Conrad Aiken - Blue Voyage

“Not at all. But go on, brother. I may catch up with you at the finish.”

“I’m determined to make you suffer … Let’s assume that I like a certain poem. Why do I like it? The esthetic critic would say that I like it because it’s beautiful, because, in other words, it’s a ‘perfect expression of something’; the something you see, doesn’t matter very much, so long as it has been ‘esthetically’ experienced! But this is based on the assumption that all ‘somethings,’ or experiences, are of like value. We know this isn’t true. It would be impossible to make an Iliad out of the buttering of a potato, or a Hamlet out of the paring of one’s nails. These experiences are universal — and could involve no confusion of reference; but they are not of very great interest, or significance, or desirability, emotionally . We are all, in a sense, frustrated — we are all of us, each in his particular way, starved for love, or praise, or power, and our entire characters are molded by these thwarted longings. I won’t go into the details of that mechanism, for I don’t know too much about it, probably no more than you do; the point I’m making for is this, that art’s prime function is the gratification of these longings. We can see this, if we like, as a kind of cowardice. We don’t like to grow up; we don’t like to face the bare or ugly facts of life, its privations, its miseries, its failures, its uncertainty, its brevity; we don’t like to see ourselves as mere automata, whose behavior is ‘merely a function of environment’; we don’t like to admit our ignorance as to our origin and destiny, or our impotence in the face of the laws that control us; and so we seek refuge and consolation in that form of daydream which we call art. Reading a novel, we become the hero, and assume his importance as the center of the action —if he succeeds, then we too succeed; if he fails, then we can be sure it is against overwhelming odds, against the backdrop of the colossal and unpitying infinite, so that in failure he seems to us a figure of grandeur; and we can see ourselves thus with a profound narcissistic compassion, ourselves godlike in stature and power, going down to a defeat which lends us an added glory … Art is therefore functionally exaggerative. When we find our response to things becoming jaded, when the bare bones of reality begin to show, then we clutch at the cobweb of the fairy tale. Think only of the world of love which literature opens to us! Solomon in all his glory of a thousand wives cannot rival us. We can range from Helen of Troy, or Lesbia, to Imogen with the cinque-spotted mole on her breast; from Isolde to tuberculous Milly Theale; from Cleopatra to Emma Bovary or Raskolnikov’s Sonia; or even to the bawdy ballad of sister Mary, who was bilious!”

“Ah— there I begin to follow you!”

“Of course!.. Well now, we jump from that to another psychological aspect of this process of wish-fulfillment. And that is this. A work of art is good if it is successful: that is, if it succeeds in giving the auditor or reader an illusion, however momentary; if it convinces him, and, in convincing him, adds something to his experience both in range and coherence, both in command of feeling and command of expression. And here we come to the idea which is terribly disquieting to the purely esthetic critic, who likes to believe that there are absolute standards of excellence in art. For if we take a functional view of art, as we must, then everything becomes relative; and the shilling shocker or smutty story, which captivates Bill the sailor, is giving him exactly the escape and aggrandizement, and therefore beauty, that Hamlet gives to you or me. The equation is the same. What right have you got, then, to assume that Hamlet is ‘better’ than Deadeye Dick ? On absolute grounds, none whatever. They are intended for different audiences, and each succeeds. Of course, Hamlet is infinitely more complex than the other. And we can and should record that fact and study it carefully, seeing in art, as we see in our so-called civilization, an apparent evolution from simple to complex. Well, all this being true, why be an artist? Or for which audience?… That’s the horrible problem.”

“I can see you’re in a bad fix. But if you feel that way about it, why not give it up? And do something really useless like me — selling chewing-gum or lace petticoats to people who don’t want them? Why not?”

“Yes, why not? The answer is, that though I’m an unsuccessful artist — pleasing practically nobody but myself — and though, as a good psychologist, I scorn or at any rate see through the whole bloody business, nevertheless I have that particular sort of neurosis, verbal in its outward expression, which will probably keep me an artist till I die or go mad.… Suppose I’m a sort of forerunner, a new type. And what then?”

“A new type? Tell it to the marines! You don’t look it. You’re no more a new type than I am.”

“Yes, sir! A type in which there is an artist’s neurosis, but also a penetrating intelligence which will not permit, or permit only with contempt, the neurosis to work itself out! If you want a parallel which will make the predicament clear, conceive a Christ, for example, who understood the nature of his psychological affliction, foresaw its fatal consequences for himself, foresaw also that to yield to his neurosis would perhaps retard the development of mankind for four thousand years, and nevertheless had to yield to it . As a matter of fact, that illustration occurs to me because it is the theme of a play that I’ve had in mind for some time. The Man Who Was Greater Than God .”

“It’s a damned good title, I’ll say that much for it! But if you ever got it on the stage, you’d be mobbed.”

“Oh, it would be impossible at present. At any rate, it probably would be, if my hero was too palpably modeled on Christ. I could, however, and probably would, represent him as a modern man, an intelligent man, who nevertheless had religious delusions of grandeur. Perhaps an illegitimate child, who compensated for that flaw in his descent by believing himself to be the son of God … Or, I’ve also considered dropping the Messiah idea altogether, and having for my hero an artist, or a writer, or perhaps a social reformer. In that case, I betray myself —it’s really myself I should be portraying in either character. The Strindberg and Nietzsche and von Kleist type, but with the addition of intellectual poise, or insight ! However, what good would it do? What’s the use of doing it? The predicament of the hero would be too exceptional to be widely interesting — no audience could possibly sympathize with him. The Messiah, on the other hand, would be a figure universally appealing … Yes, it would have to be the Messiah, much as I prefer the artist … But — why not act that play, in my own life, instead of thus taking flight from the problem in one more surrender to my neurosis?”

“Act it? I don’t get you. How do you mean act it?”

“Well, in the play the hero would finally decide (perhaps he is pushed, somewhat, to this conclusion by his friend, a psychoanalyst) to abjure his art, entirely and forever. To anyone who is an artist, that scene would be positively plangent with invitations to narcissistic anguish — every artist, beholding, would weep for himself. Imagine it. A Shakespeare, for instance, deciding for the good of humanity, not to write plays! Seeing them all there — his Hamlet, his Othello, his Lear, his Cleopatra, his magnificent Coriolanus — and dismissing them unborn! Very touching. And to make it worse, he perhaps pays for this in a complete mental breakdown, or death … That’s the play: in which, as you see, I have all the luxury of this suicidal decision, but also the luxury of having again, and thus intimately, adored myself. Now the question is — why not do it, instead of writing it? Why not give up, in advance, that play and all my other ambitions? I think very seriously of it; at the same time suspecting that my whole life would be deranged by it … It’s a nice little problem. To write, or to commit suicide.”