"As he allowed the old order to be dismembered, a new erotic order arose in which there was an unceasing intercourse between sensation and conception, the mental blossoming of every sensation and the embodiment of every idea."
— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Chatto & Windus
Date
2000
Metaphor
"As he allowed the old order to be dismembered, a new erotic order arose in which there was an unceasing intercourse between sensation and conception, the mental blossoming of every sensation and the embodiment of every idea."
Metaphor in Context
The egalitarian chaos of his psychedelic experience highlighted the roles of empathy and analogy. At first he tried to contain this chaos: surely there were choices behind these analogies, desires behind the choices, psychological structures behind the desires, and, underlying the psychology, the stainless steel of generative grammar. This analysis made him feel false, made him feel he was resisting an insight rather than having one. It was untrue to the quality of his experience, to the plasticity of his choices, the molten emergence and reabsorption of images. As he allowed the old order to be dismembered, a new erotic order arose in which there was an unceasing intercourse between sensation and conception, the mental blossoming of every sensation and the embodiment of every idea.
(p. 44)
(p. 44)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Edward St. Aubyn, A Clue to the Exit (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).
Date of Entry
09/19/2015
