>>24473020
If I were to recommend something, I'd say the Foldenyi and the Barfield. Foldenyi is like Guy Davenport with that trasncendental care for the Human Spirit that Simone Weil has. This book "Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel In Siberia And Bursts Into Tears" is his attempt at— through a series of disjointed essays—laying the grounds for a new metaphysics after the Enlightenment had brought the destruction of all, previously held, sacred values. He writes about, Canetii, Mass & Spirit, the title essay of course, Artaud, von Kleist, the Tower of Babel etc. Picrel is an extrsct from the title essay.
Barfield, was a member of the Inklings (Tolkein, CS Lewis). This book is in line with Lewis' Christian writings. It essentially explores the 3000 year history of human consciouness with relation to human perception of phenomena. I'd say that it is immensely terse, yet dense, in an Emerson sort of way. And is as difficult, if not more so to read than Emerson. So i've only read the introduction and the first chapter. It talks of Nature and the Environment as not being static, and being actively produced, or at least, in conversation with Human Perception. I guess in that respect it is similar to Julian Jaynes' Bicameral mind book. There's an interstinh blurb on the back of the Barfield by Saul Bellow of all people.
>"We are supplied with intersting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free... from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our 'common sense'."
In that respect it also reminded me of this article on Non-Duality I had read years ago.
>https://smoothbrains.net/posts/2022-08-24-planetary-scale-vibe-collapse.html
Also, the Marguerite Young book is very interesting, non-fiction book about two attempts at establishing Utopian Socialists societies in New Harmony. This article is what sold me on getting it.
>https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-lost-utopia/
