“Muhammad Ali Trains In Hyde Park”, Gordon Parks, London, England, 1966.

Source: lefthandedtoons.com

Debout, Gabriel médita puis prononça ces mots: _ L'être ou le néant, voilà le problème. Monter, descendre, aller, venir, tant fait l'homme qu'à la fin il disparaît. Un taxi l'emmène, un métro l'emporte, la tour n'y prend garde, ni le Panthéon. Paris n'est qu'un songe, Gabriel n'est qu'un rêve (charmant), Zazie le songe d'un rêve (ou d'un cauchemar) et toute cette histoire le songe d'un songe, le rêve d'un rêve, à peine plus qu'un délire tapé à la machine par un romancier idiot (oh! Pardon). Là-bas, plus loin – un peu plus loin – que la place de la République, les tombes s'entassent de Parisiens qui furent, qui montèrent, qui descendirent des escaliers, allèrent et vinrent dans les rues et tant firent qu'à la fin ils disparurent. (...) Mais que vois-je par-dessus les citrons empoilés des bonnes gens qui m’entourent ?

Raymond Queneau, Zazie dans le métro, 1959. 

If you like you can read [this book], and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the Second World War; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.  The purpose of a thought experiment, as the term was used by the [physicists], is not to predict the future [...] but to describe reality, the present  world.  Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like - what's going on- what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. [...]  They may use all kind of facts to support their tissue of lies.They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which was really fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane- bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voice, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. [...]  In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel- that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard t say just what we learned, how we were changed.  The artist deals with what cannot be said in word.

Ursula Le Guin, Introduction,The Left Hand of Darkness, 1976. 

Ferdinand Hodler, Le Männlichen, 1908, huile sur toile, 57 x 71,5 cm, collection Christoph Blocher.

Source: “Hodler, Monet, Munch: Peindre l’impossible”, 15 janvier 2016 au 22 janvier 2017, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris. 

We are all heroes struggling to accomplish our adventure. As human beings, we engage in a series of struggles to develop as individuals and to find our place in society. Beyond that, we long for wisdom: we want to understand the nature of the universe and the significance of our role in it.

Dave Whomsley, “Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand faces”, in Eva M. Thury and Margaret K. Devinney (ed.), Introduction to Mythology, third edition, 2013.

“Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, boxing world heavy weight champion in Chicago, on a bridge over the Chicago river”, Thomas Hoepker, Chicago, USA, 1966. 

Source: Magnum photo.

i will wade out                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air                                       Alive                                                 with closed eyes to dash against darkness                                       in the sleeping curves of my body Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls                                            Will i complete the mystery                                            of my flesh I will rise               After a thousand years lipping flowers             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

E. E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys, 1923. 

Source: Hugleikur Dagsson, DJ Set, 2013. 

Source: “BestSellers”, Book covers by Hugleikur Dagsson.

Source: Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, The Wicked + The Divine, Issue 30, 9 August 2017.