39~
PARTISAN REVIEW
If
we wish to translate the Biblical language into terms that are
closer to our speech (though hardly more accurate), we may call
the gift of an "understanding heart" the faculty of imagination. In
distinction from fantasy which dreams up something, imagination
is
concerned with the particular darkness of the human heart and the
peculiar density which surrounds everything that is real. Whenever
we talk of the "nature" or the "essence" of a thing, we actually mean
this innermost kernel of whose existence we can never be so sure as
we are of darkness and density. True understanding does not tire
of interminable dialogue and "vicious circles" because it trusts that
imagination eventually will catch at least a glimpse of the always
frightening light of truth. To distinguish imagination from fancy
and to mobilize its power does not mean that understanding of human
affairs becomes "irrational." Imagination, on the contrary, as Words–
worth said, "is but another name for ... clearest insight, amplitude
of mind,!And Reason in her most exalted mood."
Imagination alone enables
us
to see things in their proper per–
spective, to put that which is too close at a certain distance so that we
can see and understand it without bias and prejudice, to bridge
abysses of remoteness until we can see and understand everything
that is too far away from us as though it were our own affair.
This
"distancing" of some things and bridging the abysses to others
is
part of the dialogue of understanding for whose purposes direct
experience establishes too close a contact and mere knowledge erects
artificial barriers.
Without this kind of imagination, which actually is understand–
ing, we would never be able to take our bearings in the world.
It
is
the only inner compass we have. We are contemporaries only
so
far as our understanding reaches.
If
we want to be at home on
this
earth, even at the price of being at home in this century, we must
try to take part in the interminable dialogue with its essence.
