Poetics and Life
My devotion to Art has come a long way over time. Henry Miller says that it all happened for him when he stopped thinking of himself as an Artist and just was one. In the same way, I have become an Artist because I create, I love to create and I cherish the opportunity. But beyond that I have come to see that we are all artists; we all have some measure of the gift, and so are all called to exercise it.
The corner-stone of how I see the world is aesthetic: I once loved a girl who was in love with the idea of me. She loved poetry, and I was a poet. I think she thought that was exciting and interesting. And she was a poetess, and that was exciting. But more than that there was so much about her for me to fall in love with. But when it all came to the end, I realised she hadn't quite understood: she found it hard to be my girlfriend, she said. And I meant it when I said that I was never interested in having a girlfriend. I was much more interested in having her.
No idea could be nearly as inspiring as she was to me. It only came to me recently what the real difference between us was: she was looking for new ideas, and I was just beginning then to fall in love with things—with the world as it was, with the ways everything all fit together and yet remained itself. William Carlos Williams said it efficiently enough: "No ideas, but in things." Poetry does not come from the province of ideas—that's for essayists and philosophers. It's the things of the world that truly have the power to inspire. As Artists, we shape the material stuff into Temples for the spirit to rest in.
In his "Letter to Artists" of 1999, His Holiness Pope John Paul II says: "Through his 'artistic creativity' man appears more than ever 'in the image of God,' and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous 'material' of his own humanity..." Our very lives are the stuff of Art, and it is our job to shape it, to make of it something beautiful. "Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term," he continues, "Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece."
The beauty and worth of every created thing is affirmed by this aesthetic; we're reminded why God made the world in the first place. St. Paul writes: "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, though they are invisible, have been understood and seen through the things he has made (Rom 1,20)." Maybe sometimes the true beauty of things is hidden or veiled in such a way as to hide their transcendence. Or maybe what should be most beautiful seems ugly, perverted, or disgraced. People can seem that way. I have been that way myself: disgraced, fallen. In a word, ugly.
And as an Artist I tend to focus sometimes on the ugly. The ugliness of the world, more often my own ugliness. I wallow in failure. I'm intoxicated by sadness. Sometimes pain is preferable to feeling nothing at all. A poem by C.E. Amestoy reminded me to-day that the centre of Dante's Hell was not a writhing pit of pain, but an icy world of no-feeling: a passionless, sensation-less pit of un-being. And when my feelings betray me, rather than choose the exile of numbness, I succumb to self-torture, if only to remember what feeling is like. Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails), sang:
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focused on the Pain
the only thing that's real.
It's dismal, but it's true. For me, maybe for all Artists "in the specific sense," feeling is what it's all about. Feeling itself, or rather the ability to feel. We don't like the pain--we may hate it more than you do who are not creators. But we fear more the absence of feeling, the passionless icy Hell. Siberia. "Alaskas full of it," as Amestoy has it.
It's a touch self-destructive. But something from the Holy Father's letter shed some light on it for me: "Even when [artists] explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption." There is a purpose for our feelings, even the "bad" ones. The ones that hurt us. They lead us to the place where we can be made whole. In the most un-canny and mysterious parts of our being, we are being drawn toward affirmation, toward relationships, toward health and peace. And art gives us expression of that unceasing desire.
I'm thankful for the times of hurt and self-despair I've weathered. They've made me a stronger, better person. And they remind me, when I think of them and re-live them in my Art, how much I should cherish the moments of love and peace I am able to find in life. And this is why I want to share my work with others. Behind the veils that I create in words—"dazzling tissues of metaphors," Lacan calls them—hide Real affirmations of feeling and being. And what's more, I believe that such works of Art don't merely mirror or symbolise this affirmation, this taste of health, but they actually contain and so convey these beautiful moments to others. The experience, lived once, when written and shared is re-lived a thousand times, and so connects with the totality of experience that we all as humans share. The poem is a memorial to what was, and also a new experience all its own. Through Art, an experience that is only mine can be shaped into something which communicates the very Reality of itself to others. Art must, says the Holy Father, "translate into meaningful terms that which in itself is ineffable...without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery."
But like I've said already, the particular joy and privilege of Art is not confined to any narrow mode of expression, it is our whole life from start to finish. Life gives us so much to say, makes us feel so much, and we have so many ways to share it with anyone we choose to let into our lives. Just as God shares his creation with us, and as Christ gave up his life for us, we can offer ourselves to each other and back to God who is the supreme Giver.
"In becoming man," writes the Pope, "the Son of God...has unveiled a new dimension of beauty." By taking on human form, God has affirmed forever the dignity and beauty of humanity. And just as Christ did not keep his life for his own, but shared it to the utmost on the Cross—and continually shares it anew in the mysterious Art-work that is the Eucharist—so we can share the art and beauty of our lives with those we care about. So we become like Christ, as we offer ourselves and our experiences: like Jesus, who bids all to remember him in his Holy meal, we say "This is my life. Share it with me."
"Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude," writes the Holy Father. And I am truly filled with wonder when I consider how sacred a thing it is to be alive, to love, to be a child of God and to share with Him the work of re-creating the world to reveal its beauty and truth to anyone who will see it.
26 May, 2000