Platt, Angus, and others,
I think you have very fairly summarised my position, Platt. I have not read
'Eye to Eye', and given my respect for Wilber's thought it is likely that I
will be forced to rethink my attitudes in this area when I do. However,
despite the list of quotations and my own strong sense of something that
transcends normal awareness in the encounter with 'great art', I find
neither the enjoyment nor the creation of beauty are adequate to release me
from the separate self sense.
My attitude to art has been deeply influenced by reading 'Art and Artist' by
Otto Rank. I cannot hope to do justice to Rank's thought in a brief summary,
but highly recommend the book, despite its age (published in 1932) and
somewhat dated style. Extracts are available in 'The Myth of the Birth of
the Hero and Other Writings', edited by Philip Freund, and issued by Vintage
in 1964.
Rank, who was himself an 'artiste manque', digs deeper into the motivations
for art and the consequences for the artist than anyone else I know. He
discriminates different types of artist thus: "The primitive artist-type
finds his justification in the work itself; the Classical justifies the work
by his life; but the Romantic must justify both life and experience by his
work and, further, must have a witness to his life to justify his
production." Each attains a different unity. The unity "of primitive art,
attained through abstraction - is static [and tends to be predominantly
ornamental as in drawing]; the second - that of Classical art, based on
projection - is harmonious [and plastic and figuring (vital)]; and the
third - that of Romantic art, as the outcome of victorious conflict - is
dynamic [and poetical and musical (rhythmical)]." Is harmony, then, a third
element of the static/dynamic divide discriminated by Pirsig?
Rank views art and neurosis as related. Whereas "the neurotic clings to the
naive immortality of the individual, which leads to fear of life and terror
of death", the artist, in conflict with the prevailing ideology and its
art-style, aspires to individual immortality by recreating the collective
ideology in his personal creativity. However, Rank argues that the modern
artist "is now himself the work of art, but as such he can represent either
a good or a bad one, according to whether and how he succeeds in shaping his
life." (Shades of Pirsig here - working on the motorcycle of oneself.) "The
neurotic stops at the point where he includes the world within himself and
uses this as a protection against the real claims of life, though a price is
paid for this protection in the feeling of world-sorrow which has to be
taken in with the rest. The artist, too, has this feeling ... but here the
paths diverge, since the artist can use this introverted world not only as a
protection but as a material; he is thus never wholly oppressed by it -
though often enough profoundly depressed - but can penetrate it by and with
his own personality and then again thrust it from him and re-create it from
himself ... a process both of begetting and of bearing."
Rank suggests that there are three fundamental ways for the individual, the
indivisible single being, to deal with the dualism between separation and
communion. One is through love, including sexuality. Another is through
religion, a collective solution in which "the individual is delivered from
his isolation and becomes part of a greater and higher whole". Art is the
third way, involving an aesthetic element, in which "the
individuality-conflict is solved in that the ego, seeking at once isolation
and union, creates, as it were, a private religion for itself, which not
only expresses the collective spirit of the epoch, but produces a new
ideology - the artistic - which for the bulk of them takes the place of
religion."
In Rank's view, each artist has to struggle to overcome not only the
artistic tradition into which he is born, but inevitably during his career
he must struggle with the ideology which has emerged from his own growth and
development, if he is not to be smothered by it. And if he is unfortunate
enough to meet with success, he will find this doubly difficult.
Going deeper, Rank argues "that the artist-type, with his tendency to
totality of experience, has an instinct to flee from life into creation,
since there to a certain extent he can be sure of matters remaining under
his own control; but this totality-tendency itself, which is characteristic
of the really productive type, in the end takes hold of his creation also."
In the end all productivity is "as much a danger for the creative ego as was
the totality of experience from which he took refuge in his art." How the
artist escapes his own creation can vary. "One means of salvation from this
total absorption in creation is, as in ordinary life, the division of
attention between two or more simultaneous activities." Often this can be a
second form of artistic achievement, though it might be scientific or
philosophical. Without this release, periods of depression or physical
illness may occur.
"This conflict ... finds a peculiar expression in modern artists ... the
diversion of creation into knowledge, of shaping of art into science and,
above all, psychology." "This diversion of artistic creation from a
formative into a cognitive process seems to me to be another of the artist's
protections against his complete exhaustion in the creative process." (I
find myself in this mode very strongly at present. There is a moral here for
Squonk if he can grasp it.) "The modern artist ... is oriented toward truth
and not beauty ... in his whole psychological attitude toward himself and
his art. His aim is not to express himself in his work, but to get to know
himself by it." "This individual realism, however, which reveals itself as a
search for truth in art and life, only intensifies the conflict in the
person of the artist. The more successful his discovery of truth about
himself, the less can he create or even live, since illusions are necessary
for both." The solution of this crisis lies in the creation of "a new
structure of personality" which will use constructively the psychological
insight that is so destructive when it exists as introspection. "Today all
collective means fail and the artist is thrown back on to an individual
psychotherapy" achieving "a new formation of personality, which can,
however, be neither a therapy of neuroses nor a new psychological
art-ideology, but must be a constructive process of acceptance and
development of one's individual personality".
"Whereas the average man largely subordinates himself, both socially and
biologically, to the collective, and the neurotic shuts himself deliberately
off from both, the productive type finds a middle way, which is expressed in
ideological experience and personal creativity. But since the artist must
live as a human being and yet feels compelled to make this transitory life
eternal in an intransient work, a compromise is set up between ideologised
life and individualised creativity - a balance that is difficult,
impermanent, and in all circumstances painful, since creation tends to
experience, and experience again cries out for artistic form."
"A man with creative power who can give up his artistic expression in favor
of the formation of personality - since he can no longer use art as an
expression of an already developed personality - will re-mold the
self-creative type and will be able to put his creative impulse directly in
the service of his own personality ... But the condition of this is the
conquest of the fear of life, for that fear has led to the substitution of
artistic production for life, and to the eternalization of the
all-too-mortal ego in a work of art. The creative type who can renounce this
protection by art and can devote his whole creative force to life and the
formation of life will be the first representative of the new human type,
and in return for this renunciation will enjoy, in personality-creation and
expression, a greater happiness."
So much for Rank. Well, I ain't there yet, but I feel the pull towards what
he describes in his rather dated way.
I realise that I have not directly addressed some of the points you have
made, but this post is already long and I think undercuts Pirsig's MOQ
because it takes seriously the dilemma of individual self creation. While
Pirsig has many valid insights, ultimately he lacks a praxis, and is thus
irrelevant to my existential dilemma, of how to overcome the fear of life
and participate in the formation of life through transformation of the
personality. I do not see this transformation as the creation of the
super-man, and indeed am more inclined to view it as a via negativa, a
winnowing of truth from projection and all other forms of neurosis, in the
process undoing the boundaries established in childhood between self and
other, subject and object. I do not see this occurring as some magical
outcome of either the experience of beauty in art, as you seem to suggest,
or adopting a better metaphysics, as Angus seems to suggest. And in this I
think I am paradoxically closer to Pirsig at his fundamental best.
John B
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