Homospatial Thinking and Significant Moments: Passing Biblical Reference

Albert Rothenberg, M.D. first described or discovered a process he termed "homospatial thinking," which consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities. Homospatial thinking has a salient role in the creative process in the following wide variety of fields: literature, the visual arts, music, science, and mathematics. This cognitive factor, along with "Janusian thinking," clarifies the nature of creative thinking as a highly adaptive and primarily nonregressive form of functioning.

In a section of my book Significant Moment I discuss Richard Wagner's composition of his opera Parsifal.  Superimposed on a brief passage of the writing is a biblical image: the story of the birth of the Patriarch Isaac.  When Sarah was beyond child-bearing age, God told Abraham and Sarah that she would still give birth, at which she privately laughed (Gen. 18:10–12).  Wagner himself was 56 years old when Cosima, 24 years his junior, gave birth to their son, Siegfried.  Parsifal was Wagner's last opera; the opera was a product of the composer's old age.  (Arthur Rubinstein's father was already old when his last-born child Arthur was born; Arnold Schoenberg was old when his son Ronald was born.)

The reference to the Biblical Isaac refers to both Wagner's son Siegfried and to his opera Parsifal: and perhaps to Arthur Rubinstein and Arnold Schoenberg.  Coincidentally, Arthur Rubinstein's father was named Isaac.
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Wagner, an artist who in general had built upon and summarized the achievements of his contemporaries, was . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner, The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . in his old age . . .
Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary.
. . . following new paths.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner, The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
He would jokingly repeat . . . —
Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19: Freud’s Home and Offices, Vienna 1938.
Whoever hears will laugh at me . . .
Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary.
. . . but I like to remind people . . .
Terry Rager, Live From . . . the Stratosphere.
Parsifal . . .

Siegfried Wagner, Erinnerungen.

. . . is not an old work of my youth but a youthful work of my old 
age . . .

Conrad Susa, Music of Unseen Worlds quoting Wagner.
. . . a legacy I am proud to leave.
Isaac Stern and Chaim Potok, My First 79 Years.
Parsifal, . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . a work that was unlike anything he—or anyone else—had done before . . .
Helen A. Cooper, Thomas Eakins The Rowing Pictures.
. . . is probably the most highly personal musical invention of Wagner—it places the emphasis for the first time on uncertainty, on . . .
Lucy Beckett, Richard Wagner: Parsifal quoting Pierre Boulez.
. . . fluctuating chromatic harmonies . . .
Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s.
. . . on indetermination . . .
Lucy Beckett, Richard Wagner: Parsifal quoting Pierre Boulez.
—and I tell you that . . .
Hermann Levi, Letter to His Father (Rabbi Levi of Giessen).
. . . a patient listener . . .
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Legends of the Province House: II. Edward Randolph's Portrait.
. . . will palpably sense the distinct quality conferred by the actual experience . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.
. . . of delayed disclosure . . .
Alwyn Berland, Light in August: A Study in Black and White.
. . . of tonality—
Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea.
. . . which creates initially a sense of discontinuity.
Alwyn Berland, Light in August: A Study in Black and White.