X
As I have previously mentioned, either here or on Facebook, my output of new poems has been unprecedentedly prolific during the past few months. This has been made possible by a mechanism that I have attributed to external help -- inspiration -- coming from the Muses, or the Holy Spirit, or perhaps sometimes from sources less wholesome. I will be reading a poem, or a prose text, and a word, or a group of words, will suddenly stand out from the original context to form the nucleus of a poem. The whole poem will be intuited -- nearly as a thing completed -- in this instant of awakening. In this process, I am left feeling as though I have been used as the conduit for the creation of a window to serve as a minor vision of revealed truth.
For this reason I was very taken by my reading of the first few pages of Christopher Rowland’s recent book, Blake and the Bible, in which he discusses William Blake’s creative methods:
Dr. Trusler had commissioned Blake to produce several paintings, but when he was sent the first for approval he took exception to Blake’s flights of imaginative fancy and the lack of naturalism, and demanded an explanation for the picture. Blake responded that he had ‘attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate’, but ‘have been compelled by my Genius or Angel to follow where he led’. In other words, the ideas were the result of a supernatural impulse. In response to Trusler’s request for an explanation, Blake responded in one of his eloquent statements of his art:
I really am sorry that you are fall’n out with the Spiritual World, Especially if I should have to answer for it. I feel very sorry that your Ideas & Mine on Moral Painting differ so much as to have made you angry with my method of Study. If I am wrong, I am wrong in good company. I had hoped your plan comprehended All Species of this Art, & Especially that you would not reject that Species which gives Existence to Every other, namely Visions of Eternity. You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients consider’d what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction, because it rouzes the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, Plato. [p.6]
On page 9, Rowland explains that “in Blake’s use of the Bible, the original context of the various allusions is almost completely left behind as the new narrative is woven together. In this kind of interpretation the Bible is a stimulus rather than a template.” [emphasis added]
Rowland goes on to say that for Blake “art is not something to be deciphered” and that “Throughout his work Blake challenged the hegemony of reason.”
In Blake’s own words, “Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably.”
The role of the poet, and the function of art, is to catapult the human mind out beyond the somnambulant state of ordinary consciousness, in order to ‘rouze’ an experience of the Real, which is the Eternal and the true Being of man. Exposing oneself to any true art, be it poetry or prose or visual, can excite the mind to participate in this process of creation.
X
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Reflections: The Poet's Burden
X
For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with Italo Calvino’s poetic novel, Invisible Cities, I will state briefly here that it imagines a series of descriptions of cities supposedly visited by Marco Polo in his travels, presented to Kublai Khan as Polo attends the Great Khan’s court. It is a bit like A Thousand and One Nights, but without the overhanging threat, or the narrative content. Invisible Cities is not comprised of tales, but rather of concepts strung together, giving shape and scope to these imagined cities. For a fuller description, click here.
In a recent discussion of poetry and the arts on Facebook, I posited an assertion that the poet, or artist, once he has proclaimed his vocation, and made public the product of his artistic visions, has ipso facto taken on a responsibility to the world at large. This thought was inspired by contemplating these words of the poet, Robert Lax:
It is funny that in most all societies, even though poets may not be well-treated, the idea of a poet is honored. I think it has something to do with vision; that without vision, the people perish. I think the people sense that poets are or should be carriers of vision, and should be those who express it. And people sense that that is needed; that vision is always needed.
If it is e-ffective, one’s art will a-ffect one’s audience, either positively, or negatively. This certainty is what entails the artist’s responsibility; it becomes a moral obligation, reminiscent of charity.
In this light, consider the following excerpt from Invisible Cities. Calvino has Marco Polo describe a city called Laudomia. Laudomia, he says, is not only a double city, allowing equal space for both the living and the dead; but a triple city, in that the unborn are also allowed equal space:
… Rightly, Laudomia assigns an equally vast residence to those who are still to be born. Naturally the space is not in proportion to their number, which is presumably infinite, but since the area is empty, surrounded by an architecture all niches and bays and grooves, and since the unborn can be imagined of any size, big as mice or silkworms or ants or ants’ eggs, there is nothing against imagining them erect or crouching on every object or bracket that juts from the walls, on every capital or plinth, lined up or dispersed, intent on the concerns of their future life, and so you can contemplate in a marble vein all Laudomia of a hundred or a thousand years hence, crowded with multitudes in clothing never seen before, all in eggplant-colored barracans, for example, or with turkey feathers on their turbans, and you can recognize your own descendents and those of other families, friendly or hostile, of debtors and creditors, continuing their affairs, revenges, marrying for love or for money. The living of Laudomia frequent the house of the unborn to interrogate them: footsteps echo beneath the hollow domes; the questions are asked in silence; and it is always about themselves that the living ask, not about those who are to come. One man is concerned with leaving behind him an illustrious reputation, another wants his shame to be forgotten; all would like to follow the thread of their own actions’ consequences; but the more they sharpen their eyes, the less they can discern a continuous line; the future inhabitants of Laudomia seem like dots, grains of dust, detached from any before or after.
The Laudomia of the unborn does not transmit, like the city of the dead, any sense of security to the inhabitants of the living Laudomia: only alarm. In the end, the visitors’ thoughts find two paths open before them, and there is no telling which harbors more anguish: either you must think that the number of the unborn is far greater than the total of all the living and all the dead, and then in every pore of the stone there are invisible hordes, jammed on the funnel-sides as in the stands of a stadium, and since with each generation Laudomia’s descendants are multiplied, every funnel contains hundreds of other funnels each with millions of persons who are to be born, thrusting their necks out and opening their mouths to escape suffocation. Or else you think that Laudomia, too, will disappear, no telling when, and all its citizens with it; in other words the generations will follow one another until they reach a certain number and will then go no further. Then the Laudomia of the dead and that of the unborn are like the two bulbs of an hourglass which is not turned over; each passage between birth and death is a grain of sand that passes the neck, and there will be a last inhabitant of Laudomia born, a last grain to fall, which is now at the top of the pile, waiting.
Imagine if you will the radically different take on these passages as read by a devoutly religious Catholic, whose moral life is dominated by daily contemplation of the abortion and birth-control controversies; or by an artist who is continuously driven onward in quest of recognition and the apparent immortality offered by fame, or even infamy. In creating and publishing his works, the poet, the artist, is obligated to make a good-faith attempt to present a true vision and an inspired prophecy, rather than just one more cynically contrived and self-referential example of onanistic drivel. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
X
For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with Italo Calvino’s poetic novel, Invisible Cities, I will state briefly here that it imagines a series of descriptions of cities supposedly visited by Marco Polo in his travels, presented to Kublai Khan as Polo attends the Great Khan’s court. It is a bit like A Thousand and One Nights, but without the overhanging threat, or the narrative content. Invisible Cities is not comprised of tales, but rather of concepts strung together, giving shape and scope to these imagined cities. For a fuller description, click here.
In a recent discussion of poetry and the arts on Facebook, I posited an assertion that the poet, or artist, once he has proclaimed his vocation, and made public the product of his artistic visions, has ipso facto taken on a responsibility to the world at large. This thought was inspired by contemplating these words of the poet, Robert Lax:
It is funny that in most all societies, even though poets may not be well-treated, the idea of a poet is honored. I think it has something to do with vision; that without vision, the people perish. I think the people sense that poets are or should be carriers of vision, and should be those who express it. And people sense that that is needed; that vision is always needed.
If it is e-ffective, one’s art will a-ffect one’s audience, either positively, or negatively. This certainty is what entails the artist’s responsibility; it becomes a moral obligation, reminiscent of charity.
In this light, consider the following excerpt from Invisible Cities. Calvino has Marco Polo describe a city called Laudomia. Laudomia, he says, is not only a double city, allowing equal space for both the living and the dead; but a triple city, in that the unborn are also allowed equal space:
… Rightly, Laudomia assigns an equally vast residence to those who are still to be born. Naturally the space is not in proportion to their number, which is presumably infinite, but since the area is empty, surrounded by an architecture all niches and bays and grooves, and since the unborn can be imagined of any size, big as mice or silkworms or ants or ants’ eggs, there is nothing against imagining them erect or crouching on every object or bracket that juts from the walls, on every capital or plinth, lined up or dispersed, intent on the concerns of their future life, and so you can contemplate in a marble vein all Laudomia of a hundred or a thousand years hence, crowded with multitudes in clothing never seen before, all in eggplant-colored barracans, for example, or with turkey feathers on their turbans, and you can recognize your own descendents and those of other families, friendly or hostile, of debtors and creditors, continuing their affairs, revenges, marrying for love or for money. The living of Laudomia frequent the house of the unborn to interrogate them: footsteps echo beneath the hollow domes; the questions are asked in silence; and it is always about themselves that the living ask, not about those who are to come. One man is concerned with leaving behind him an illustrious reputation, another wants his shame to be forgotten; all would like to follow the thread of their own actions’ consequences; but the more they sharpen their eyes, the less they can discern a continuous line; the future inhabitants of Laudomia seem like dots, grains of dust, detached from any before or after.
The Laudomia of the unborn does not transmit, like the city of the dead, any sense of security to the inhabitants of the living Laudomia: only alarm. In the end, the visitors’ thoughts find two paths open before them, and there is no telling which harbors more anguish: either you must think that the number of the unborn is far greater than the total of all the living and all the dead, and then in every pore of the stone there are invisible hordes, jammed on the funnel-sides as in the stands of a stadium, and since with each generation Laudomia’s descendants are multiplied, every funnel contains hundreds of other funnels each with millions of persons who are to be born, thrusting their necks out and opening their mouths to escape suffocation. Or else you think that Laudomia, too, will disappear, no telling when, and all its citizens with it; in other words the generations will follow one another until they reach a certain number and will then go no further. Then the Laudomia of the dead and that of the unborn are like the two bulbs of an hourglass which is not turned over; each passage between birth and death is a grain of sand that passes the neck, and there will be a last inhabitant of Laudomia born, a last grain to fall, which is now at the top of the pile, waiting.
Imagine if you will the radically different take on these passages as read by a devoutly religious Catholic, whose moral life is dominated by daily contemplation of the abortion and birth-control controversies; or by an artist who is continuously driven onward in quest of recognition and the apparent immortality offered by fame, or even infamy. In creating and publishing his works, the poet, the artist, is obligated to make a good-faith attempt to present a true vision and an inspired prophecy, rather than just one more cynically contrived and self-referential example of onanistic drivel. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
X
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Reflections: Don't F**k It Up
X
I invite you to consider first the words of poet, Robert Lax, concerning the role of the poet in the human project; as expressed in a 1985 interview with William Packard:
I think the question that keeps occurring to me whenever we talk about poetry, literature and the rest, is: why are we doing it? Why are we writing it, why do we talk about it, and why do societies in general, at a certain stage of their development anyway, seem to take it seriously as a thing to do. Why are we writing poetry. It is funny that in most all societies, even though poets may not be well-treated, the idea of a poet is honored. I think it has something to do with vision; that without vision, the people perish. I think the people sense that poets are or should be carriers of vision, and should be those who express it. And people sense that that is needed; that vision is always needed. So there’s always or often a place for the poet in a society, and a person who’s writing poetry probably senses too that he’s doing something that matters. And that he should be left to do it, encouraged to do it. At least not unnecessarily hampered in his pursuit.
Okay. Keeping Lax’s vision of the role of the poet in mind, please consider also, in the same light, this wonderful poem by Anna Swir; translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan:
POETRY READING
I’m curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.
Who will tell me
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.
The telephone rings. I have to give
a poetry reading.
I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.
I know for what.
I am supposed to tell them
why they were born,
why there is
this monstrosity called life.
Ouch. Yet, consider again Lax, from a bit further on in the same interview:
We are related to all beings on this planet and particularly are human beings: we are all parts of each other. We contribute to each other’s lives in spiritual or psychological ways. We share each other’s dreams and we exchange dreams, and visions. And as we share, the general vision we have becomes larger and sharper, becomes clearer in showing us who we are, and what we are – not only individually, but who we are as one being, as a whole person, one humanity. It all becomes clearer through this exchange of dreams and visions. And one of the regular places for this exchange is in what we call literature – in poetry, drama, in novels – in literature and the fine arts.
If you call yourself “poet” then, or “artist,” you assume a major responsibility. Don’t fuck it up.
X
I invite you to consider first the words of poet, Robert Lax, concerning the role of the poet in the human project; as expressed in a 1985 interview with William Packard:
I think the question that keeps occurring to me whenever we talk about poetry, literature and the rest, is: why are we doing it? Why are we writing it, why do we talk about it, and why do societies in general, at a certain stage of their development anyway, seem to take it seriously as a thing to do. Why are we writing poetry. It is funny that in most all societies, even though poets may not be well-treated, the idea of a poet is honored. I think it has something to do with vision; that without vision, the people perish. I think the people sense that poets are or should be carriers of vision, and should be those who express it. And people sense that that is needed; that vision is always needed. So there’s always or often a place for the poet in a society, and a person who’s writing poetry probably senses too that he’s doing something that matters. And that he should be left to do it, encouraged to do it. At least not unnecessarily hampered in his pursuit.
Okay. Keeping Lax’s vision of the role of the poet in mind, please consider also, in the same light, this wonderful poem by Anna Swir; translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan:
POETRY READING
I’m curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.
Who will tell me
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.
The telephone rings. I have to give
a poetry reading.
I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.
I know for what.
I am supposed to tell them
why they were born,
why there is
this monstrosity called life.
Ouch. Yet, consider again Lax, from a bit further on in the same interview:
We are related to all beings on this planet and particularly are human beings: we are all parts of each other. We contribute to each other’s lives in spiritual or psychological ways. We share each other’s dreams and we exchange dreams, and visions. And as we share, the general vision we have becomes larger and sharper, becomes clearer in showing us who we are, and what we are – not only individually, but who we are as one being, as a whole person, one humanity. It all becomes clearer through this exchange of dreams and visions. And one of the regular places for this exchange is in what we call literature – in poetry, drama, in novels – in literature and the fine arts.
If you call yourself “poet” then, or “artist,” you assume a major responsibility. Don’t fuck it up.
X
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Quote du Jour: Art for Our Sake
X
As quoted in Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South:
Amidst such a terribly dehumanized world as ours, the function of art, says [critic Lionel] Trilling, is to rehumanize us. What we least need, says Trilling, is the anonymous and silenced voice of many modern novelists. …Hence Trilling’s call for novelists whose voice is not banished from their books: “Surely what we need is…the opportunity to identify ourselves with a mind that willingly admits that it is a mind and does not pretend that it is History or Events or the World but only a mind thinking and planning – possibly planning our escape.”
X
As quoted in Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South:
Amidst such a terribly dehumanized world as ours, the function of art, says [critic Lionel] Trilling, is to rehumanize us. What we least need, says Trilling, is the anonymous and silenced voice of many modern novelists. …Hence Trilling’s call for novelists whose voice is not banished from their books: “Surely what we need is…the opportunity to identify ourselves with a mind that willingly admits that it is a mind and does not pretend that it is History or Events or the World but only a mind thinking and planning – possibly planning our escape.”
X
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Rants: Howling in the Desert
The cyber-sphere has struck me as sort of low-energy lately. The blogs I have frequented in recent years have been either sluggishly active, or have seemed thematically repetitive and unoriginal. Or both. Several have simply become defunct.
Looking for an antidote, I have in recent days experimented with both Facebook and Twitter. For Twitter, I’ve found no use at all; it seems largely to be a net for spam. Visiting Facebook, on the other hand, amounts to self-imposed cruel and inhuman punishment. Imagine entering a room to find dozens tone-deaf individuals, all singing Cielito Lindo off-key, but not in unison: I-I-I-I, mira me, amigo. Got the tune in your head, you gringo putz?
Maybe it’s me.
Along the same lines, as I write, I’m listening to the new Dylan CD, Together Through Life--a string of ten tunes almost all of which are about going alone through life. Go figure. These new tunes sound pretty much like the old tunes on his last CD, though not as good.
But, maybe it’s me.
I recently pulled off the shelf my dusty paperback copy of The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters. In her introduction, Charters writes of the seminal launching—the money shot—of “the Beat Generation” that was Allen Ginsberg’s reading of his poem “Howl” at the Six Gallery in San Francisco:
The “Six Poets at the Six Gallery” reading was the catalyst… Michael McClure later described the atmosphere he felt the night of the reading in 1955:
We were locked in the Cold War and the first Asian debacle—the Korean War… We hated the war and the inhumanity and the coldness. The country had the feeling of martial law. An undeclared military state had leapt out of Daddy Warbucks’ tanks and sprawled over the landscape. As artists we were oppressed and indeed the people of the nation were oppressed.
…We knew we were poets and we had to speak out as poets. We saw that the art of poetry was essentially dead—killed by war, by academies, by neglect, by lack of love, and by disinterest. …We wanted voice and we wanted vision…
Ginsberg’s “Howl” delivered the necessary “voice” and “vision” on October 7, 1955, with the now famous opening words, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…”
It seems to me this morning that America in the mid-1950s, as described by Michael McClure, is not that different from the America that I’m walking around in today. But where the fuck is our Allen Ginsberg? When is he coming?
I was just a bit too young, in 1955, to be aware of the cultural ripple-effect caused by “Howl” and augmented by the publication of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road two years later. But by the year Nineteen Fifty-Nine, when I was a kid attending middle-school in Middletown, U.S.A., I had become aware of the “beatniks.” Maynard G. Krebs had become my favorite TV character. I was a beatnik before I was ever a long-haired counter-cultural freak.
The questing elements of my father’s generation had their cultural-spiritual-artistic renaissance in the Beats; mine had its own high-energy reawakening in the ‘Sixties phenomena of political activism, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, LSD, the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, et al. If anybody sees anything comparable happening now, please turn me on to it.
The avant-garde artiste of today seems to be a bionic man; a hybrid of man and machine—his output computer-generated. What this means, if you boil it down to the stark essentials, is that the artist is the captive and the frigging tool of the (shudder!) corporation. I don’t see any good coming of that Faustian deal.
So, to sum up: the perpetual war rages on (this time in the Middle-East); we still have the political oppression, enduring which we sit hunkered-down on the hot sands of a spiritual desert, imperfectly shaded from its blazing sterility by an umbrella of compulsive consumerism, enhanced by an addictive dependence on “entertainments.”
And now I ask: how can an "artist" who is tethered to a corporate machine by a digital chain advance the cause of human freedom?
_____________
Note: All of that said, in the background, from the soundtrack of my life, I can hear the Shirelles singing: Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, Baby, it's you...
X
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Reflections: Thesis...Antithesis...
X
In direct contradiction of the presentation of the Spirit of Philosophy, excerpted from Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy of in the previous post, is the position of Nietzsche as interpreted here by Martin Heidegger:
XXXAccording to Nietzsche’s interpretation the very first principle of morality, Of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a “better” world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a “true world” beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.
XXXIn such manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a “yes” apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the “true world” of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensuous, is an error. The sensuous world—which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error—is the true world. But the senuous, the sense-semblant, is the very element of art. So it is that art affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says: “Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.”
While one wants to preserve Nietzsche’s idea of art as effectively enhancing the essential Being of the artist, one does not want to relinquish one’s belief in, and hope for, the Next World in order to do so. If ever a good strong dose of thesis-antithesis-synthesis were called for, it seems called for here.
X
In direct contradiction of the presentation of the Spirit of Philosophy, excerpted from Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy of in the previous post, is the position of Nietzsche as interpreted here by Martin Heidegger:
XXXAccording to Nietzsche’s interpretation the very first principle of morality, Of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a “better” world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a “true world” beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.
XXXIn such manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a “yes” apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the “true world” of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensuous, is an error. The sensuous world—which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error—is the true world. But the senuous, the sense-semblant, is the very element of art. So it is that art affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says: “Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.”
While one wants to preserve Nietzsche’s idea of art as effectively enhancing the essential Being of the artist, one does not want to relinquish one’s belief in, and hope for, the Next World in order to do so. If ever a good strong dose of thesis-antithesis-synthesis were called for, it seems called for here.
X
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Readings: The Art of Being
X
This, from Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche, Volume I: The Will to Power as Art:
[T]he being of an artist is the most perspicuous mode of life. Life is for us the most familiar form of Being. The innermost essence of Being is will to power. In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this regard decisive priority.
And then:
[A] guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words: "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experience of 'what is beautiful.' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing...." ...The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.
Not to be a mere critic, then, or a passive, effeminate recipient, one must produce art; having done so, one has enhanced one's essential Being. This is why Jesus was also a tekton. So, get off your ass and make something.
X
This, from Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche, Volume I: The Will to Power as Art:
[T]he being of an artist is the most perspicuous mode of life. Life is for us the most familiar form of Being. The innermost essence of Being is will to power. In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this regard decisive priority.
And then:
[A] guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words: "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experience of 'what is beautiful.' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing...." ...The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.
Not to be a mere critic, then, or a passive, effeminate recipient, one must produce art; having done so, one has enhanced one's essential Being. This is why Jesus was also a tekton. So, get off your ass and make something.
X
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Readings: Staunchly Equivocal
At the conclusion of this post, I wrote:
“I am hopeful that Murdoch, herself being the author of some really kick-ass novels, will pull art's fat out of Plato's fire by the end of the essay.”
I have since gone on to other essays, and other books, without ever tying up that loose thread. To do so, it would seem to be sufficient to merely let Murdoch put the matter to rest with the closing paragraph of the essay in question, “The Fire and the Sun”:
Plato feared the consolations of art. He did not offer a consoling theology. His psychological realism depicted God as subjecting mankind to a judgment as relentless as that of the old Zeus, although more just. A finely meshed moral causality determines the fate of the soul. That the movement of the saving of Eros is toward an impersonal pictureless void is one of the paradoxes of a complete religion. To present the idea of God at all, even as myth, is a consolation, since it is impossible to defend this image against the prettifying attentions of art. Art will mediate and adorn, and develop magical structures to conceal the absence of God or his distance. We live now amid the collapse of many such structures, and as religion and metaphysics in the West withdraw from the embraces of art, we are it might seem being forced to become mystics through the lack of any imagery which could satisfy the mind. Sophistry and magic break down at intervals, but they never go away and there is no end to their collusion with art and to the consolations which, perhaps fortunately for the human race, they can provide; and art, like writing and like Eros, goes on existing for better and for worse.
Murdoch kind of fudges it in the end, don’t you think? She seems to be saying, You can have art, but be aware, at the same time, that all art is essentially an idolatry, the aesthetic consolations of which are a stumbling block to the pilgrim on the way to perfection. Art is for individuals who are willing to make compromises with Existence and to settle for second best; it is not for aspiring saints.
Art: Murdoch voted for it before she voted against it.
“I am hopeful that Murdoch, herself being the author of some really kick-ass novels, will pull art's fat out of Plato's fire by the end of the essay.”
I have since gone on to other essays, and other books, without ever tying up that loose thread. To do so, it would seem to be sufficient to merely let Murdoch put the matter to rest with the closing paragraph of the essay in question, “The Fire and the Sun”:
Plato feared the consolations of art. He did not offer a consoling theology. His psychological realism depicted God as subjecting mankind to a judgment as relentless as that of the old Zeus, although more just. A finely meshed moral causality determines the fate of the soul. That the movement of the saving of Eros is toward an impersonal pictureless void is one of the paradoxes of a complete religion. To present the idea of God at all, even as myth, is a consolation, since it is impossible to defend this image against the prettifying attentions of art. Art will mediate and adorn, and develop magical structures to conceal the absence of God or his distance. We live now amid the collapse of many such structures, and as religion and metaphysics in the West withdraw from the embraces of art, we are it might seem being forced to become mystics through the lack of any imagery which could satisfy the mind. Sophistry and magic break down at intervals, but they never go away and there is no end to their collusion with art and to the consolations which, perhaps fortunately for the human race, they can provide; and art, like writing and like Eros, goes on existing for better and for worse.
Murdoch kind of fudges it in the end, don’t you think? She seems to be saying, You can have art, but be aware, at the same time, that all art is essentially an idolatry, the aesthetic consolations of which are a stumbling block to the pilgrim on the way to perfection. Art is for individuals who are willing to make compromises with Existence and to settle for second best; it is not for aspiring saints.
Art: Murdoch voted for it before she voted against it.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Reflections: Socrates as Rock Star
As a lover of art – especially the art of prose fiction – I have always been somewhat put off and confused by Plato’s banishment of the poets from his ideal Republic. Poetry, words, it seemed to me, were the wheels on which we might hope to be carried towards the truth. Fiction had the capability of embodying myth; myth had the capability of embodying eternal Truth. Not much of what is written rises to that level, as I well understood. But still it seemed to me that, at the very least, the poets should be exiled on a case-by-case basis, and not across the board.
Although it is a very long essay, and she is unfolding her thesis slowly and carefully, I believe that I can confidently assume from the point I’m now at, that the “fire” of Iris Murdoch’s piece “The Fire and the Sun”—that is, the lesser light in Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” – represents the upper limit of what art can achieve. She writes:
The Good (truth, reality) is absent from us and hard of access, but it is there and only the Good will satisfy. This fact is concealed by the consoling image-making ego in the guise of the artist whom every one of us to some extent is. Art with its secret claim to supreme power blurs the distinction between the presence and the absence of reality, and tries to cover up with charming imagery the harsh but inspiring truth of the distance between man and God.
She discusses this not only in terms of “poetry” in the broadest sense of the word, but also with reference to other arts, such as painting. Even philosophy itself is apparently suspect:
The strongest motive to philosophy is probably the same as the strongest motive to art; the desire to become the Demiurge and reorganize chaos in accordance with one’s own excellent plan.
Wow. I mean, I was aware that many a rock star first picked up a guitar more in the hope of one day getting "access" to most any chick that caught his fancy, than of making great music. But philosophers with ulterior motives? Who knew?
I am hopeful that Murdoch, herself being the author of some really kick-ass novels, will pull art's fat out of Plato's fire by the end of the essay.
Although it is a very long essay, and she is unfolding her thesis slowly and carefully, I believe that I can confidently assume from the point I’m now at, that the “fire” of Iris Murdoch’s piece “The Fire and the Sun”—that is, the lesser light in Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” – represents the upper limit of what art can achieve. She writes:
The Good (truth, reality) is absent from us and hard of access, but it is there and only the Good will satisfy. This fact is concealed by the consoling image-making ego in the guise of the artist whom every one of us to some extent is. Art with its secret claim to supreme power blurs the distinction between the presence and the absence of reality, and tries to cover up with charming imagery the harsh but inspiring truth of the distance between man and God.
She discusses this not only in terms of “poetry” in the broadest sense of the word, but also with reference to other arts, such as painting. Even philosophy itself is apparently suspect:
The strongest motive to philosophy is probably the same as the strongest motive to art; the desire to become the Demiurge and reorganize chaos in accordance with one’s own excellent plan.
Wow. I mean, I was aware that many a rock star first picked up a guitar more in the hope of one day getting "access" to most any chick that caught his fancy, than of making great music. But philosophers with ulterior motives? Who knew?
I am hopeful that Murdoch, herself being the author of some really kick-ass novels, will pull art's fat out of Plato's fire by the end of the essay.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Reflections: The Elusive Butcher Knife of Love
In yesterday’s Quote du Jour we saw Iris Murdoch finger the ego as the enemy of the moral enterprise. Today we quote, from the same essay, her identification of the ego’s chief product, fantasy, as the antagonist of excellence in either the moral, or the artistic life:
The chief enemy of excellence in morality (and also in art) is personal fantasy: the tissue of self-aggrandizing and consoling wishes and dreams which prevents one from seeing what is there outside one. Rilke said of Cézanne that he did not paint ‘I like it’, he painted ‘There it is.’
Murdoch is here again speaking in terms of Simone Weil’s concept of attention; attention as the form of prayer:
Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love. With it goes the idea of grace, of a supernatural assistance to human endeavor which overcomes empirical limitations of personality.
Through attention one transcends the ego. Through attention one defeats the runaway imagination. Through attention one approaches the Real, the ‘There it is.’ A bit further on Murdoch states:
Almost anything that consoles us is a fake…
Consolation, then, is a function of the imagination; an attachment to and reliance upon the unreal.
Several days ago, as I was looking for a roll of tape in one of those catch-all drawers of which there are several in almost every human dwelling, I came across a 3x5 card, yellowed with age, upon which I had many years ago scribbled a quote by Canadian novelist, Robertson Davies. The card has been clipped to the monitor of this computer since I found it. It reads:
The business of art is not beauty. The business of art is to butcher whatever coddles the mind.
Remarkable, is it not, how this card turned up just in the nick of time, to add a layer of understanding to my reading of Murdoch’s essay?
The message, then: Truly objective art, made possible by attention, “butchers” false consolation—that coddler of daydreaming minds—and, like supernatural grace, renders the moral agent capable of love.
Ah, but if one still has God in this decadent age, that attention is known as prayer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: The Davies quote is probably taken from The Deptford Trilogy
The chief enemy of excellence in morality (and also in art) is personal fantasy: the tissue of self-aggrandizing and consoling wishes and dreams which prevents one from seeing what is there outside one. Rilke said of Cézanne that he did not paint ‘I like it’, he painted ‘There it is.’
Murdoch is here again speaking in terms of Simone Weil’s concept of attention; attention as the form of prayer:
Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love. With it goes the idea of grace, of a supernatural assistance to human endeavor which overcomes empirical limitations of personality.
Through attention one transcends the ego. Through attention one defeats the runaway imagination. Through attention one approaches the Real, the ‘There it is.’ A bit further on Murdoch states:
Almost anything that consoles us is a fake…
Consolation, then, is a function of the imagination; an attachment to and reliance upon the unreal.
Several days ago, as I was looking for a roll of tape in one of those catch-all drawers of which there are several in almost every human dwelling, I came across a 3x5 card, yellowed with age, upon which I had many years ago scribbled a quote by Canadian novelist, Robertson Davies. The card has been clipped to the monitor of this computer since I found it. It reads:
The business of art is not beauty. The business of art is to butcher whatever coddles the mind.
Remarkable, is it not, how this card turned up just in the nick of time, to add a layer of understanding to my reading of Murdoch’s essay?
The message, then: Truly objective art, made possible by attention, “butchers” false consolation—that coddler of daydreaming minds—and, like supernatural grace, renders the moral agent capable of love.
Ah, but if one still has God in this decadent age, that attention is known as prayer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: The Davies quote is probably taken from The Deptford Trilogy
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Interlude: The Matrix - Roll, Roll, Roll, Your Blog
Since I stubbornly refuse to add a permanent blogroll to this site, it behooves me, from time to time, to direct attention to the goings-on at some of the other sites that make up my blogospheric neighborhood. So here goes:
In the comments section of Postmodern Papist, Kyle was asked to define the term “postmodern” as he understands it. Kyle modestly directed the reader to the Stanford University philosophy site to which I hereby link again. It is an excellent resource to which I have often been conducted in the past in my wanderings across the universe of directed cognition.
As I was eavesdropping, I went there myself and came across the following citation touting Kierkegaard as a precursor of postmodernism:
Kierkegaard…describes modern society as a network of relations in which individuals are leveled into an abstract phantom known as “the public”. The modern public, in contrast to ancient and medieval communities, is a creation of the press, which is the only instrument capable of holding together the mass of unreal individuals “who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization”. In this sense, society has become a realization of abstract thought, held together by an artificial and all-pervasive medium speaking for everyone and for no one.
Substitute “the blogosphere” for “the press” in the above, and understand how Kierkegaard continues to define our common lot today. (I should not neglect to mention here that Kyle has also made available for your perusal and delight some new art by his wife, Genece. Check it out.)
Speaking of art, over at Disputations, reigning sage and guru, Tom, posted a mysterious cartoon graphic well over a month ago. And then vanished. His loyal readers hope that his dramatic reappearance, with or without more cartoons, is imminent.
While Tom remains on the lam, over at Sex, Politics and Religion, our MC, Civis, has returned from a lengthy sabbatical with this timely post. He solicits your advice.
At Ragged Thots, host Robert A. George continues to have a hell of time keeping his rowdy crew of regulars within the bounds of propriety universally recognized as orthodox by members of a civil society. Go there armed.
Anthony, The Catholic Libertarian, has gotten the most response recently to his post on the antics of everybody’s favorite Hugo Award winner, Senor Chavez. Go there and rip the Venezuelan Pol Pot a new one for Jesus.
On the eve of the Super Bowl, at Politics and Pigskins it’s all pigs and no pols with resident maven, Ed. You can’t tell the swine without a scorecard, folks. But in the spirit of redneck unity, it must be remembered that, before there was “Andy of Mayberry,” there was “What It Was Was Football”.
Keesey claims to be fo’ Sheezy, but I’ve been watching all the debates I didn’t even know that Sheezy was running. This is the place to hang if you’re looking to meet the blonde-all-over, slanty-eyed, slinky, Slav-ette of your dreams. And a quirky topic, or two, or three…
Finally, go here to keep an Ever Vigilant eye on what the hyper-edumacated, hard-right-reactionary set is all a-buzz about, as we are swept by the currents of history inexorably toward the End of Time.
In the comments section of Postmodern Papist, Kyle was asked to define the term “postmodern” as he understands it. Kyle modestly directed the reader to the Stanford University philosophy site to which I hereby link again. It is an excellent resource to which I have often been conducted in the past in my wanderings across the universe of directed cognition.
As I was eavesdropping, I went there myself and came across the following citation touting Kierkegaard as a precursor of postmodernism:
Kierkegaard…describes modern society as a network of relations in which individuals are leveled into an abstract phantom known as “the public”. The modern public, in contrast to ancient and medieval communities, is a creation of the press, which is the only instrument capable of holding together the mass of unreal individuals “who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization”. In this sense, society has become a realization of abstract thought, held together by an artificial and all-pervasive medium speaking for everyone and for no one.
Substitute “the blogosphere” for “the press” in the above, and understand how Kierkegaard continues to define our common lot today. (I should not neglect to mention here that Kyle has also made available for your perusal and delight some new art by his wife, Genece. Check it out.)
Speaking of art, over at Disputations, reigning sage and guru, Tom, posted a mysterious cartoon graphic well over a month ago. And then vanished. His loyal readers hope that his dramatic reappearance, with or without more cartoons, is imminent.
While Tom remains on the lam, over at Sex, Politics and Religion, our MC, Civis, has returned from a lengthy sabbatical with this timely post. He solicits your advice.
At Ragged Thots, host Robert A. George continues to have a hell of time keeping his rowdy crew of regulars within the bounds of propriety universally recognized as orthodox by members of a civil society. Go there armed.
Anthony, The Catholic Libertarian, has gotten the most response recently to his post on the antics of everybody’s favorite Hugo Award winner, Senor Chavez. Go there and rip the Venezuelan Pol Pot a new one for Jesus.
On the eve of the Super Bowl, at Politics and Pigskins it’s all pigs and no pols with resident maven, Ed. You can’t tell the swine without a scorecard, folks. But in the spirit of redneck unity, it must be remembered that, before there was “Andy of Mayberry,” there was “What It Was Was Football”.
Keesey claims to be fo’ Sheezy, but I’ve been watching all the debates I didn’t even know that Sheezy was running. This is the place to hang if you’re looking to meet the blonde-all-over, slanty-eyed, slinky, Slav-ette of your dreams. And a quirky topic, or two, or three…
Finally, go here to keep an Ever Vigilant eye on what the hyper-edumacated, hard-right-reactionary set is all a-buzz about, as we are swept by the currents of history inexorably toward the End of Time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
