The childhood of the race before Man understood facts (Heinlein, Orphans of the Sky, page 22)
This is the view of the orthodox scientists abord a runaway starship, a vast centrifugal cylinder resembleing Silent Running but closed and hermetic to the heavens, to whom "facts" are simply the servicing of the ship which, to them, is the entire universe.
Later in the story, following a rebellion, captain Narby is shown the evidence of the stars in the astrodome, but still refuses to believe.
'I'm surprised that you did not see it. When an apparent fact runs contrary to logic and common sense, it's obvious that you have failed to interpret the fact correctly. The most obvious fact of nature is the reality of the ship itself, solid, immutable, complete. Any so-called fact which appears to dispute that is bound to be an illusion. Knowing that,. I looked for the trick behind the illusion and found it.' (page 129)
This is a case of having different interpretations of the same facts, in this case the view of the stars. Narby is someone without a trace of poetry in their makeup, being the counter to the eventual hero, Hugh Hoyland, a "foolish romantic" to whom the "ecstacy of beauty" of the stars is all the proof they need.
What relation do imagination, beauty and poetry have to truth? If the UVS website is on the right wavelength, then the truth is not simply a question of hard facts.
“To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” - William Blake
Childhood is when the imagination develops and when you first read comics. A prev post () made the suggestion that Howard's primitivism stemmed from his childhood exposure to the mystical tales of his Irish mother.
The relation between something early and psychic in life, and the primitive psyche of past ages is quite clos. The primitive impacts on childhood in the same way as Kirby impacted on the 60s.
Loyalty to early memories inspired such as BWS and Harlan Ellison to believe romance of physical and psychic power in contradistinction to the "factual" world we inhabit.
Loyalty to the naivety of childhood imagination. The romance and the past, as personified in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
A world of fact that is devoid of childhood imagination is prey to the profane dragon of corrupt lusts. The reason being that scientific facts are only persuasive when they come from the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism) that is attractive to the ego (of acolytes).
The physical and psychic realms of imagination, beauty and poetry are neglected and rendered more as things of childhood. The Apollonian vison of Kirby is like a primitive fairy tale that facts cannot eclipse when the romance is present. Romance is belief in the primitive power of psyche and the physique.
The facts that science gives us drag us further inside the mirror where they are ever-more convincing. Outside of this illusion exist symbolist areas of decadent growth. These invite decaying castles, deep forest glades, shafts of sunlight. These are areas where Pre-Raphaelites have trod and where blood and earth have a Noto-like ambiance.
In one of the original symbolist yarns, Pelleas and Melisande, the heroine is a water-nymph whose destiny is to descend to the depths. Fatalism and mysticism (Poe Annabel Lee) frequent these folk tales.
Rackham Whereas facts invite us into a sterile future of the head, romance harks back to the physicality of foul-smelling waters and collapsing caverns. The lifecycle of the underworld.
Inside the mirror of illusions, we are typically stunned by words into submission; the news a nightmare repeat of hollow phrases. Outside, we are haunted by the beauty of line, the arch of a throat (song).
Words alone, within the illusory world of fact, give us the sterility of number, where rubbish-removal replaces the beauty and felicity of line.
Words, like those of Atten-bore (prev) which tell us there is continual competition, when what we see is the beauty and fertility of line. That is more like the world of fairy tale storytelling than it is the pseudo-statesman of bore. Competition for “them” is what exists inside the mirror of illusions, a type of endless electromagnetic repetition of signals, signifying nothing.
