The story and the Fable

I completed Willa Muir's 'Belonging' in my friend's, Wendy's, delightful garden, backing onto the Dart river in Totnes.

It is deeply moving; a combined journey of 'true love'.

When first married, Edwin had received a vision the end point of which had been the two ascending winged towards light and the interior wing on each side falling away, so that their ascent was wholly dependent on each other. It was a vision triumphantly fulfilled.

A theme that Willa explores throughout is the relationship, in Edwin's formulation, between the story and the Fable.

The former is the unfolding history of an individual life, the latter the universal pattern of myth on which every human life is woven. The fullest possibility of an individual life is the realisation of that aspect of the Fable with which it is most concerned. It is what Jung would have called a journey of individuation.

Edwin's guiding aspect of the Fable was of the Fall and the long journey back towards the light - a light more fully resonant for the journey undertaken. Paradise regained consciously is different from that enjoyed unconsciously.

Time and again, Willa refers, and with external corroboration, to Edwin's radiance when he was living in fullest accord with the Fable in the texture of his own history. He radiated benevolence and that quiet invitation such radiance has that you, in encountering it, might change your life in response. undertake your own journey in the light.

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