The Dangerous Herald

I - Departure
    3 - Supernatural Aid

"Not infrequently, the supernatural helper is masculine in form....Protective and dangerous, motherly and fatherly at the same time, this supernatural principle of guardianship and direction unites in itself all the ambiguities of the unconscious - thus signifying the support of our conscious personality by that other, larger system, but also the inscrutability of the guide that we are following, to the peril of all our rational ends."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Havel on the Theater of the Absurd

"...the aesthetics of my plays - to simplify it somewhat - were based on a particular kind of foregrounding...i.e., on a viewpoint that removes the obfuscations of conventional perception from phenomena, tears them out of their habitual and automatic interpretational contexts and attempts to perceive them - as Ivan writes - "without glasses."  Among other things, that means perceiving their absurdity as an insufficiently clear dimension of reality (because it is obscured by conventional interpretations).  Ridding phenomena of false meaning.  Manifesting them as absurd, and thus opening the question of their true meaning.  The absurdity of entities as an invitation to inquire after the nature of being."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Not by any means the majority view of the writers of absurdist theater, but one I'm very sympathetic with.  Absurdity is the experience of an absence.  Meaning is what is absent.  The hole suggests what once (and what might again) fill it.

Havel's Philosophical Background

"Of all the philosophy I have read since my youth, existentialism, and thus phenomenology as well, were always what stimulated and attracted me most.  I enjoyed reading works by those authors, yet my knowledge in that regard was always superficial.  I was influenced more by the atmosphere of their thinking than I was by particular theses, concepts, conclusions, etc.  I read them for the delight and excitement I found in them, rather than to learn, study or commit details to memory.  For some time, therefore, I approached philosophy somewhat the way we approach art."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

In Havel's description of his relationship to God (posted earlier) you can see the vocabulary of phenomenology - being and horizon, etc.  Interesting to see how the spirit of your time colors the way you approach what we think of as universal phenomenon.

Marcus Aurelius on the nature of things

"The universe is transformation, life is opinion."

Marcus Aurelius
Meditations

This pithy little summary perhaps needs a little explanation.
There are two worlds Marcus contemplates here -
     1) The outer world of objective reality.  Its nature, as numerous writers ancient and modern have agreed, is ceaseless change.  As far as outer circumstances are concerned, the one thing you can rely upon is that they will change. 
     2) The inner world of subjective experience.  Perhaps "attitude" is a better 21st century translation than "opinion" here.  How we experience life is determined not half so much by our outer circumstances as it is by our attitude towards them.

Riding the Tide of Destiny

I - Departure
    3 - Supernatural Aid

"...in so far as the hero's act coincides with that for which his society itself is ready, he seems to ride on the great rhythm of the historical process.  'I feel myself,' said Napoleon at the opening of his Russian campaign, 'driven towards an end that I do not know.  As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me.  Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me.' "

Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Supernatural Aid

I - Departure
    3 - Supernatural Aid

"For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero journey is with a protective figure....

"What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny....protective power is always and ever present within the sanctuary of the heart and even immanent within, or just behind, the unfamiliar features of the world.  One only has to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear.  Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side.  Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Refusals and Second Chances

I - Departure
    2 - Refusal of the Call


"Not all who hesitate are lost.  The psyche has many secrets in its reserve.  And these are not disclosed unless required.  So it is that sometimes the predicament following an obstinate refusal of the call proves to be the occasion of a providential revelation of some unsuspected principle of release."


Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Havel on Camus (and some more thoughts on refusal)

"...the most important experience of recent days has been my rereading of Camus's The Stranger.  As you know, it's not a cheerful book and yet I'm indebted to it for a few moments of great joy, that special and elevating kind of joy I always feel on encountering a supreme work of art.  Part of it is the sensation that it is 'just right,' exactly as it should be; in other words a feeling that I too might have written it, or even that I did write it myself.  It may sound silly to put it so baldly, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.  It's simply an inner identification that you can feel equally well when looking at a painting or listening to a piece of music, even though you are not a painter or composer yourself.  Moreover this book has many dimensions and it merged, in an interesting way, with my own thoughts on responsibility.  The stranger is not a man without responsibilities, he is merely a man who refuses to conform to conventional order, i.e., to the conventional structure of duties, and he feels obligated to accept only those duties that are an authentic expression of his own sense of responsibility."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

The "Positive" Refusal

I - Departure
    2 - Refusal of the Call

"Willed introversion...is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device.  It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images....If the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experience an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control....It cannot be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call.  Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of transformation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Refusal - II

I - Departure
    2 - Refusal of the Call






"...the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one's own interest.  The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as though one's present system of ideals, virtues, goals and advantages were to be fixed and made secure."


"...if one is oneself one's god, the God himself, the will of God, the power that would destroy one's egocentric system, becomes a monster....One is harassed, both day and night, by the divine being that is the image of the living self within the locked labyrinth of one's own disoriented psyche.  The ways to the gates have all been lost: there is no exit.  One can only cling, like Satan, furiously to oneself and be in hell; or else break, and be annihilate at last, in God."






Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Campbell - Refusal of the Call

I - Departure
    2 - Refusal of the Call







"Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests.  Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative.  Walled in boredom, hard work and "culture," the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.  His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless - even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.  Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide him from his Minotaur.  All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces