Whither the Arts
Art, shmart. Oh dear, I’ve gone all philistine – but people do talk such nonsense about ‘art’ sometimes. Here’s some nonsense on stilts – a lecture by Helen Vendler.
I want to propose that the humanities should take, as their central objects of study, not the texts of historians or philosophers, but the products of aesthetic endeavor: architecture, art, dance, music, literature, theater, and so on. After all, it is by their arts that cultures are principally remembered. For every person who has read a Platonic dialogue, there are probably ten who have seen a Greek marble in a museum, or if not a Greek marble, at least a Roman copy, or if not a Roman copy, at least a photograph.
And – ? Because ten people have seen a photograph of a Greek marble for every one who has read some Plato, therefore the humanities should center on art rather than philosophy or history? Er – why? The reductio is certainly all too obvious. By the same token, for every person who has read a Shakespeare sonnet, a thousand (ten thousand? a hundred thousand?) have watched ‘Survivor’. So what?
But it gets worse – it gets into territory that always sets my teeth on edge.
The arts bring into play historical and philosophical questions without implying the prevalence of a single system or of universal solutions. Artworks embody the individuality that fades into insignificance in the massive canvas of history and is suppressed in philosophy by the desire for impersonal assertion. The arts are true to the way we are and were, to the way we actually live and have lived–as singular persons swept by drives and affections, not as collective entities or sociological paradigms.
Oh, bollocks. That only makes even a little sense if you substitute the word ‘novel’ for ‘the arts’ in that passage, and even then it doesn’t make much sense. There are plenty of novels that don’t do any such thing, and most of the rest of ‘the arts’ don’t either. It’s all just sentimental bilge.
There’s a lot of sentimental bilge about ‘art’ and ‘the arts’ out there. I probably used to believe a little of it myself – at least about literature, if not about all the arts. I don’t any more. I gave it up. For one thing I’ve read or started too many vacuous pretentious ‘literary’ novels, and I’ve talked to too many people who think all ‘serious’ novelists, no matter how ignorant and unthinking, are ‘creative’ and somehow important and significant in a way that no writer of ‘non-fiction’ can possibly be. Oh I see – so one kind of writer knows a lot and writes about it well, and the other kind just writes well, and the second one is better? Hmm.
Brian Leiter quotes from an anonymous (to us) poet who puts it this way:
As to poets giving insight into life (or whatever the words are), I have been struck time and again at how plain dumb sentimental religious (‘spiritual’) so many well-regarded poets are. Do they understand life, humanity? Through a glass barely. People like Vendler live in a political vacuum and worship purity and refinement of sensibility which is fine if joined with social responsibility and authentic concern for the victims of injustice.
Just so. I’ve talked to a good many plain dumb novelists, too. I don’t think they suddenly become less dumb just because they write stories, and I don’t believe they have more insight or wisdom or ability to be ‘true to the way we are and were, to the way we actually live and have lived’ than philosophers or historians, or psychologists or sociologists, either.
This is relevant to what we’ve been talking about lately because of the ‘Freud was a novelist’ line of defense. Of course the main problem with that is that he wasn’t, that he was in a completely different kind of work, and that calling him a novelist is basically just a face-saving ploy. But even apart from that, I think there is a further problem in the sentimentality about novels and novelists in that defense which is related to the sentimentality about Freud himself. There is some underlying idea about the power and insight of novelists-and-Freud – about profundity and depth and complexity that are considered unique to fiction-writers. I don’t buy it. I like and admire really brilliant novelists as much as anyone, but I don’t think they’re magic. I don’t think they necessarily do tell us more than really brilliant writers and thinkers in other fields do. And in fact I think it’s a form of anti-intellectualism to claim that they do. So I may be a philistine but I’m not an anti-intellectual.
You have made clear something that I had sort of sensed but not quite recognized, and it helps explain why my hackles went up some years back when my aunt asked me why I never read any Novels–you could hear her capitalize it with her voice–as opposed to science books [and sci-fi.]
I wonder if in some cases the profundity depends on the reader. I learned some important things when young from reading total trash–I guess I was ready to learn them, and would have picked them up anywhere–I could have found better sources, perhaps, but I could also have done worse. And yes I did eventually move on to [some] better fare. I suspect that a good mind can learn from anything, and discard the worthless matter. No, that doesn’t mean I think all works are of equal merit, but it does lead me to be suspicious of the sort of praise that is just mystical hooey, not reasoned out.
I wonder if this sentimental approach is sometimes caused by the assumption that some folks have, that analyzing something will destroy its pleasing effects. I have long suspected that anything really worth enjoying is strong enough to survive analysis, but I haven’t yet figured out if this is really true or how to prove it.
So on one side we’ve got the people who say that only stuff done before a certain time is great, then we’ve got the ones who say that if something has been seen by everyone that makes it important, then there’s the ones that say nothing is great, it is just all a hegemonic whatchacallit…Aaack. Heck with this–I’m going to put on some music. There’s Just Something about music…
“it helps explain why my hackles went up some years back when my aunt asked me why I never read any Novels”
Yeah. This is a fairly new attitude for me, really. I used to share, in a vague haven’t-really-thought-about-it way, that idea the Literachoor is superior to everything else. Then at some point a few years ago I started to hear other people saying the same thing and it suddenly sounded – kind of cracked. As if Novel-writing were some kind of magic, whereby people just by the very act of writing fiction became endowed with superior insight into human motivations. Well, I’ve known too many ignorant self-obsessed fiction-writers to buy that idea any more.
“I wonder if this sentimental approach is sometimes caused by the assumption that some folks have, that analyzing something will destroy its pleasing effects.”
Probably. That’s part of what Richard Dawkins is getting at in Unweaving the Rainbow.
“central objects of study, not the texts of historians or philosophers, but the products of aesthetic endeavor”
A recipe for disaster. Students can learn to weigh histories against evidence and to analyze the arguments of philosophical arguments. I am at a loss for an equivalent way of teaching “the products of aesthetic endeavor”.
There was a time when I used to think physics is superior to everything; the rest of natural science follow closely in importance and anything else is bogus narration of non-sense. That is back when I was in undergrad majoring in physics. For me everything was a collection of atoms and energies and interactions of both that are explainable by physics alone (there are times I still think this is true). I am guilty of strict reductionism and materialism.
Now after some maturation (??), I have moved social sciences a little bit higher in the importance list. Art and literature, I can admire but just for its entertainment value.
Perhaps the most desirable function of poetry and prose fiction is to enlighten those benighted individuals who lack the intellect or education to appreciate that rational enquiry is the only road to understanding. These people far outnumber rational thinkers and are in desperate need of a shortcut to what we might regard as a working set of memes. I would sooner see this ‘working set’ influenced by poets and authors who are themselves rational, rather than being left to the tender mercies of theists and demagogues. Unfortunately, as is pointed out above, many poets and authors seem ill-equipped to perform this valuable function.
“Unfortunately, as is pointed out above, many poets and authors seem ill-equipped to perform this valuable function.”
Just so. I certainly agree that the best novelists and poets can be a good ‘shortcut.’ But the best of them are so few. And that magical idea – that meme, if you like – that any and all novelists and poets, any ‘artists’, are by definition founts of wisdom and insight, is amazingly pervasive, even among people who surely ought to know better, if they thought about it for ten seconds.