English
What's up, guys, I hope you're okay, and we started my blog with a topic that I think is important for many of the things I'm going to talk about in the future.
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Okay... Let's start with something I consider basic. What is fantasy? If we go to a dictionary, or look on the internet: We can find that: fantasy is a faculty of the human mind to represent unreal things. Or alter things that are or were real, but not present. What do I understand from it? That what we understand as fantasy, is either something imagined almost in its entirety; or a set of factors which lead you to imagine something; these factors may well be the environment, or even historical facts. Of course, something imagined almost in its entirety, will have many factors that can be related to their environment, or historical facts, but not seek to be related so directly to those factors, as we will see later. And of course, you can gather many historical facts into one, and relate it to an environment, and create something new, but for me it already becomes something that is imagined almost in its totality, because the essence of it does not seek to be related to something that has already happened, but seeks to be its own world directly, or indirectly. To distinguish between the two, and to understand better what I am saying, I want to put into better perspective all that I have already said, with some examples.
Let's talk about Dante's Inferno, about the play "The Divine Comedy". I will consider this play as a world almost entirely imagined. I also take it into consideration, not only because it is a work of great importance on a historical level, but also because there are too many factors in it to be able to explain better what I am saying about taking many historical characters, and putting them together in a pre-established setting. I also have to say that I am only going to take the first part, which is hell, so as not to be talking all day, although the pattern I am going to talk about is also reflected in the purgatory, and heaven belonging to this same work.
In remembering or speaking about Dante's Inferno, they do not refer to it as a guide to the Bible, or a biography of the characters who appear in it. One goes straight to imagine those circles in which a person is suffering a condemnation, the path, which with his words, makes you feel the extension of that world; the reflections and words of Horace; the fear of Dante and the landscapes that are described. But it is also clear that the references he takes to his world will be taken into account, don't misunderstand me. But as I said above, the book is really about Dante's journey, he sees it in this one, the reflections he makes, and the self-knowledge and becoming stronger. A journey in order to reach a destination, which his path is represented by a lot of stories and facts about his characters, either being directly these (the characters), or a reference to these (again, the characters). The aim of The Divine Comedy is to trap you with a journey, with characters and an environment of which you know, but perhaps until the moment of reading The Divine Comedy, you were not able to shape it. In that way Dante creates a new world, one in which you can travel, shape it, believe what you want, and feel that the journey can be made by you, not just Dante. And not only be another story about the famous characters that appear in this, which can be real, or imagined (What I will talk about next, not the characters, eye, but of these imagined beings that represent certain natural elements, or epic fantasies), not be prey to be compared to the hell of the bible as it would be, but gives a form of what can be, create something new. No doubt I'll talk about The Divine Comedy later in my blog, I left a lot of things I can and want to talk about, and as I said, it's just something of this world, a surface. Don't talk so directly about the characters, and don't mention purgatory and heaven, but I think the whole play will deserve a post for itself. For the time being, we'll just take it as a great example of what I consider a work almost entirely imagined.
Let's talk now about the other side of the coin, which I say is involved by factors that lead you to imagine something, and that can be related to the environment, or a historical fact. It's not the same to create my world, with my rules, representations, characters, and so on... Something considered as totally unreal, despite its references as seen with Dante's Inferno. To imagine something and consider it real, a fact in itself, a representation of something tangible, of which something fantastic can be represented. For this, let's talk about another clear example. For the attentive readers who looked at the images, you can already give an idea of where I am aiming. How can I not explain better what I say, if not with the mythologies, and the world that surrounds them? Come on... That's a good point.
When we talk about mythologies, we must not forget the fact that in its time it was considered a religion. Fantastic facts to explain things that at the time were not very clear. Things like natural phenomena, visions, life, causality, death, diseases, even the social situation of several people, etc.. They were a set of contexts, to give way to the understanding of various things that happened around those social groups, of which they could not find an explanation. For this reason, several explanations came to light about phenomena that today are no more than a mere product of nature, but that at the time transformed that into word of mouth stories about how the gods fought, or dedicated themselves to doing their own thing on a mere whim. Why not say that lightning comes from a being led to the divinity, and to this one we give the name of Zeus, God of Lightning? And if that wasn't enough, not only did they leave him as the God of thunder, they also gave him the highest rank among the Gods among those beings of great power. With this, you can see that the communities that believed in this, gave great importance, and great impact to what lightning storms were, and that their logical explanation, was the fact that Zeus was either upset, or fighting with someone. This happens quite a lot, and I can think of a God just like this one, only that he was not taken to the highest rank among his people (although he still enjoys a good position in this one), who is also considered the God of lightning, but in another mythology, I speak of the God Thor, of the Nordic mythology.
When we talk about mythologies, we must not forget the fact that in its time it was considered a religion. Fantastic facts to explain things that at the time were not very clear. Things like natural phenomena, visions, life, causality, death, diseases, even the social situation of several people, etc.. They were a set of contexts, to give way to the understanding of various things that happened around those social groups, of which they could not find an explanation. For this reason, several explanations came to light about phenomena that today are no more than a mere product of nature, but that at the time transformed that into word of mouth stories about how the gods fought, or dedicated themselves to doing their own thing on a mere whim. Why not say that lightning comes from a being led to the divinity, and to this one we give the name of Zeus, God of Lightning? And if that wasn't enough, not only did they leave him as the God of thunder, they also gave him the highest rank among the Gods among those beings of great power. With this, you can see that the communities that believed in this, gave great importance, and great impact to what lightning storms were, and that their logical explanation, was the fact that Zeus was either upset, or fighting with someone. This happens quite a lot, and I can think of a God just like this one, only that he was not taken to the highest rank among his people (although he still enjoys a good position in this one), who is also considered the God of lightning, but in another mythology, I speak of the God Thor, of the Nordic mythology.
Now to close, let's talk a little over what I'm going to cover in my blog. Let's talk about literary fantasy. I already addressed this topic a little bit here and there during this post, but I want to define it since it leaves it very ambiguous in a certain way, and thus give an idea of what it is, and what I can say about it.
The literary fantasy is just a genre of literature, in which the elements are going to be represented mainly by unreal things. Although I don't stay alone with that, not because I also gave my own sense to it, (And as a great writer said, which we'll talk about later, even if I paraphrase, and not with exact words... hehehe, maybe I exaggerate or alter it in something): Fantasy has no limits or rules, or it wouldn't be fantasy). But because for me... Literary fantasy is what gives a great context to everything I said, it helped me to raise the idea of what is fantasy for me?, it helped me to give context to what I said, to formulate ideas, and many other things throughout the post, and what I will take into account throughout my blog. It is what allows one to transmit the worlds that are locked in their meten, sometimes bad, sometimes very good; it is an explosion of possibilities, which personally has led me through several worlds, to imagine the unthinkable, to understand a little of the human soul, social situations, and to understand people better. Because always, even a little, the context of stories in literary fantasy can lead you to understand that not everything is black or white, but that there is a touch of grey (and that doesn't make everything worse). That in adverse situations, the least expected can be the best way to move forward and keep going, or that something simple can be the answer to something complex. That your world can be real if you want it to be, and that there are still many others to visit. A literary genre guided by unreal themes, where even a panda can be more human than the same human being. This literary genre contains a lot of content, it has many branches, and no matter how many books I read, there is still a lot to read, and I will always want to visit some other world. And I'm just starting to talk about it in a blog... So there are many posts coming, and there will be plenty more to come.
Con esto y poco más, me despido Hivers, y los espero en mi próximo Blog primigenio... ¡Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!