The Cloud Over the Highway. On the Inescapability of Mystical Experience
The Cloud Over the Highway. On the Inescapability of Mystical Experience

Summary/Abstract: Adam Zagajewski’s essays on poets and poetry are interpreted here in the context of scholarly debates about the specificities of mystical experience. From the four criteria the great American philosopher and psychologist William James developed in 1902, “transiency” and “passivity” can be brought together as indicators of what I call the inescapability of mystical experience, while the two other criteria, namely “ineffability” and “noetic quality”, can be treated as what I call the “paradox of articulation”. The essay demonstrates how profound the reflections of the Polish poet on these questions are, how they are related to his views about the possibilities of contemplation and art in view of the history of violence of the 20th century and what they mean for the future of religion. The highly influential narrative of a world-historical process of ongoing “disenchantment” (Max Weber) loses much of its persuasiveness if these reflections are true.

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