The question of the utility of literature and of art generally is never quite scotched. If someone asks me about the value of literature, or more bluntly says that they don’t see the point, there are are all sorts of thoughts and statements that come crowding in, an abundance of personal, emotional and intellectual objections, but no knock-out blow. That’s partly because any decent answer feels like it needs to encompass some sort of reasonably worked theory about the Importance (capital I) of Art (capital A), and that is very contended ground – abundant with theory and argument, but also messy, incoherent and sometimes contradictory.
And it doesn’t help that I don’t think there’s good connexion between ‘weak argument’ approaches and ‘strong argument’ approaches. In fact, arguments that say things like ‘art is one of the hallmarks of a civilised society,’ beg the question. While I agree it’s true, it quickly becomes so complicated by counter-statement (‘art has been a hallmark of barbaric and uncivilised society’, ‘some art is supportive of totalitarian society’, ‘I can conceive of a civilised society that provided housing, education, transport and health equally to all that did not have art’ &c&c) that it ends up contributing through its very weakness to the opposing team.
And sometimes you just want to exclaim ‘O, reason not the need’.
I originally wrote here “In fact, I think that makes it a good question” – but that’s ponderous nonsense, and I don’t think it does in fact. It is a question tainted by its production from the lenten-spirited motherfuckers who utter it and I dislike the direction of covert hostility from which it often seems to come. But for someone who finds what is contained in artistic creation more interesting than the question of first principles, and who therefore takes the question of its importance or not as absurdly irrelevant, it is sometimes a good question to ask.
I think if it could be fully reasoned, that if there were a cogent, knock-back answer, we probably wouldn’t be talking about Art. It does not prove itself in reductive, materialist spaces, though it must exist in them. [reread 20/12/2022 – this is a very contentious point, I think. the material aspects of art may be as vital as the imaginative spaces from which it derives].
But every now and again you come across an expression of why art or literature or whatever is important that you find potent and compelling, and it’s worth recording.
So I was sitting on the tube earlier this week and read Constantine Cavafy’s poem collected as The First Step.
A young poet is complaining to Theocritus that he’s been writing for two years and has only completed one idyll, and that he’s only standing on the first step of the very tall ladder of poetry. Theocritus responds:
…”Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.
Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you’ve done already is a wonderful thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it’s a hard unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.”
Its councils are full of Legislators / no charlatan can fool. ‘When I read this I felt an involuntary internal exclamation of forceful assent. ‘Yes!’ Yes, and at the moment, in these times*, especially yes. There is something serious about the point of deciding to materialise that mixture of idea and feeling into the creation of something that doesn’t at that moment exist. Something like ‘How will I execute this idea to do it justice?’ or ‘How will I understand the nature of what I want to do so that its external representation does justice to its internal meaning?’
It is not that Art contains truthss, though I suppose it may, but the more solid coin is that it is the outcome of a process that is… not truth exactly, but through which it is impossible to pass falsely, as a charlatan – it’s a good word.
In a time when public statements are so vexed by mendacity and which jemmy the intention/apprehension divide to such an extent that we are incapable of auditing them socially (and do not seem to have the tools to do so), the existence of that process, that first step, that essential seriousness, is important to state; that done well, it is impossible to speak meaningfully of deceit, and where there is deceit it will only result in failure.
This is about creation rather than appreciation, and the poem is about the meaning of being an artist and poet, rather than of reading a poem, art as practice rather than art as object. (Though its weight and force is gained from the subject matter of the practice of poetry). And there’s thorny, conceptually rocky spaces between aesthetics and artistic intent. In some respects, this only refers to an artist like Evmenis in the poem, who is able to say when they have failed and when they have succeeded.
And yes, this is inherently mystical (tho art is too, probably, I think) and unlikely to win you any pub arguments. But when I read the poem, the cogent force and fullness of feeling was greater than any pedantic uncertainty produced by the question of utility. And you know, it’s a good thing to have up your sleeve, so if someone does come at you with this bullshit, you can pause between sips of your beer and say, “Well, the thing about art is, as Cavafy said, ‘Its councils are full of Legislators no charlatan can fool,'” look momentarily wise, and then go back to reading your paper (who am i fooling – checking twitter) and ignore any attempts to brook the question further.
Anyway, good poem I think is what I’m saying.
*’in these times’ – a rather complacent and self-centred phrase and refers current US and UK society and politics of course. After all the need for Legislators no charlatan can fool has been felt in societies throughout time.
(And as always when I put words down these days I feel like putting the coda – that is a way of putting it, not very satisfactory. or ‘there are other arguments on other days.’ But what are you going to do.)
