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Energeia Staff ~ l l 'The energy of a bocfy mqy be defined as the capacity it has of doing work, and is measured "l?J the quantity of work which it can do. The kinetic ener­ gy of a bocfy is the energy which it has in virtue of being in motion . .. '' -J. Clerk Maxwell ENERGEIA STAFF If there is one truly encouraging factor to Charles Darwin's evo­ lutionary theory, it is the concept of "vigor." Vigorous animals sur­ vive, and pass on a high level of this trait to their offspring. Darwin never defines it, but I would like to believe that vigor has nothing to · do with ambitious intentions or rippling muscles, and everything to Editor: Peter Heyneman do with efficacy, or work. A creature certainly must be judged by the Junior Editor: l(athleen I<.:.elley effect it has in the world, and this judgment should take into account only the consequences of its striving for the betterment of its species. Jill Delston Assistant Editors: In other words, natural selection doesn't care for potential energy. The Sandeep Shekhar Das beings that have vigor, act; if it is unused, it does not exist. Editorial Board: Anderson Tallent Perhaps there is also a sort of natural selection among the "Being Matthew Albanese of Fictions" that Eva Brann speaks of in her essay, (beginning on Matthew Gates page 7). There certainly was an unnatural selection here at the maga­ zine, when the staff and I picked a winner of the first annual Thorpe­ Artwork Editor: Caroline Picard Andrews Prize for First Year Student Writing. There were many quite Publishing Advisor: Andrew Ranson promising entries, and the decision was difficult, but the work we chose, Marshall Derks's poem "Song of Summer," (page 25) displayed Layout and Design: Paul Detchemendy a kind of vigor evident in writing that is not simply strong, but casu­ ally effective. Readers, like us Energeia editors, are constantly singling out characters, writers, books, even individual lines, not on the basis of some vague potentiality or secret power, but for the intellectual and emotional movement created in us by these vigorous fictions. For there must always be progression in thought as well as in life's devel­ Thanks to: Chris Colby and the opment: a motion, if not towards a certain goal, then possibly just a St. John's College Print Shop cheerful, headstrong revolution of forms and beliefs, energized con­ tinuously by individual striving. Aesop, the great historian, once said, "Toils are the treasures of man." Treasure is equally toil, though, even if the bird hardly knows it is working as it sings out from the trees its vigorous tones. -Peter Heyneman \' 0 n Faith and Perfection ........ ...... .. .. .. ............... ........... ..... ....... ... ...... ..4 7 .Annual Essay Prize TABLE OF Kathleen Kelley (untitled) .. .. ...... .. ....................... .... .... .... .. .. ... ... .... ... ... .... ...... .... .... ... .. 62 Cara Lammey Harpokrate's Pilgrim ... ... ... ...... .... .. ..... ....... ... .. ........... .... ....front cover Sean Ross Secret .. .. ...... ........... ... .... .. .. .. ........ .... .............. .. ................. ... ..... .... ..... .. 63 Jill Delston Oula. ........ .... ..... .. .... .. .... .. .. ........... ... ............ ................ ..... .. .. ...... ... ... ..6 Caroline Picard Goat ................................................................. .. ... .. ............... ... ......... 65 Cara Gormally The Being of Fictions .... ......... .. .. ... .... .... .............. .... ...... ................... .. 7 Eva Brann Untitled .. ................ .... ..... ............ .. ... .. ...... ...... .... ... .. ..... .... ..... .. ...... .....66 Benjamin Truesdale 13 Colonial ..... ....... .. ... ....... ... ... .. ................... ..... ... .. ..... ....... .. .... .· .......24 Marion Cook Egypt and the Cult of Heracles: Mythology and the Marvelous in Herodotus' Histories .... .. ..... .. ........ .. 67 Song of Summer .... ....... .. .. ..... .. ......... .. .... ... .. ...... ...... ... ...... ... ...... .. .. .... 25 ~-\nnual Essay Honorable Mention Marshall Derks Bryan Thorpe Untitled .... ..... .... ............. .... ... .. ......... ... .... ....... .. ..... .... ....... .... .. ...... ... ...26 Untitled ... ....... ... .... ........ .. ........... ...... ... ...... .. ....... ..... ..... ... .. .... ...... .. ..... 112 Lucas Ford Elizabeth Wagner The Present is Pregnant with the Future .. .... .................. .. ..... .... ... .. ... ..27 Beatrice.... .... .. .. .... .... .. ... ... ...... .......... .......... ... ... ... ...... ... .... .. ..back cover Annual Essay Prize .Ann-Therese Gardner Rachel Seay Arte Poetica ..... ....... ..... .............. ... ...... .. .... .. ... ..... ... ............ ......... ..... ..44 Jorge Luis Borges translated by Isaac Smith CON T EN TS S e!f-portrait ...... ..... .. ... ... .... ..... ...... ... .. ........ .. ..... .... ................ .. ... .. .... ...46 Kathryn Bush \ ENERGEL-\ The Being of Fictions 1 by Eva Brann In casting around for a subject that might be of interest to many of you and yet not utterly familiar to everybody, I thought that an inquiry into which philosophy, literature, logic, psychology, ordinary experience, and cognitive science enter in about equal parts might fill the bill. The Being of Fictions seemed to be such a subject. The philo­ sophical version of the issue would be: What is the ontological status of fictions? What kind and degree of being do fictions have? The lit­ erary question would be: How does a fictional text convey the nature of its creature? What literary devices distinguish fictions from lies? The logical version would be: What is the logical quality of the exis­ tence operator that a fiction commands? Are statements about non­ existent beings somehow true or simply false? In psychology one might ask: What is the mental framework proper to the reception of fictions? Is a special psychological vulnerability involved? In ordinary experience the question is: Whence comes the power of the unreal? Is it to be accepted or discounted in ordinary life? And in cognitive science the most clearly defined problem was: Can one show experi­ mentally that there are mental images? Could the visual imagination, Ou/a Caroline Picard as a faculty for making canvasless and paintless pictures visible to none but the imaginer, be made to reveal its products to empirical sci­ ence? All the questions I have mentioned are, as a matter of course, about cognition and its theories-what is there of interest to us that isn't? But only the last is about cognitive science as an experimental 7 6 ENERGEIA BRANN study. Let me explain first why I put the question in the past, as a emanating from them. Amateurs of the imagination are pretty good superseded problem, so to speak, and then why it once mattered to at unformulated atmosphere, but it takes a master to coagulate the fig­ me and still does matter to the being of fictions. ures: Like many of us who spend a very lively part of our lives immersed in fiction I live somewhat split-mindedly, schizophrenically. ... as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen On the one hand I readily give in to the seduction particularly of nov­ Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing els, not so much in the mental frame of suspended disbelief (which .A local habitation and a name. implies an initial vigilant skepticism) as in an unguarded readiness to be taken over, to believe. But of course I emerge form the realm of At any rate, Shakespeare intimates that poetry begins with internal reading, and the question is: ''Where have I been?", and the frame of visions, and so, I'm persuaded, does most prose fiction. And it takes mind is: "I believe; help thou my unbelief." Put more prosaically, a a cognitive constitution able to re-envision the shapes to become a lover of fiction is likely to be driven to reflection about its status. For reader of the scripture that comes from the poet's pen-which, put me, at least, such an inquiry has two aspects. There is a world to be technically, means that mental imagery is a sine qua non, an absolute penetrated, the world of the imagination as a natural amateur's realm necessity for reading fiction. of fiction-what goes on inside all of us (or at least most of us, since Let me give you a magnificent example of this necessity, the most it seems to be true that there are some people, significantly enough, spectacular one I know, though I can think of scores of other good often people of very high logical purity and sensitive moral con­ ones. It is from the Iliad. Having been insulted by the commander-in­ sciousness, whose imaginative inner realm is very narrow). And then, chief, Achilles has withdrawn from the battle before Troy. Now, driv­ emerging from and distinct from this relatively inchoate space of fic­ en by the rout of the Greeks to fatal half-measures, he has dressed his tion in general, there are the well-formed specific fictions of the pro- bosom friend Patroclos in his own well-known armor, in the wrong­ fidents, the poets and the novelists. It is their products that particular­ headed hope that the mere appearance of a figure looking like him­ ly induce reflection on the controll~d exploitation of the imagination, self-recall that Greek armor covers the whole man, face included­ · on the artificial modifications that lead to public fictions, and above will scare off the Trojans. Of course, Patroclos, who has been told to all, on the warranties and certifications of existence with which fic-
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