Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Imagination")
August 20-26, 2023 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: “Imagination”
Opening Line of the Week
It’s hard for me to imagine—no pun intended—anyone reading this opening paragraph and not feeling a desire to continue reading.
The cover of the book is also intriguing. Take a look and see if it stimulates any thoughts in your mind (for me, I confess that it did not). Then check out what critic Janet Maslin wrote in a 2012 New York Times review:
“Look closely at the provocative image on the cover of John Irving’s new novel, In One Person. It depicts a slender, nearly bare-backed person either hooking or unhooking a bra. Context suggests that the photographer’s model is a woman, but the hands may be a little large. The shoulder blades are widely spaced, the left hip slender. This seemingly straightforward photo turns out to be completely ambiguous about gender and sexual identity.”
Over the years, many uncomplimentary things have been said about critics, but Masalin’s remarks illustrate one of the most valuable contributions of literary criticism—it enables readers to see things that would otherwise go completely unnoticed.
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This Week’s Puzzler
On August 25, 1918, this man was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrant parents from the Ukraine. Introduced to the piano as a child, he developed a great passion for the instrument. After studying at Boston Latin, he majored in music at Harvard, where he began to imagine a career as a performer, composer, and conductor.
In 1943, four years after graduating from Harvard, he was only twenty-five when he was named assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. A few months later, when guest conductor Bruno Walter came down with the flu, he was a last-minute replacement. Even though he’d never rehearsed with the orchestra, his performance received rave reviews—and marked the beginning of a brilliant career.
In his career, he achieved the rare distinction of being equally acclaimed as a conductor as well as a composer (he even joked about the whole matter once, saying chiastically, “When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer”).
He served as conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969, and as guest conductor for all the great symphony orchestras of the world. In addition to his many classical compositions, he wrote the music for many Broadway musicals, most famously “West Side Story” (1957). He scored a number of films as well, including “On The Waterfront” (1954). He was the classical music world’s greatest ambassador, giving hundreds of informative and entertaining lectures, and more than fifty “Young People’s Concerts,” all televised on CBS-TV.
In a 1982 memoir, he wrote that imagination was not something restricted to exceptional creative artists, but a quality found in all human beings, saying:
Who is this person? (Answer below)
What Role Has Imagination Played in Your Life?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines imagination as: “The formation of a mental image of something that is neither perceived as real nor present to the senses.” The root sense of the word reflects the mind’s ability to form mental images of things we do not literally see or that don’t actually exist.
Many exceptional things have been written about imagination over the centuries, but few can rival this 1978 observation from one of history’s great thinkers.
Imagination is almost always regarded as a positive thing, and it’s easy to understand why. Having imagination enables us to comprehend the world of others—thus forming the basis for empathy, compassion, and kindness. Think about it for a moment. While we cannot actually feel another’s pain or suffering, if we’re able to imagine it, we’ll be more likely to respond in a positive way. In the second edition of his classic Theory of Moral Sentiments (1762), Adam Smith wrote, “Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They [the senses] never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons.” He then concluded:
“It is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations.”
Every literary or artistic creation, every invention, every scientific discovery, every technological breakthrough, and every bold new idea has the same origin: the human imagination. The “mind’s eye” is not bound by the rules of nature, so it is free to envision things that do not exist in reality, especially those things that are considered impossible. A great poet captured the essence of the phenomenon.
Imagination is at work even in areas where we think it plays little or no role at all. For example, while we tend to think that our memories accurately reflect our life experiences, they are regarded by psychologists as a complex mixture of fact and highly imaginative fiction (the anthropologist Ruth Benedict put it even stronger, once writing, “Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination”).
To cite one additional example, when we get lost in a masterpiece—a novel, a painting, a musical composition—we generally believe we’ve been captured by the creator’s imagination. The full truth, though, is that we bring our own imaginations to the experience—and it is this coupling of the two imaginations that makes the magic happen. In How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003), Thomas C. Foster expressed this interplay in a lovely, understated way: “Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer’s alone.”
Lest we get carried away in hailing the powers of this remarkable human faculty, imagination is also the source of great suffering and misery—as we see every day with worry warts, jealous lovers, insomniacs, catastrophic thinkers, conspiracy theorists, and, of course, those tortured souls suffering from paranoia. The downside of imagination was nicely described by the English writer L. E. Landon in her 1831 novel Romance and Reality: “The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may, with equal truth, be applied to the imagination—it is a good servant, but a bad master.” More than a century later, the incomparable Anaïs Nin put her finger on the exact mechanism at work.
And, finally, even though the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that “The great instrument of moral good is the imagination,” let me close by mentioning that it would be a grave mistake to view imagination as intrinsically associated with what is good, right, or true. Like all human talents, imagination can be perverted into an instrument of evil, as we’ve seen with the hellish dreams of tyrants and dictators, the sick fantasies of sadists and psychopaths, and the villainous schemes crafted by unethical politicians to upend the public good.
This week, take a few moments to reflect on the role imagination has played—for good or for bad—in your life. As you do, let your thinking be stimulated by this week's selection of quotations on the theme:
“If we don’t begin by imagining the perfect society, how shall we create one? —Isabel Allende
“Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.” — Lauren Bacall
“Imagination…is a very high sort of seeing.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson,
“My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.” — John Keats
“To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.” — Cynthia Ozick
“Imagination is the eye of the soul.” — Joseph Joubert
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” — Marcus Sakey
“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.” — Henry David Thoreau,
“Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.” — Phyllis Theroux
“Whatever we build in the imagination will accomplish itself in the circumstances of our lives.” — William Butler Yeats
For source information on these quotations, and many other quotations on the topic of IMAGINATION, go to Dr. Mardy's Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations.
Cartoon of the Week
Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:
Leonard Bernstein
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been looking forward to “Maestro,” the upcoming biopic of Leonard Bernstein. Written, produced, and directed by Bradley Cooper (other producers include Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg), the film will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September. It will begin showing in theaters in November and is scheduled to begin streaming on Netflix on December 20th.
The film is Cooper’s second directorial effort after the acclaimed “A Star is Born” (2019). In “Maestro,” he stars as Bernstein and, according to many observers, became “fully transformed” into his subject during the shooting of the film. In the “still shot” above, note that he was equipped with a nose prosthesis that made his resemblance to Bernstein almost uncanny.
After some online critics lambasted Cooper for engaging in what they called “Jewface” (a term derived from the Vaudeville practice of blackface), Bernstein’s three adult children immediately came to the actor’s defense, writing, “Bradley Cooper included the three of us along every step of his amazing journey as he made his film about our father.” They went on to add:
“It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”
Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week
Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “Satire & Satirists.”
Mardy
In your commentary about John Irving, you refer to a New York Times critic named Janet "Masalin" (sic). I'm pretty sure you're referring to Janet Maslin, a superb critic and author in her own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Maslin
Many thanks for your columns over the years--great sources of entertainment, edification, and inspiration.
Aydon Charlton
Imagination for me is sometimes torture because, honestly, I have a good one I believe. However, its necessary partner, discipline, is sadly lacking in me, meaning my imagination never takes me that far.
John Irving is brilliant.
Leonard Bernstein was a complicated figure in our house because my dad, an amateur musician and composer who actually looked a lot like Bernstein, was very envious of him.