Looking to his own past, he wonders how he could ever have been so pompous an Ass.
Bardelys was transcribing old essays he had written in decades past. And reading them as he dictated them, he became acutely aware of two things:
- He had been an insufferable prig and ‘expert’ on matters of which he knew practically nothing at all
He had no assurance to offer himself (or anyone else) that his present proclamations amounted to a whit more substance or truth.
Here is one of these glimpses into juvenile nonsense.
Fantasy Art
If as I have affirmed, writing deals with the manipulation of the mechanism of memory, then this has particular importance for anyone writing fantasy. Because these things (fantasy creatures, worlds, events – the ultimate Other) nobody has experienced. How then can we ‘remember’ them?
There are five possibilities I see now: atavistic memory – the memory of contradictions – other forms of fantasy art – childhood memories – ESP.
Possibility one. Atavistic memory is only a possibility, as yet unproven to exist. Yet if neo-hatched chicks will flee the shadow of a cardboard hawk (as has been shown in studies), yet not flee the cardboard cutout when its shadow does not represent a hawk, and some knowledge might be passed from generation to generation among humans just as easily as among chickens.
Possibility two. ESP assumes we can somehow ‘tune in’ to events happening elsewhere in time and space. Again, this is only a supposition and speculation and is as yet unproved.
Possibility three. Memory of contradictions. Since we can manipulate memory – not just in whole but in the smallest parts – we should be able to ‘cobble’ memories of things which never occurred. This is called ‘imagination.’ A greeting giraffe – a horse with wings – and all the legendary monsters are examples of this. Still, this remains rooted in reality: we cannot imagine a giraffe whose color we have never seen.
Possibility four. Other forms of art. As I have written, only writing has no external objective existence – just the notations to indicate its existence, as if we wrote notes and had no instruments. But other forms of art do have objective existence. So it is possible to draw creatures and worlds which never existed; and this forms the basis for our memory. Thus perhaps the importance of illustration for fantasy literature. (But, as Professor Tolkien has affirmed, the finest fantasy literature is hurt by this.)
Possibility five. Childhood memories. The existence of a child is filled with wonder. He sees things adults do not; he has not yet understood that all things are different in their own way, and that the expectation of existence is formed by the statistical database of past experiences. In addition to this, deeply-felt and repressed emotions manifest themselves in various seemingly-unconnected. So traumas can give rise to terrors and joys beyond the normal run of existence.
...
In addition to old days, we appreciate fantasy literature based on past fantasy literature we have read. Yet this cannot go back forever and must ultimately rely on one of the mechanisms cited above. Still, it shows why fantasy literature tends to run in cycles, and why tradition in fantasy literature is so important.
