phy of
mine--"pollyanalytics," as one of my respected critics might say--is
deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The novels and poems
come unwatched out of one's pen. And then the absolute need which one has
for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in
general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's
experiences as a writer and as a man. The novels and poems are pure
passionate experience. These "pollyanalytics" are inferences made
afterwards, from the experience.

And finally, it seems to me that even art is utterly dependent on
philosophy: or if you prefer it, on a metaphysic. The metaphysic or
philosophy may not be anywhere very accurately stated and may be quite
unconscious, in the artist, yet it is a metaphysic that governs men at
the time, and is by all men more or less comprehended, and lived. Men
live and see according to some gradually developing and gradually
withering vision. This vision exists also as a dynamic idea or
metaphysic--exists first as such. Then it is unfolded into life and
art. Our vision, our belief, our metaphysic is wearing woefully thin,
and the art is wearing absolutely threadbare. We have no future;
neither for our hopes nor our aims nor our art. It has all gone gray
and opaque.

We've got to rip the old veil of a vision across, and find what the
heart really believes in, after all: and what the heart really wants,
for the next future. And we've got to put it down in terms of belief
and of knowledge. And then go forward again, to the fulfillment in
life and art.

Rip the veil of the old vision across, and walk through the rent. And
if I try to do this--well, why not? If I try to write down what I
see--why not? If a publisher likes to print the book--all right. And
if anybody wants to read it, let him. But why anybody should read one
single word if he doesn't want to, I don't see. Unless of course he is
a critic who needs to scribble a dollar's worth of words, no matter
how.

TAORMINA

October 8, 1921

FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Let us start by making a little apology to Psychoanalysis. It wasn't
fair to jeer at the psychoanalytic unconscious; or perhaps it _was_
fair to jeer at the psychoanalytic unconscious, which is truly a
negative quantity and an unpleasant menagerie. What was really not
fair was to jeer at Psychoanalysis as if Freud had invented and
described nothing b