PSP 2012 Theme:
Pitching the Sacred: Art and Spirituality
 
From Swedenborg to Madame Blavatsky, over the past couple of centuries the fringe of secular western culture has had a spooky aspect. The disassociation of spirituality from organized religion proceeded from Romanticism and its Yankee cousin Transcendentalism, and was a defining feature of Modernism, T.S. Eliot both included and notwithstanding. In the 19th century, Kant’s idealism was antidote to Locke’s “sensualism,” and Vedic thought was a shimmering alternative to Western thought in general. As Thoreau put it, “the pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”

“New Age” is not just Shirley MacLaine and ancient aliens. It permeates both “low” and “high” culture, and though in the former it is often silly, in the latter it often seems the very essence of what is vital in contemporary art. In this nineteenth year of the Prague Summer Program, we will consider the influence of Eastern thought and traditions on popular and serious culture alike, and how that influence is tinged with an idealization of “primitive” cultures, from pre-Christian European to pre-Columbian. We will also consider the influence of mysticism in its various forms, and of ancient systems of divination, from the I-Ching to astrology, on contemporary art and culture, particularly literary culture. We will consider, indeed, how Prague was a center of heterodoxy, kabbalah, Christian mysticism and alchemy.

With open hearts and minds, we will contemplate the afterlife and its inhabitants, alien intelligence, the shimmering paradoxes of modern physics, past lives and alternative futures. We will consider not necessarily the efficacy of all that is called paranormal, but its cultural influence on literary art and the various discourses on literature. Finally, we will consider how the concepts of “alternative lifestyle,” “alternative medicine,” as well as “counterculture” are rooted in radically egalitarian conceptions of the sacred that are a maelstrom of Eastern and pre-Christian traditions and mysticism in its various forms.

Richard Katrovas
PSP Founding Director