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The Heroic Encounter, by (circulated by the American Federation of Arts, 1958-59).
I first met Dorothy Norman at Ascona in Switzerland, during a meeting of the Eranos-Tagung. She struck me immediately as being a woman of parts. On closer acquaintance it transpired that, like all those who are aware of the importance of the individual in dealing with the crisis now threatening society, she had herself had no easy life and at the same time understood her personal responsibility for it.
Living in New York, part of her contribution towards the solution of problems common to all of us was, in the Spring of 1958, to stage An Exhibition of Symbolic Art at the Willard Gallery. This was accompanied by a well-bound volume of illustrations with related text entitled The Heroic Encounter, subsequently circulated by the American Federation of Arts 1958-59, which is the subject of this review.
The text, written mostly by herself, also includes quotations from or references to Zen Buddhism, artists ranging from Goya to Picasso, writers from Dostoevsky to Joyce, architects such as Le Corbusier, thinkers like Einstein, not omitting Freud and Jung. Each illustration has its own captions culled from the Book of Job and other biblical sources and ancient texts, Suzuki, Kerenyi, Coomaraswamy, the Bhagavad Gita, Pascal, Plato, Nietzsche, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, and others less known.
The theme is to see “ourselves, in the process of becoming what we potentially are”, which is described as a “relentless seeing,” disclosing “the necessary interdependence of spirit and matter, creation and destruction,” in such a manner as “never to fail to be involved” through “facing and experiencing, without fear … our very own demons”. The illustrations warn us “that we cannot assume too great loftiness, else we crash mercilessly to the very earth we would deny…. There is a price to be paid for every illumination and every victory; an act of faith to be performed in the face of every def