TECHNE AND THE TITANIC
Samten de Wet
“The Orphic story tells of
the dismemberment of the infant Dionysus by the Titans at the instigation of
the goddess Hera. Proclus saw in the scattered members of the god the multiple
ubiquity of Plato’s “anima mundi,” and he saw in the preservation of the
infant’s heart the soul’s unity; the Dionysian heart remained unaffected by the
cruelty of the Titans. I associate the Titans with technique: they are the
fabulous technicians, the mythical surgeons that operate the dismemberment and
scatter soul into the world. Without them, Dionysus, reputed to be the god of
theatre, would have remained a baby-god, and imagination would have remained in
the crib, identified with the infant, as it remains for so many today. Titanic
cruelty tears this baby-imagination apart, boils it, and casts it out into the
world. The egocentric, unified imaginal body of the infant is torn into its different
components, differentiated. Titans were said to have souls of steel, which fits
our image of technique: the hard, arid, steel-like, analytic dissociation
drills that actors are put through in “object-metaphor” exercises are a titanic
endeavor, tearing apart the infant’s subjective vision, its innocent wholesome
body, so that it may see the world, and even his own members, as “other.”
Herewith attached is an article by James Hillman, called 'AND HUGE IS UGLY.'
Though some aspects of this lecture, which was given to the Schumacher
Society, and published in RESURGENCE MAGAZINE, [No. 134] - have already
dated - I still think it remains, one of the most valuable cries from
the late-20th century that I have ever read. I am by
no means in agreement with everything that James Hillman says - but
there are some very powerful core ideas, that still need amplification,
attention and action. I thought I would invite your responses,
questions, networking and contributions, as you absorb this fascinating
piece of thinking - and we could gather all this material, plus
commentaries from myself, on a page on one of my Websites.
Using
HYPERLINKS - I will add material that can help to amplify the ideas -
for example, the bibliographic reference to Kerenyi on Prometheus.
Anyhow, these are a few ideas - let me know how you feel… here some of the FEEDBACK.
The original project is dated: July 06, 2001