THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

armed with the distinct impressions of the imagination, could harness what might not be
penetrated. Descartes had insisted, and Newton demonstrated, that natural and cosmic
phenomena might be reduced to formalistic relations expressible in the rational terms of
mathematics, which in turn made it possible to predict the outcome of other, analogous
phenomena. Such success was possible, only because the imagination provided rational
representations of the objective world, without which recent advances in technology and
engineering would have been impossible. Men were confidant that they recognized reality
because, armed with technology, they could imitate and sometimes even alter it to suit
their purposes.
Unfortunately, the imagination turned out to be something of a maverick, even
eccentric member of the cognitive team. 10 Indulged with too many unreal impressions–
due, say, to religious mysticism, to the surreptitious reading of romances, or to all too
frequent visits to the theater–a captive imagination might end up ignoring the input of the
senses, preferring the flattering representations of fiction to mundane reality, favoring
unreason over reason. That is precisely the trouble with the boy Wilhelm when the
visions afforded him by the puppet theater disappear, leaving only the dull doorframe of
the day before: “‘Den andern Morgen war leider das magische Gerüste wieder
verschwunden, der mystische Schleier weggehoben, man ging durch jene Türe wieder frei
aus einer Stube in die andere, und so viel Abenteuer hatten keine Spur zurückgelassen’”
(17). [“‘Next morning that magic structure had vanished, the mystic curtain was gone and
you could once again move without hindrance from one room to the next. All the
enchantment had disappeared and left no trace’” (EAB 6).] A second production of the
puppet show offers Wilhelm a glimpse behind the curtain and into the technical apparatus
10 Foucault writes of the “arbitrariness of the imagination” in what he calls the classical age. See
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage Books,
1988), pp. 93-94. He notes that, while the imagination was not thought to be the source of
madness, “it is profoundly rooted in it”. What he means is that the images it provides were
assumed to be entirely subject to the will; that when passions disrupt the balance in mind and
body, the imagination is highjacked, as it were, to provide the image that suits desire.
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