Matn/Pizhūhī-i Adabī (Mar 2024)
The Collective Unconscious Mind and the Role of its Themes and Images in the Richness of the Literary Work (Relying on the Comparison of the Theme of "Patience against Calamity" in "Kelidar" and "Da")
Abstract
There are different methods for criticizing a work of art, which critics use to criticize and analyze works of art and literature. Until today, the criticisms focused mostly on the author's external world, the work itself, and the author's influence on the story. This research tries to examine the findings of psychological studies about the collective unconscious mind and the use of its contents and facilities in the creation of artwork; Therefore, the main goal of this research is to answer the question, what role did the factors and elements belonging to the unconscious mind play in literature or giving literary dignity to "Da" and "Kelidar"? This research has been conducted by document analysis and analytical-descriptive method. The result shows that any text with any level cannot provide a suitable platform and necessary conditions to play the role of archetypes and myths. Texts that are solely developed by the intellect and the five senses cannot go beyond the intellect; this is despite the fact that the more sense and imagination are left free, the more literary and mythological text we will have at our disposal.Keywords: Collective Unconscious Mind, Archetype, Kelidar, Da, Calamity, Literacy. IntroductionIn recent decades, the attention of critics of literary works has been drawn to psychology more than ever before, the reason for the interest is that it has been able to enter the boundaries that were closed to critics in the field of analysis and criticism of works. Freud and Jung are among the psychologists who were able to discover the relationship between literature and the human psyche and open its gates to the world. One of these gates and achievements was the unconscious mind. Freud stated that the human mind should consist of two parts or areas, the conscious part (rational area) and the unconscious part (irrational area). Freud later revised this theory and said that no thought is completely conscious or completely unconscious, and instead, he considered states of consciousness or unconsciousness. In completing Freud's comments, Jung divided the unconscious into two parts, individual and collective: the first part: the individual unconscious which is specific to individuals, and the second part is the collective unconscious which is the result of the lives of many generations of our ancestors and is in no way unique to an individual and exists in everyone. Jung believes that the basis of a person's unconscious contains once conscious information; but in a period due to being forgotten or suppressed, they have gone out of the conscious field; while unconscious contents never enter the conscious realm; therefore, they are not acquired individually and their existence depends on heredity. According to Jung, the individual unconscious is generally made up of complexes, while the collective unconscious is basically made up of archetypes. This opinion of Jung is not accepted by other psychologists, including Eastop. Eastop states that it is not possible to know the nature of the collective unconscious except in an indirect way. He says that the nature of the unconscious can be determined by analyzing the characteristics of human behavior, especially his linguistic behavior. According to these materials and since the researchers cannot directly reach the unconscious mind, they must inevitably find out the nature of the unconscious by examining the effects emerging from it. Literature ReviewIn the literature review of this research, there was no material confirming the opinion that research is directly centered around the explanation of unconscious themes and images in the formation of a work of art, especially a story. In Sara Mobra's thesis, which deals with the category of unconsciousness in the field of painting, she examined the topics of unconsciousness in the paintings of several artists and the result of the work led to the acknowledgment of the important role of the unconscious mind in their creation. The researcher attempts to study this issue in fiction and examine the unconscious expression in the works created in this field.Clarification of this issue will have such results: 1. With the expansion of research following this issue, critics of literary works will criticize the works in a more fundamental way; 2. The works created in the field of sustainability should be looked at from a different perspective and the enrichment of the literary part of this type of work should be done more easily. MethodologyThis research has been conducted in the form of documents and library studies. In the process of conducting the research, by comparing the contents of themes, archetypes, and images of the collective unconscious, the semiotic concepts and archetypal symbols of the two books of Da and Kelidar were analyzed in accordance with the reference books in the field of symbology. Finally, the conclusion was drawn by comparing Da and Kelidar. Discussion"Imagination", "myth" and "archetype" are the main perspectives that have attracted the attention of critics when examining the influence of the contents of the unconscious mind in the formation of desirable works of art. The main issue of this research is the answer to the question of whether the creators of the so-called sustainable literature have used the themes and images of the collective unconscious mind and their capacity in the artistic richness of their work. To answer this, by choosing a limited and researchable theme of "reaction to calamity" and with the help of the mentioned perspectives, the role of the unconscious in the creation of artistic and literary works has been explained. "Calamity" has wide meanings and concepts. In this research, the tragedy of losing loved ones has been specially investigated. According to the opinions of philosophers, "imagination" is the main factor of creativity and also the creator of artwork, which has differences from "imagination". Coleridge, the English literary critic, and philosopher, does not separate the primary imagination from the secondary imagination; rather, he considered it a higher rank and position in which he can make a difference between the artist and other people. From his theories, it is understood that a person can give it the soul appropriate to the work, which can connect the imagination to the higher level of imagination, regardless of his will and desire. Of course, there were others who considered other forces to be effective in literary creation; among others, we can mention Proust, who considered instinct as a source of inspiration and power and considered the writer to be someone who can use it and mix it with internal and external factors to create his work of art. This is despite the fact that Jung considered instinct as a physical tension that is received by the senses. He equated "instinct" with "archetype". In fact, from this point of view, Jung called the instinct an archetype, and the archetype also emerges and shows itself like an instinct; just as the instinct is spontaneous and stimulating, the archetype also appears instinctively and spontaneously.Based on this, the themes and images emerging from the collective unconscious mind, which are represented in the works of art, can be traced through the archetypes used in the texts and understand which artistic texts are the suitable platform for these images. To achieve such significance, considering anything as a scale other than the collective unconscious seems far from scientific logic. With this criterion for measurement, one should compare works that are on both sides of this spectrum in their foundation; just like night and day, white and black, good and evil, and to understand each of these concepts, one must understand the other. In this research, two works have been placed on both ends of the measuring scale, which are in front of each other. One is the flagship of the memoir, which is the seat of reason and objectivity, and the other is a novel full of archetypes, which the reader realizes in the first reading. The result shows that any text with any level cannot provide a suitable platform and the necessary conditions to play the role of archetypes and myths. The texts that are only developed by the intellect and the five senses, cannot go beyond the intellect. This is despite the fact that the more sense and imagination are left free, the more literary and mythological text we will have at our disposal. ConclusionThe comparison of the two books from the point of view of the reaction to the "calamity of losing loved ones" and the role of archetypal themes and images in giving them literary and artistic dignity shows that in some themes and images, the narration of both works has been compiled in such a way that they can provide more or less capacity and capability for archetypal reading and emerging from the realm of the unconscious mind; among other things, in the archetypal images of "death", "mother" and "lost", it seems that the feature mentioned in Kelidar's narrative has more depth and variety, and in this regard, it can bring the reader with him more. Kelidar's expression is such that you can read it many times and get to know more angles of it in each reading. This is why repetition in reading desirable literary works increases the reader's excitement; because in every reading, a knot is untied. Perhaps it can be said that because of its type, which is a memoir, and in its core and primary material, it has a lot of dependence on reality and the self-conscious world. Therefore, at least in the presentation and first report of self-narrative, it is deprived of this gift. These two different types of narration showed that the effect of possessing unconscious content in reaching a literary work to its desired position, which is the continuous communication with the reader, is important, and Kelidar's ability to communicate with the reader is greater by using archetypal elements instead of narration and connecting the reader's soul and unconscious with these themes.
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