Fiction and Fantasy 2

3. FUSION AND UNITY
a). The mother-son dyad
b) The mystical attraction

[…] a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool [means here everyday life] is hidden a pattern ; that we — I mean all human beings — are connected with this ; that the whole world is a work of art […] there is a pattern behind the cotton wool. that we are parts of the work of art… There is no Shakespeare; there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; […] we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
(Virginia Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past”)


II.THE IMAGE IN THE MIRROR : THE SAME, YET DIFFERENT :
Je suis ce malheureux comparable aux miroirs
Qui peuvent réfléchir mais ne peuvent pas voir
Comme eux mon œil est vide et comme eux habité
De l’absence de toi qui fait sa cécité.
Aragon, Le Fou d’Elsa.


1.THE FLOUNDERING MIRAGE
a) Mirrors are traps :

Les miroirs sont des portes par lesquelles la mort va et vient […] vous verrez la mort travailler comme des abeilles dans une ruche de verre.
J. Cocteau

b) The body image in the mirror ?
c) The principle of reality prevails over the pleasure principle