{"title":"[Re]readings of the perfect. Mysticism of James Lee Byars","authors":"J. Mancebo","doi":"10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-21","url":null,"abstract":"The complex contextualization of the work of James Lee Byars (1932–1997) in contemporary artistic practices was determined by its timelessness in both form and concept. Considered by Kevin Power as one of the key artists of the second half of the twentieth century alongside figures such as Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, his legacy seems to have declined probably because of the discomfort caused by the approach to his work, since any previous consideration and attempt at cataloging, escapes through the loopholes on which they are based. Byars’ performances and pieces were mostly structured around the cryptic concept of perfection. The artist’s mission, in this case, takes on the roles of a shaman and a magician who questions the illegibility of a world whose materialism seems to have expelled any consideration of the sacred, thus articulating a work that, far from providing answers, raises questions about the ultimate meaning of life. Gold, geometry, time (and its transience), space (re-signified by his cultural heritage), language and the body expressed a proposal in which installations and actions are the instruments he uses primarily to question us about the big questions. Byars in this sense has been considered a mystic, since he places us at the doors of a new perception to make us uncomfortable and provoke us, to transmit us the questions about being in the world. This article is modulated on the poetics of the work, thought and actions of James Lee Byars, one of the few contemporary artists who can be defined as mystic in the broad sense of the word and for whom the sacred, contrary to the current of unidirectional thought, is inherent to the contemporary subject.","PeriodicalId":226045,"journal":{"name":"The Figurativeness of the Language of Mystical Experience","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124043844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The image of the Jungian Self in the work of St. Teresa of Ávila","authors":"J. Knapik","doi":"10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-10","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on the figurativeness of the language of mystical experience in the context of Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness. It analyses the autobiographical work of St. Teresa of Ávila and tries to identify images that mirror the archetype of the whole, or the Jungian Self (das Selbst). The main objective of the paper is to reveal the life-giving potential and spontaneous nature of symbols created by the unconscious and to highlight their scope and importance in human life.","PeriodicalId":226045,"journal":{"name":"The Figurativeness of the Language of Mystical Experience","volume":"71 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123382711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The heart as an image of deification in mystical writing","authors":"M. Kučerková","doi":"10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-11","url":null,"abstract":"The paper explores two phenomena powerful in life and interpretive terms: the heart and deification. One is understood as deeply human, the other as metaphysically appealing. It is a connection present in the history of Christian thinking for a long time, since the heart is perceived as an inner space where God meets man, in the most intimate form, which can only acquire the character of unification. Deification, as the experience of Christian mystics and mystics shows, basically means the deepest unification with God and activation of the change in God’s love. The issue examined in the paper is presented in the form of a brief guide to the theological concept of deification, and also the convergence of the historical and biblical views of the heart. The core of thinking about the topic is the interpretation of the heart as an inner image the (heart as the center, exchange of hearts) and the interpretation of the phenomenality of deification in the context of written mystical experience.","PeriodicalId":226045,"journal":{"name":"The Figurativeness of the Language of Mystical Experience","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122608517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Death as radical border. About Jan Čep’s novel The Border of a Shadow","authors":"J. Gallik","doi":"10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5817/cz.muni.p210-9997-2021-4","url":null,"abstract":"The Czech Catholic writer Jan Čep (1902–1974) belonged to the group of authors who built their work on spiritual-religious motifs. Literary critic František Xaver Šalda stated in the bookmark of Čep’s novel The Border of a Shadow (1935) that he is a “poet of death”, namely “a very special, possessing a very special, unusual view of things of life and death”. The language and imagery of his artistic work are based on philosophical-reflexive and meditative lyricism, often with a contemplative overlap. We consider the image of a double home to be one of the key images of Čep’s poetics. Its development can be traced from the author’s juvenile prose work to the latest texts, which are mainly essay-like. In addition to this image, however, in Čep’s work, reflecting on the phenomenon of life and death also appears to be the mainstay, while it is obvious that these entities are very closely related to the image of a double home. In this context, it will be important to observe how the phenomenon of death is depicted in Čep’s only novel The Border of a Shadow.","PeriodicalId":226045,"journal":{"name":"The Figurativeness of the Language of Mystical Experience","volume":"138 8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128820852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}