Dov Talpaz, “The Burning Bush” (2018), pen on paper, 9 x 9 inches (image courtesy the artist)
In a beautiful lecture by Jorge Luis Borges called “Nightmares” (from Everything and Nothing, New Directions, 1999) he states, “dreams are perhaps the most ancient aesthetic expression” and that nightmares are “flavors” of horror.
Recently reading the mythology of the burning bush, in which God is revealed to Moses for the first time, it struck me that this image evokes that flavor of horror Borges so effectively describes. How is it possible for the bush to be in flames but not consumed by the fire? Is it God’s hand at work, or is it Moses’s own dream-reality ? Is it possible for us, in ourselves, to ignite a fire, a passion, that doesn’t destroy?
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