayists, "We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print." Mrs. Ramsey, in contrast, raises children and smooths the way for everyone around her. The dinner party that she rescued brought people together, and it was a thing of ephemeral beauty. Although she dies halfway through the book, she remains a significant figure to the very end. So, I think you can see Becker's Eros/Agape dichotomy exemplified in the elder Ramseys. In reading To the Lighthouse, we can ask ourselves which immortality is worth having. And we can wonder if those are the only options. Which makes the character of the unmarried Lily Briscoe especially interesting, as she has no ambition either for herself or for her painting, beyond getting the painting right.
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