contemplations of the God-artist

[intertribal]

the question of "is literature art or is it politics?" has been one I've been grappling with for the past week, since reading James Joyce's "The Dead" for a second time.  Mainly, I wonder what it is I write.  Some of my writing has been extremely political, but it's also gotten more artistic, and universal, and once you start writing speculative fiction, you have to get rather universal. 

from an interview with Ralph Ellison. 

Interviewers:  Then you consider your novel a purely literary  work as opposed to one in the tradition of social protest.
Ellison:  Now, mind, I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest.  Dostoevski's Notes From Underground is, among other things, a protest against the limitations of nineteenth-century rationalism; Don Quixote, Man's Fate, Oedipus Rex, The Trial - all these embody protest, even against the limitation of human life itself.

from an essay by Margaret Atwood.

As for the particular human society to which you yourself belong - sometimes you'll feel you're speaking for it, sometimes - when it's taken an unjust form - against it, or for that other community, the community of the oppressed, the exploited, the voiceless.  Either way, the pressures on you will be intense; in other countries, perhaps fatal.  But even here - speak "for women," or for any other group which is feeling the boot, and there will be many at hand, both for and against, to tell you to shut up, or to say what they want you to say, or to say it a different way.  Or to save them.  The billboard awaits you, but if you succumb to its temptations you'll end up two-dimensional. 

Tell what is yours to tell.  Let others tell what is theirs.

my mother recently remarked that she found it interesting that even though she considers me a writer, I'm not interested in going to writing classes, and then she doubted that writing can be taught.  I suggested it's because we all use language.  Whatever it is, it's true that many of the great writers were not groomed and sculpted by teachers of the art the way a lot of the up-and-coming prodigal writers today are. 

from an interview with William Faulkner.

Q.  Mr. Faulkner, could I ask you how important you think a college education is to a writer?
A.  Well that's - is too much like trying to decide how important is a warm room to a writer.  To some writers, some people, the college education might be of great importance, just like some of us couldn't work in a cold room.  So that's a question I just wouldn't attempt to answer, and then I'm more or less out of bounds because I didn't have one myself.

sort of an extension on the same theme - the role of the artist in society (and the world) is one I've been debating for ages, and a huge impact on why I chose to major in political science and not english with a creative writing concentration.

from an essay by Leo Tolstoy.

Art will not be produced by professional artists receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else besides their art.  The art of the future will be produced by all the members of the community who feel need of such activity, but they will occupy themselves with art only when they feel such need.

In our society people think that an artist will work better and produce more if he has a secured maintenance; and this opinion once more would prove quite clearly, were such proof still needed, that what among us is considered to be art is not art but only a counterfeit.  It is quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of labour is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need not prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots or loaves than if he has to buy himself with those matters.  But art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.  And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when he is living a life in all respects natural and proper to man.  Therefore security of maintenance is a condition more harmful to an artist's true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition natural to all men - that of struggle with nature for the maintenance both of his own life and the lives of others - and thus deprives him of the opportunity and possibility of experiencing the most importantand most natural feelings of man.  There is no position more injurious to an artist's productiveness than the position of complete security and luxury in which in our society artists usually live. 

And what happens when the artist lives the way Tolstoy says we shouldn't - as the art being his only existence - he becomes Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist", commercialized for entertainment purposes, with his original motivations for creating art completely forgotten by anyone who witnesses the art.  An excerpt:

... at any rate the pampered hunger artist suddenly found himself deserted one fine day by the amusement seekers, who went streaming past hiim to other more favored attractions... [he joins a circus, is ignored by people who want to see animals and don't understand how to react to him, and is forgotten]

They poked into the straw with sticks and found him in it.  "Are you still fasting?" asked the overseer.  "When on earth do you mean to stop?"  "Forgive me, everybody," whispered the hunger artist; only the overseer, who had his ear to the bars, understood him.  "Of course," said the overseer, and tapped his forehead with a finger to let the attendants know what state the man was in, "we forgive you."  "I always wanted you to admire my fasting," said the hunger artist.  "We do admire it," said the overseer, affably.  "But you shouldn't admire it," said the hunger artist.  "Well, then we don't admire it," said the overseer, "but why shouldn't we admire it?"  "Because I have to fast, I can't help it," said the hunger artist.  "What a fellow you are," said the overseer, "and why can't you help it?"  "Because," said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer's ear, so that no syllable might be lost, "because I couldn't find the food I liked.  If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else."  These were his last words, but in his dimming eyes remained the firm though no longer proud persuasion that he was still continuing to fast. 

Kafka himself is described by my Norton anthology thus:

After obtaining a law degree at the German University in Prague, he held an inconspicuous position in the civil service for many years.  His few intimates remembered him as a warmly humorous man; however, his deep sense of inferiority to his father, the frailty of his health, his indecisive and prolonged engagement that never led to marriage, his preoccupation with suicide, and his last years of struggle against the tuberculosis that killed him suggest some origins of the great anxiety that pervades his literary production.  He was not altogether a pessimist but was tormented by the conviction that goodness is very remote and nearly impossible to attain. 

Kafka has said, "A book ought to be an icepick to break up the frozen sea within us."

Last words go, as always, to Faulkner.

Q.  Mr. Faulkner, you may have touched on this previously, but could you give some advice to young writers?
A.  The most important thing is insight, that is, to be - curiosity - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not. 
Q.  How would you suggest that he get this insight?  Through experience?
A.  To watch people, to have - to never judge people.  To watch people, what they do, without intolerance.  Simply to learn why it is they did what they did.