JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Jerusalem

Plate 64

"The visual conception suggests the emanation of poetic thoughts from the mind of an inspirited dreamer whose rational self tries to inscribe the vision's literally unreadable marks." The Illuminated Books - Volume 1.

I've read that when Joseph Campbell began to write for popular consumption he had to learn a new style of writing. Previously his academic writing had followed a direct line of reasoning from a premise to a conclusion without digression or repetition. If he wanted the general public to read what he wrote and understand it that couldn't be his model. The general reader needs to be to told in the beginning the purpose, he needs to have the material explained or illustrated, and then he should be told what conclusions he might draw.

These biographical passages that you are giving to your readers now follow neither of these two patterns. They are scattered episodes drawn from your memories. If they have particular significance to you or to the reader, it must be discerned within the context of a life. Our lives come to us along a time line but there is a dimensional factor involved also. The second dimension is what else is going on simultaneously in our psyches, in the world and in people around us at a specific point in time. The third dimension is what went before and what will come after; this is where meaning and purpose enter. These aspects can't be made explicit because they are unfolding in a dimension outside of time - in eternity. 

"The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”
 Leo Tolstoy