Photo from Google Images: DancingSky_HarmonyOfTheSpheres.jpg
I took these photographs in Ireland, June 2009.
The following is an excerpt from a paper I presented at the Mid-Atlantic Conference for Irish Studies, in 2007:
Human beings have an inherent need to interact with
one another. Yet, they often find themselves struggling with what appears to be
the truth of their perceptions. This ambivalence leads to the categorizing of
experiences as a way to manage personal reactions. Philosophers, such as John
Locke, Immanuel Kant and Carl Jung, as well as mathematicians, such as
Pythagoras and Kepler, have clarified this management in terms of music, more
specifically, the mystical music of the spheres.
This concept illustrates that human communication
parallels strict mathematical components associated with harmonics. To clarify
the concept of harmony (music) of the spheres, one can consider a musical tone that contains the original resonating
frequency with overtones creating precise harmonic variations.
Pythagoras’s theory contained the idea that there was
a distinct mathematical configuration, establishing a relationship of the
harmonic distances between the planets. These harmonics were considered the
substance of a planetary influence on the human psyche. Centuries later,
Johannes Kepler clarified this theory with his discovery that harmonic energy
emanates from the sun, and there exists an exact harmonic relationship between
each planet. Philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as John Locke and
Immanuel Kant, connect Kepler’s theory to the concept of human consciousness.
Thus, music of the spheres represents the harmonics of human
thought whereby one idea, emanating from a human being, extends to another
throughout the centuries, and overtones or nuances of thought create a new
harmonic of the original conception. This new harmonic, then, resonates with
another interpretation, and soon, there are many new concepts formed that
connect with the original resonating thought.
Although this concept
illustrates that human communication parallels strict mathematical components
associated with harmonics, iconic realism is a literary principle whereby an
artist uses an iconic, yet real figure to represent another aspect of reality
within the culture. This principle clearly resonates throughout literature as a
means to express truth in a way that contains meaning while maintaining
elements of the mysterious. Indeed, iconic realism intones throughout Sydney
Owenson’s national tale, The Wild Irish Girl, written from a feminine cultural point of view shortly after the
British Act of Union 1801.
Sydney Owenson engages in the
construction of iconic realism through her interface with the concept of
literary harmony elicited from the initial resonance of Irish revolution. She
creates characters as iconic representatives of the consciousness that exists
in her historical reality, leading her audiences to a recognizable semblance of
truth and a basis for future writers to harmonize with the transitioning,
historical significance of human consciousness.
Such resonance, which
distinguishes between intense reality and strength of the human spirit through
iconic realism, occurs in Owenson’s novel, demonstrating the necessity for
humankind to relate to one another on a realistic rather than a symbolic level.
As she reacts to her despotic environment, Owenson’s technique of using iconic
structures in allegorical representations of Irish reality resonates through
such 20th century writers as William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. (Lakatos 2007)
