We know that Theseus, the winner of Minotaur, would have stated that imagination goes further than reason. And there is no need to go to mythical Greece to confirm this, as it is enough to remember that Albert Einstein said the same, demonstrating it in the audacious scientific path he followed. Starting from Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night’s Dreamcontinuing with the famous map of Hereford Cathedral, where old legends of the ancient world were compiled, culminating in Gauguin’s journey to Tahiti in search of the essence of Art, Francisco Louçã presents in his book Imagination – Colors, Gods, Travel and Love (Bertrand, 2025) a stimulating and unexpected reflection on this fundamental question: Is there, beyond cold reason, a human essence that is born from the impulse of creativity? The path it presents to us is stimulating, as Lídia Jorge mentioned in the book’s presentation. And since we talked about Theseus, it is worth saying that we can use the metaphors of the labyrinth and a beautiful kaleidoscope to identify this long reflection.
The themes are intertwined and we can understand how it is possible to resort to different clues, “whether in religion the Sumerian and Mesopotamian beliefs and the Quran, or in literature the enchanting influence of Epopeia of Gilgamésdo Romance of Genji and the One Thousand and One Nightswhether reporting on the African travels of Ibn Battuta or the geography of Al-Idrisi and the North American and Kondrarionk indigenous sageza”.
Despite the distances in geography and time, around a thousand years, we are discovering the complexity of the human condition. We are facing a census, naturally limited, despite its length, on the ability to think and create new possibilities in different social and historical frameworks. And so we find ourselves confronted with revealing temporal overlaps. And Plínio asks: “how many things are judged impossible before they have actually occurred?” The author may say that the script he presents is incomplete and even imprecise, but what is certain is that the themes are promising in themselves, opening up several questions that lead to new horizons.
The route proposed to us is an exciting path for those who consider reading, reflection and thought to be powerful factors of emancipation. And in this way, the themes follow one another throughout the work: Imagining Color; Imagine the Beyond; Imagine the unknown; and Imagine pleasure. Regarding each one, we can fill in the spaces opened by the unfathomable mysteries presented to us. And we realize that imagination is the cognitive faculty that creates mental images and their imaginaries. “In fact, one cannot think, feel or learn without imagining”.
Cervantes invents the modern novel, just as Fernão Mendes Pinto constructs a true saga. And Gauguin, on his journey, teaches us that blue is what appears blue to us. And religions, in their mysterious millennia-old connections, are the oldest social imaginaries, narrating myths, constructing rituals, characterizing places. Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov it puts us to the test of who we are, and the memory of António Conselheiro in the Canudos war takes us to the limit. And read the intellectual testament of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, which forces us to go to the heart of Art: “I bequeath to my friends/ a cerulean blue to fly high / a cobalt blue for happiness / an ultramarine blue to stimulate the spirit / a vermillion to circulate the blood happily…”
President of the Arts Council of the National Culture Center