Thursday 16 February 2012

AFTER A DEATH - THE PORTRAIT



I said yesterday that we’d look at the phrase ‘after a death’ in relation to my novel THE PORTRAIT.

After we die, do we reincarnate?  Many great minds have made a strong case for reincarnation.  Three of these were Pythagoras, Schopenhauer and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

Pythagoreanism is chiefly distinguished by its description of reality in terms of arithmetical relationships and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.  Interesting, isn’t it, that arithmetic and reincarnation were considered by such a man as Pythagoras to be so closely connected?

But for those of us who are not mathematicians or philosophers, where does reincarnation come in to our thinking?

For Joseph Glenny, in THE PORTRAIT, it is a case of his heart telling him something that his head rejects.  It is not possible – is it – that the wife he had loved and lost is not lost to him after all?

He becomes gradually convinced that she has returned in a different skin.  But the girl for whom his heart has thawed takes much more convincing ...

Can you imagine standing by your own gravestone and ultimately coming to terms with its significance both to your past and your present? 

That, in effect, is the question THE PORTRAIT asks after a death.


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