Shattering the Muses

<p><em>Shattering the Muses</em> Rainer J. Hanshe’s third book is a hybrid entity constructed of quotes poetry short essays and visual art including original works created expressly for the book by Italian artist Federico Gori. Fragmentary and elliptic aphoristic & apothegmatic <em>Shattering the Muses</em> explores if not enacts the eclipsing of the logos and creative force within individuals as well in the spheres of culture & civilization.</p><p> </p><p>Spanning a broad range of history <em>Shattering the Muses</em> stages the fundamental chiasmic unity of creation and destruction as it occurs in individuals whether a result of choice tragic events and/or social religious or political exigencies. It also enumerates the destruction of individual artworks museums and the various biblioclasms enacted by numerous cultures from biblical times till today. When do individuals and cultures rise out of catastrophe and destruction and when do they descend into silence either temporarily or (possibly) permanently and thus remain forever shattered</p><p> </p><p>If language or the creative force is a dwelling place conversely when it disintegrates or is rendered inoperative or when we as individuals or as a civilization are split from it — this is the ultimate form of the <em>Unheimlich</em> an extreme cataclysm out of which there is often no return. Hanshe proposes that “apocalypses” are not eschatological but ontological ever-present continuous events that threaten us. Hope before disaster creation in the midst of inevitable evaporation. <em>Shattering the Muses</em> is a paean to the book a work of mourning and of threat where the fragility of consciousness of art as a positive power is an ephemeral but stalwart citadel against barbarism.</p>