“City Limits”

[Gany]

“City Limits”
by James Hillman
… imagemaking is a different procedure from thinking, planning,
projecting, and conceiving. Thinking can go on without images, by
means of pure abstractions, operations of pure thought, like thinking
out logical conclusions or thinking in numbers … When planning,
projecting, and conceiving do make images, they are images of what we
have already planned or conceived — two dimensional graphs or
photographs, three dimensional miniature models of buildings and
highways. But these visual aids, as they are called, are aids of a
projected program. They are different from images in that visual aids
are illustrations of ideas or demonstrations of projections, rather
than acts of imagining. The difference here is like that between
advertising copy or background music written to capture and present a
concept, rather than a scene in a novel or a movement in a concerto
which sets the mind imagining. Visual aids attempt to program the mind
rather than let it fly or sing. As one of our most successful
philosophers of practical wisdom, Mohammed Ali, said: “Ken Norton’s
got no imagination. I got imagination. I can fly.” I have labored this
difference between imagining in images and visual aids for conceiving
and planning because when we try to imaging …, we may be substituting
for our individual spontaneous imagination … visualized conceptions
preprogrammed for us. We need to test these visualized programs
against our own memories, fantasies, and imaginations … We have to
take these concepts … and make the effort to enter them imaginatively,
taste and feel and breathe them, try ourselves in them with our hearts
and bodies. I have also labored this difference between imagining and
conceiving to emphasize that images do not have to be optical, things
for the eyeball. They may be verbal, or musical, or sculptural for the
hand. Imagination evokes our whole physical being. It especially
reflects the heart — like … peaches and pools in July, like the bird
sounds on an early March morning. [Hillman, “City Limits”, p. 55-57]
… images do not have to be optical, things for the eyeball. They may
be verbal, or musical, or sculptural for the hand. Imagination evokes
our whole physical being. It especially reflects the heart — like …
peaches and pools in July, like the bird sounds on an early March
morning. [Hillman, “City Limits”, p. 55-57]
Thinking can go on without images, by means of pure abstractions,
operations of pure thought, like thinking out logical conclusions or
thinking in numbers … When planning, projecting, and conceiving do
make images, they are images of what we have already planned or
conceived — two dimensional graphs or photographs, three dimensional
miniature models of buildings and highways. But these visual aids, as
they are called, are aids of a projected program. They are different
from images in that visual aids are illustrations of ideas or
demonstrations of projections, rather than acts of imagining. The
difference here is like that between advertising copy or background
music written to capture and present a concept, rather than a scene in
a novel or a movement in a concerto which sets the mind imagining … We
need to test these visualized programs against our own memories,
fantasies, and imaginations … We have to take these concepts … and
make the effort to enter them imaginatively, taste and feel and
breathe them, try ourselves in them with our hearts and bodies.
[Hillman, “City Limits”, p. 55-57]
… a primary characteristic of all images: they have limits,
boundaries, frames like a photograph or painting. These edges may be
soft, as the shading of a dream image, and only sketchy, as a lyric
image conjures a person by mentioning only fair ankles and golden
hair, but they hold the mind to a definite focus. An image presents a
moment of time and forms it like a sculpture; even musical and dance
imagination is limited to a particular phrase, its completed breath,
its inherent limit. Images come to an edge and have a stop. Imagining
is self-limiting by its images. Images provide limits … Each natural
and artistic event has its inherent form and limits itself by its own
image, which as we would say now, is laid down in its genetic code.
This form or internal image appears at the borders of things giving
each thing its visible shape. These edges are not rigidly fixed, but
breathe in and out, like the heart’s expansions and contractions, a
beating rhythm of life. [Hillman, “City Limits,” p. 59-60]
… we are always very careful with a person’s void and empty place, his
or her feeling of nothingness, considering it as the invisible image
which determines the way in which and in response to which that
person’s future form takes shape. We do not rush in to fill these
emptinesses with programs, “things to do,” suggestions, advice. We let
the emptiness imagine itself out; as it does so, it begins to define
the person’s self-development according to a specific quality and
direction … These responses to the challenge — [historian Arnold]
Toynbee’s formula for the movements of civilization — are the way
human imagination generates culture within its sense of lack. To keep
the culture alive we must keep that sense of lack, those feelings of …
barrenness and … inferiority. To ignore our emptiness and deprivation,
to cover it over with promotional boosterism, or abstractions in
numbers, fills the holes that must be felt for imagination to prosper
… So to do away with the void with a new masterplan of new structures
is not the answer because it is a programmatic response which fills
the void rather than respecting its potential. [Hillman, “City
Limits”, p. 61-62]
… let what is already there spontaneously develop qualitatively toward
more sophistication. [Hillman, “City Limits”, p. 62]