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摘要
"The Italians have a musical notation not found in any other language: tempo giusto 'the right tempo.' It means a steady, normal heat, between 66 and 76 on the metronome. Tempo giusto is the appropriate heat of the human heart."
One of the preeminent literary artists of our time turns her attention, her profound insight, and her passion to humankind's most enduring, important, evocative, and provocative symbol:
What is heart? It is the muscle of life, sending our most vital fluid coursing through our veins to every striving hungry part of our being. It is what keeps us striving against impossible odds; that fortifying something that is the cornerstone of every triumph. It elates us when we discover love and pains us greatly when that love is lost or proves unrequited. It is a gentleness that colors what we give to others. It is a symbol that we see on greeting cards: a small, red shape that was drawn on the wall of a cave in Spain more than 12,000 years ago
In this truly remarkable work, acclaimed, bestselling author Gall Godwin takes us on a breathtaking journey of the heart that spans the entire history of human civilization, combining literature, myth, religion, philosophy, medicine, the fine arts, and intensely personal stories from the writer's own past to explore the full and complex character of that unique symbol. Brimming with intelligence and wit, Godwin's explorations and meditations brilliantly track themes of the heart in life, legend, and art -- from the first valentine to the first stethoscope, from Gilgamesh to Confucius, from the heart of darkness to wearing one is heart on one's sleeve.
Here is a gift of the heart from an eminent American writer at the pinnacle of her creative talents. It is a work of extraordinary power, creativity, scholarship, and passion. Lively and moving, Heart offers us a profound new look at where we come from and what has sustained us across millennia-in short, what it is that makes us human.
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
Well known for her many exquisitely crafted and bestselling novels (three, including Violet Clay and A Mother and Two Daughters, were National Book Award finalists), Godwin blends the scholarly and the personal in her first work of nonfictionÄa thoroughly researched study of the meaning of the heart in political and religious history, literature and poetry, philosophy, psychology and medicine. Beginning with the first known image of the heart, in a prehistoric cave drawing of an elephant, and the conception of the organ in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which prescribes weighing the hearts of the deceased in judgment of their lives, she shows that heart lore is as old as humankind. Ancient myths and religions alike revered the heart as the seat of wisdom and the home of the soul, until, as Godwin explains, science gained ascendancy during the industrial revolution and assigned a lesser role to the heart than to the brain, as the locus of the mind. Godwin considers literature's representations of the heart's diverse properties, including heartbreak, descents into darkness, "changes of heart," as well as the coldhearted "invalids of eros" who lack any heart at all. Accounts of loss, depression and suicide prompt the author to ask, "Are some of us born with strong hearts, others with fragile ones?" She studies Shakespeare's sonnets as models for modern treatments of love, and the writings of Teresa of Avila and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for their portrayals of religious rapture. Concluding with illustrations of people full of "hospitality of heart," Godwin brings the book full circle, proffering hope for "a coherent culture in which mind and heart are partners, not competitors, in perception." Agent, John Hawkins. (Feb. 14) Forecast: While Godwin's fans will appreciate her occasional references to her characters and the glimpses of her personal life here, her scholarly approach is unlikely to capture the fancy of most of the readers of her novels, despite the publisher's five-city tour and 15-city NPR campaign. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
Bestselling novelist Godwin ( Evensong , 1999, etc.) stitches an intimate sampler of the ways we humans have imagined acts of the heart through time and across cultures. The heart works in strange and curious waysheart acts are often improvisational detours from point-to-point plansGodwin observes, but she is most interested in a kind of heart-knowledge based on feeling values, relationship, personal courage, intimations of the ineffable, a passion for transcendence. The author focuses here on a selection of cultural heart acts that have moved her and made her more alive, more worthy, from the prehistoric cave painter who gave life to a wooly mammoth by adding a heart to the epic of Gilgamesh , the story of one human heart living fully in its time, finally conceding its human limits. She examines the Hebrew heart that feels shame when it deviates from walking with God and St. Augustines Confessions , in which the heart is pure protean marvel. She deplores the horrible theft of the hearts poetic associations by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of empiricism, which see the individual human as a cog in the almighty economic machine. Godwin takes light-footed tours through such literary themes as heartbreak, heartlessness, change of heart, and the heart of darkness: the journey into a darkness that might poison or dry up this precious wellspringor deepen and enlarge it if you come through. She lauds the hospitality of the heart, a special kind of imagination that concentrates on how another creature might be feeling, one of those essential rhythms to which the caring heart is tuned. She also provides numerous personal stories to give her survey an anecdotal warmth and clarity. Though not really much more than a commonplace book of the authors personal fascinations, many readers will dip into this appealing grab-bag with pleasure and sometimes surprise.
《书目》(Booklist)书评
The heart has always been envisioned as the seat of emotions and home of the soul, providing a crucial balance to the head, a more pragmatic organ. This perception has given rise to a wealth of imaginative interpretations that are embedded in religious and artistic traditions throughout the world. In her first work of nonfiction, Godwin conducts a personal, highly spiritual, and wholly involving survey of these manifestations of the metaphorical heart. Although she doesn't neglect romance in her inquiry into how the heart became the emblem of intuition, compassion, and love, the concern with religious conundrums that shapes her fiction, most overtly in Evensong (1998), compels her to focus on "heart-oriented" spiritual teachings. Godwin plucks out and examines myriad allusions to the heart found in Sumerian myths, the Hebrew Bible, the Upanishads, Taoist texts, and the Koran. As insightful and enthusiastic as her exegeses on these traditions are, however, she can't help but approach them as an outsider. When she turns to the Christian tradition, she catches fire and writes with unmitigated passion about Saints Augustine and Teresa and spiritual writers such as C. S. Lewis. The most powerful of her musings involves the loss of heart, which she relates poignantly to her brother's violent death. Godwin also expertly explicates heart-illuminating passages in Ovid, Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, and Elizabeth Bowen and finds paths to the heart in contemplation of friendship, hospitality, flowers, and the paintings of Paul Klee. This is a generous, graceful, and memorable read, kin to the spiritual writings of Kathleen Norris, Andre Dubus, and Thomas Lynch. Donna Seaman Adult Fiction
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Respected novelist and short story writer Godwin (The Finishing School) combines personal meditations with poignant quotations from world literature to construct a penetrating diary of musings on the human heart's meanings and metaphors. Organized around three rather vague topics, her narrative draws on well-founded data and thought from traditional folklore, mythology, and religion as well as history, psychology, and the fine arts. Quotations from the likes of Shakespeare, Rilke, Bernard Shaw, and Herman Hesse support the text. The result, while intriguing, is a somewhat disconnected work of historical curiosity that wanders without firm definition. Recommended only where demand warrants. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/00.] Richard K. Burns, MSLS, Hatboro, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
目录
| Author's Note | p. xi |
| Prologue: The Rhythms That Count | p. 1 |
| Part 1 The Heart Through Time | |
| I. The Elephant with a Heart | p. 19 |
| II. Heart Shape | p. 20 |
| III. The Sumerians | p. 22 |
| IV. The Egyptians | p. 27 |
| An Ancient Boy's Heart | p. 30 |
| V. The Hebrews | p. 33 |
| VI. The Hindus | p. 43 |
| The Upanishads | p. 43 |
| Religious Heart/Romantic Heart: The Hindu Connection | p. 49 |
| The Chakras | p. 53 |
| VII. Siddhartha Gautama: The Buddha | p. 55 |
| VIII. The Chinese | p. 61 |
| Confucius | p. 61 |
| Lao-tzu and the Tao Te Ching | p. 64 |
| Heart Ideas in Chinese Medicine | p. 66 |
| IX. The Japanese | p. 69 |
| Haiku | p. 72 |
| X. The Greeks | p. 73 |
| The Durable Heart of Baby Dionysus Zagreus | p. 73 |
| The Heart Separates from the Head: The Fathers of Philosophy | p. 75 |
| Socrates | p. 78 |
| XI. Jesus of Nazareth | p. 80 |
| XII. Muhammad, Prophet of Islam | p. 86 |
| XIII. St. Augustine: The Autobiographical Heart | p. 93 |
| XIV. The Romantic Heart: From Courtly Love to Valentines | p. 98 |
| The Troubadours | p. 98 |
| Chretien de Troyes | p. 102 |
| The Heart of Heloise | p. 104 |
| The Valentine | p. 108 |
| XV. The Great Heart Split of the Seventeenth Century | p. 111 |
| William Harvey | p. 112 |
| The First Stethoscope | p. 115 |
| St. Teresa's Heart Preserved in Alcohol | p. 116 |
| The Nun Who Popularized the Sacred Heart of Jesus | p. 117 |
| Blaise Pascal | p. 121 |
| XVI. Hard Times and Where Is the Heart? | |
| The Industrial Revolution to the Present | p. 128 |
| A Recapitulation | p. 135 |
| XVII. Heart Signs in These Times? | p. 139 |
| Books with Heart | p. 140 |
| Open-heart Occupations | p. 142 |
| Part 2 Heart Themes in Life and Art | |
| I. Heartbreak | p. 147 |
| Terminal: My Brother's Story | p. 147 |
| Avenged Through Art: George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House and Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart | p. 159 |
| Heartbreak Observed: C. S. Lewis | p. 170 |
| II. Absence of Heart / Heartlessness | p. 176 |
| Invalids of Eros: Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady | p. 176 |
| Am I One? | p. 186 |
| Pockets of Heart-Absence | p. 189 |
| III. The Heart of Darkness | p. 194 |
| What and Where Is It? | p. 194 |
| Witness-Explorers of the Heart of Darkness | p. 201 |
| Inanna's Descent | p. 204 |
| Inanna, Marlow, and Kurtz | p. 213 |
| Safe Conduct out of the Heart of Darkness | p. 216 |
| "My Heart of Darkness": Personal Stories | p. 219 |
| IV. Change of Heart / Conversion of Heart | p. 227 |
| Sudden, Violent, Dramatic, Radical | p. 227 |
| "It's a Phrase We Use When We Don't Feel the Same Anymore": A Brief Etymology | p. 230 |
| Lovers Who Stop Loving | p. 232 |
| Heart Work: The Heart in Pilgrimage (Rilke, Yeats, Herbert) | p. 235 |
| V. The Heart in Love | p. 241 |
| Shakespeare's Heart in Love | p. 244 |
| Two Old Hearts, Still Entwined: Baucis and Philemon | p. 250 |
| Two Old Hearts Survive Swiftian Satire | p. 253 |
| Two Old Hearts, Evicted by Faust the Land Developer, Are Incinerated | p. 255 |
| Two Old Hearts Leave Us a Legacy | p. 257 |
| Holy Eros: The Mystic Heart in Love: Teresa of Avila | p. 261 |
| How She Changed | p. 265 |
| Completing Love's Guest List: Love of Self | p. 268 |
| Part 3 Hospitality of Heart | |
| I. Heather's Parties | p. 275 |
| II. Toward More Consciousness of Heart | p. 281 |
| III. A Jesuit Scientist and His "Converging Hearts": Pierre Teilhard de Chardin | p. 283 |
| "The Heart Grows a New Skin" | p. 288 |
| The Heart of "the Heart of Things" | p. 289 |
| IV. An All-around Heart: Paul Klee | p. 291 |
| The "Heart Pictures" | p. 296 |
| Epilogue | p. 299 |