Nature into Language: Hieroglyphs and the Origins of Poetic Thought

Nature into Language: Hieroglyphs and the Origins of Poetic Thought
Sponsor Center for the Study of World Religions
Contact CSWR, 617.495.4476

Details

Emerson wrote, “Language is fossil poetry." Susan Brind Morrow will discuss hieroglyphs as poetic metaphors and vehicles of abstract thought that emerged from close observation of nature—a sophisticated language and metaphysics rooted in the vivid and precisely depicted physical world. 

Susan Brind Morrow is Scholar in Residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. Morrow has written extensively on the origins of written language in metaphor drawn from the natural world. She is the author of The Names of Things: A Passage in the Egyptian Desert, Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World, and The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Nation, The Seneca Review, and Lapham’s Quarterly. Morrow is currently at work on a book on the religious meaning of darkness for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Morrow is a former fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation

This event will be live streamed, and can be viewed here when the event begins on Wednesday, October 10th at 6:30 pm EST.