Erich Kahler

Erich Kahler, The Inward Turn of Narrative. (Princeton University Press)

In the depth of my mind. Drifting from a poor shallow idea to another.

It may occur to me that this, the ever new miracle I call thought, the most importante feature to make me different from a beast, has gone and is still going through changes.

That the thoughts of Dante Alighieri were quite different from the thoughts of John Milton.

Their thoughts and the way they considered the universe. The universe and every bit of reality and themselves.

Their minds were utterly different.

In this book Erich Kahler leads us through the deep changes of human mind, from the times of Gilgamesh to the times of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, and even if he is not acquainted with the work of Marshall McLuhan about the importance of typography, he says more or less the same things.

He passes through Milton’s Paradise Lost and through Swift’s Gulliver Travels, showing us the huge significance of this work in encompassing a new awareness by human beings, of themselves and of their relation with reality and with others.

So now the question could be, what has happened during the time between Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wakefield and Hemingway’s A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Or between Tristram Shandy and Wallace’s Infinite Jest. In Tristram Shandy and in Infinite Jest we find the same disruption of time, but not the same depth of consciousness. And between Hawthorne and Hemingway we could find the growth of a new sense of disconnection from the world, from the outside world and from our inside world.

Consciousness is changing, just like it has always been changing.

Our minds are changing, and we ourselves are changing, and our world is changing with us.

The Inward Turn of Narrative may be a powerful aid for our comprehension of what there’s inside and outside us. (quint)