The Prometheus Syndrome, and: Dream and Image by Bettina L. Knapp (review)

THE PROMETHEUS SYNDROME BY BETTINA L. KNAPP (Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing Co., 1979. 286 pages, including notes and index.) DREAM AND IMAGE BY BETTINA L. KNAPP (Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Publishing Co., 1979. 426 pages, including notes and index.) It was the historian Isaiah Berlin, quoting Archilocus, in his book The Hedgehog and the Fox, who gave us an image for two mental views of existence, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." While the fox bounds over hill anddale, the hedgehogtries to relate all to one central vision. Bettina Knapp belongs in the latter category. Her approach to literature, based on the archetypal theories of Jung, Mircea Eliade, and others, regards individual works and writers from 'one big' viewpoint. Such a view, however, is not without its dangers. While the fox may lapse into an apparently fragmented sort of thought, the hedgehog may at times appearto ignore or to distortparticularities in a Procrustean attempt at satisfying larger concerns. In The Prometheus Syndrome, Knapp falls victim to this sort ofproblem. Taking the hedgehog's all-encompassing view, she fails to keep that vital balance between particular and general. The book contains nine chapters, the last eight of which comprise three sections (Man as Creator; The Ordeal of Reason; Toward Integration) and a very brief conclusion. Knapp defines Prometheus as the archetype of the creative spirit, the process of which she divides into two major phrases: ego consciousness and self-consciousness. The former represents a personal, subjective focus on one's vision, a rejection of prevailing forces. The latter stage, one of expanded consciousness, marks a re-integration of Promethean man withhis society or gods. Prometheus, in his titanic energy, embodied both pure energy and intelligence or reason, thus emblematizing these successive stages. In his creation of man and subsequent theft of fire for man, Prometheus exhibited ego-consciousness; in his reintegration into the pantheon of gods, Prometheus accepted his existence "as a transpersonal object" thus achieving self-consciousness. (One wishes that Knapp had acknowledged Chiron's role in Prometheus' rehabilitation more extensively.) These chapters balance particular and general inconsistently. The chapter on Voltaire, an impressive sketch of an energetic human, only tenuously serves the general point. That on Balzac's In Search of the Absolute fails to convince for a similar reason: the gap between particular and general. On the other hand, Albertus, Paracelsus, Rabbi Loew serve Knapp's purpose well. And Malraux's statements cap off.the book well. What one misses are concluding sections throughout and at the end to attempt to bring all this together, to fit particulars into the overall pattern, to order the hedgehog's view. In Dream and Image, Bettina Knapp asserts, "Dreams and images are the prima materia for the creative individual." Though she neverdefines images as such, it becomes clear that for her the term refers not simply to sensory language but to such language the roots of which can be traced to archetypes inherent in the collective unconscious. Inorder to effect suchtracings. Knapp refers to psychology (both Freud and Jung), to alchemical lore, to the Bible, Koran, I Ching, and the Kabbala, among other sources. Such a wide range of reference lends the book a certain erudition and rewards the reader with a ROCKT MOUNTAIN REVIEW213 plethora of information. Such gains are not without the risk of diffuseness, however. The region, including both the personal and collective unconscious, in which "visualizations congregate, grow and live inchoate," Knapp labels as the oneirosphere. The writer's "creative impulse" transforms this raw material to the visible shape of an art work. To exemplify her point, Knapp treats thirteen lesser or better-known French writers: Descartes, Racine, Diderot, Jacques Cazotte, Charles Nodier, Nerval, Balzac, Oautier, Baudelaire, Hugo, Huysmans, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé. She points out that the chapters may be read singly "or as part of an evolving process: the creative individual's spiritual and artistic development in his perpetually altering rapport with his oneirosphere—from Descartes' unwilling Oodsent experience to Mallarmé's willed ascesis." In the interesting chapter on Jacques Cazotte (The Devil in Love), tor example, Knapp's concern with his premonitory dreams leads to a logically related...