You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed” (p. 3). These two opening sentences announce the central theme of Levels of Life—a book about self-transcendence, love, and devastating loss. The friend who gave me the book knew that I had been investigating and writing about the phenomenology of traumatic loss since the death of my late wife in February of 1991 shattered my world (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-relating-existing/201110/trauma-and-the-hourglass-time), and he believed that the book would strike a deep chord in me. He was right. The book is an artful blend of interesting historical fact, fictional narrative, and personal phenomenology, culminating in Barnes’s grippingly rich description of his own prolonged, agonizing grief-strickenness.
The theme of self-transcendence and its perils, of Icarian ascension and the tragedy of falling, is introduced early in the first section, “The Sin of Height,” in the form of the expansive aeronautical adventures of balloonists Fred Burnaby and Felix Tournachon (later, Nadar) and actress Sarah Bernhardt. Barnes employs evocative aeronautical metaphors skillfully throughout the remainder of the book.
In the second section, “On the Level,” self-transcendence through ascension gives way to self-transcendence through love, along with its perils:
You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed” (p. 3). These two opening sentences announce the central theme of Levels of Life—a book about self-transcendence, love, and devastating loss. The friend who gave me the book knew that I had been investigating and writing about the phenomenology of traumatic loss since the death of my late wife in February of 1991 shattered my world (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-relating-existing/201110/trauma-and-the-hourglass-time), and he believed that the book would strike a deep chord in me. He was right. The book is...