The Notions and Concepts of Poetic imagination.

 

Imagination was linked to the concepts of emotions, feelings and passions from its early accounts. Imagination was considered as the faculty that generates images that are associated with feelings, passions, desires, aversions, and the like called “emotional states”. The close connection between images and emotions and feelings related to them, and the fact that each mind has its own volume of images sets up different imaginations for different people. Every poet/author connects his own passions, emotions and feelings to the images he creates. The phenomenon implies the existence of more than one mode of imagination in poetry and literature. Imagination was initially considered similar to memory as it was thought to mediate the reproductive images of mental realities rather than those of sensory realities. This conceptualization highlights some dimensions of imagination that were developed later when imagination became distinct from memory. This position associates imagination with mental reality rather than sensory ones. The early distinction between memory and imagination stresses the fact that memory refers to the past while imagination does not. This also emphasizes that imagination cannot be defined in terms of time and place which distinguishes between images that belong to the past compared with images that are associated with imagination and are not from the past. Emotions were also conceptualized as “secondary impressions” that are received from the actual feeling of things. In Hume’s terminology, “impressions” are directly received from the senses and are reproduced as “ideas” under the process of imagination.

 The interconnection of imagination to the notion of the soul forms one of the distinguishing characteristics of imagination in poetry and literature. This interconnection highlights the emergence of the poetic image from the poet’s soul rather than the poet’s mind. The early exploration of the existence of a connection between soul and imagination conceptualized imagination as a medium of soul (Neo-Platonists’ theory). The interconnection of soul and imagination was one of the concepts that led to the recognition of the creative imagination in artistic creation. The soul of the artist/poet is the only area that imagination is able to create superior works of art. In other words, any work that embodies greatness, uncommonality and beauty (as the elements of a true creative work according to the judgment of taste) permeates soul with revelation and newness, which raise pleasures in the imagination. The exploration of imagination’s working in the soul led to establish a dichotomy between mind and soul. This dichotomy places thought in one realm, referring to mind as the objective part of the psyche, and imagination in another realm, referring to soul as the subjective part of the psyche. The idea that poetic image is not associated with thought indicates that the poetic image belongs to the poet’s soul. Similarly, the phenomenological conceptualization of not considering any past for the poetic image, which means poetic image has no cause, discusses emerging of the poetic image from the soul into the consciousness. Fancy is another significant concept that contributed to the development of the concepts of imagination in poetry and literature. Fancy’s conceptualizations in relation to imagination in poetry characterize concept of imagination with levels of power. Fancy is an important concept that has been associated with imagination in the conceptual history of imagination. Fancy was initially taken synonymous with imagination, associating fancy with supernatural and superstition (Hobbes 1651 and Addison 1712). Such conceptualizations highlight that fancy is a form of imagination which embodies creativity. The development in the concept of fancy and its distinction from imagination introduced these concepts as the powers that produce two kinds of poetry. Fancy was conceptualized as an inferior mental faculty which produces a mechanic form and is associated with the definite. On the other hand, imagination produces an organic form which is higher in creativity, and is associated with the indefinite. The notion of nature was connected to imagination in poetry, stressing the capability of imagination to get access to a kind of knowledge that cannot be provided by other means (the senses or reason). This conceptualization was initiated and developed only during the Romantic period. Nature’s elements were discussed as important in developing imagination from a perceptive power to a creative and poetic power. The Romantic conceptualizations of the connection between nature and imagination explore several dimensions of creative imagination in poetry and literature. The co-existence of imagination with nature as are evoked in poetry brings tranquility to the mind. This means that the aesthetic beauty of nature affects the poet’s in creative process. Furthermore, creative imagination is a source of energy that can regenerate nature in the artistic creation (poetic creation). Romantics’ belief in the poet’s forming power of imagination in poetic creation similar to God’s divine imagination in creation of nature is the substantial contribution to the study of this concept. This notion associates creative imagination of the poet as being capable of conveying the intuitive and transcendental knowledge in the poem. In a similar vein the unifying power of imagination is one of the important features that was only explored in the Romantic period. The unifying power of imagination is a “synthetic magical power” that reconciles the opposites and forms a whole. The significant aspect of imagination as a unifying power is to provide forms of knowledge that are intuitive and subjective. Bringing the concept of meaning and language into the discussions of imagination by the modern phenomenologists, highlights the mediatory function of imagination in relation to its creative aspects. This conceptualization explains the way imagination contributes to the creation of meanings behind the words in poetry and literature. Concept of metaphor with the focus on “semantic innovation” (Ricoeur 1991) helps to explain the creative role of imagination in relationship with meaning in literal and figurative levels. In metaphor one semantic filed is changed or restructured to another semantic field which results in the expansion of meaning. Imagination offers its mediatory role when a new meaning emerges out of the destruction of semantic fields in the literal level. The restructuring or change in the semantic fields is the result of a semantic shock which sparkles the emergence of new meanings. In addition to the conceptualization of the role of imagination as a medium of creating new meanings in language through forging a link between concept of “metaphor” and imagination, the phenomenological studies focus on concept of “intentionality” to open up some other aspects of the similar conceptualization. Intentionality refers to being conscious of direct meanings of things, and double intentionality is of indirect meanings that exist behind direct meanings as mostly seen in poetry and literature. The role of image and imagination in creation of meanings in poetry and literature is made through a “double intentionality”. In an overall view, intentionality refers to our consciousness of imagining things or their images in language. It specifies the act of making images and imagining in order to establish the specific meaning of things as images or the experience of imagining them which are separate from the meanings of things that might be found through other experiences such as understanding, feeling, etc. Double intentionality specifies the act of imagining in order to establish meanings of objects in language when the real object is not present or does not exist in the world, which is true in the case of figurative language and poetry. The change of focus from imagination to image in several conceptualizations manifests a change in the treatments that the concept of imagination receives in the modern period. Studies on poetic image and its feature in phenomenology define imagination as a faculty that produces poetic image. The poetic image is characterized with spontaneity, suddenness and novelty. It also has the capacity to create new meanings in language, similar to imagination in relation to metaphor. Poetic image does not carry the old and familiar meanings of perception. Another characteristic of poetic image is to consider no past reality for it. These characteristics of poetic image indicate that imagination that produces poetic image (poetic imagination) is not restricted to the realm of perception and sensation.

The creative/poetic imagination of the artist/poet finds many new dimensions in the modern period. Imagination was conceptualized as an interaction between the conscious and the unconscious. The methods of Freudian “free association” in psychoanalysis, Jungian “active imagination” in analytical psychology and studies on dreams as a mode of communication provide some insights in the modern concepts of imagination in poetry and literature. These studies clarify especially the imagining process of artistic/poetic creation, its materials and the artist/poet’s psychical release in the process of creation. The spontaneity and autonomy of imagination and self-dramatizing feature of imagining process are explored in studying and examining the interaction between the conscious and the unconscious. In poetic creation, creative imagining helps the poet to know his inner self or the unconscious. This interaction also shows the materials with which the artist/poet works in artistic/poetic creation. Freudian psychology defines function of the creative/ poetic imagination as to express the psychological complexes of artist or the poet. This also helps the reader to experience the work and gives expression to his unfulfilled wishes and desires.

The notion of imagination in poetry as a tool to understand reality indicates a change in the concept of poetic imagination in the modern period. Reality is defined as an admixture of the real and the unreal. Imagination does two acts referring to the poet’s stages in the creative process: imagination helps the poet to discover the unreal out of the real which define the origin of imagination in the perceived reality. This imagination is not poetic and creative. This is poetic imagination that helps to create the unreal out of the real which, in fact, leads into creating reality. One large area of the unreal belongs to the territory of the self. The modern poet writing particularly about personal life has the tendency to discover this territory of the unreal with no much attempt at creating the unreal through poetic imagination. Before the modern period, poetic imagination was considered as a human faculty concerned with creating autonomous aesthetic artifacts (poetry and literature) which could represent directly or indirectly the human experience. This notion has now been turned into as “an agency that isused solely for nurturing and insulating the self’s interiority” in the modern world.

The notion of image as picture in poetry emphasizes the objective dimensions of image referring to its object in the real life. To evoke an image as picture, image in poetry and literature possess some characteristics: image is direct and specific, meaning that image embraces the clear representation of the external object or sensory perception; image is exact and non-decorative, meaning that image depicts the effect of the object; image is the unit of a poem in poetic composition, meaning that emphasis is on the image rather than words; too many abstractions reduces the concreteness and pictorial quality of images. The notion of image as picture has been a feature examined by the Imagists in the modern period. The attempt at characterizing the image in poetry provides and contributes to the exploration of some aspects of the concept of imagination in poetry and literature. Defining poetic image as the embodiment of “psychic energy”, stresses the vitality and the animated quality of the poetic image. Poetic imageis defined as the natural speech of imagination, and cannot be drawn from or inserted back into the real world. In this way, poetic image cannot be described only as picture as Imagists were willing to do. Psychic energy refers to the animated quality in an image that infuses it with liveliness and vitality. This means that while objectivity is still present to make the context of poem/text seem real, the level of subjectivity is increased through the imagining process. As was mentioned earlier, this paper primarily aims to discuss and present one of the main outcomes of the research and demonstrates contemporary notions of poetic imagination which help to characterize and explain the manifestations and modes of creative imagination in contemporary poetry.