Goodness:
The Pursuit of Art
Any notion of good presupposes some
structure by which goodness is measured. The legitimacy of these structures as
just or true ways of measurement shall be left to the philosophers and critics
of our time. What matters is that art is in pursuit of this notion. At bottom
artists if they publish their work desire some sort of compensation. This only
happens if people interact with their work, thereby validating it as worthy or
“good”. Billy Collins has had much of his poetry honored in this way. His book Sailing Alone Around the Room is no
different. Collins most significantly was the U.S. poet laureate from 2001-2003
which presented him with the unfortunate task of honoring those lost on
September 11th. Collins’ work urges us over and over again to
examine the mundane and the sublime and he does so with great respect to the intellectual
context of a layman. Collins’ poems in Sailing
Alone Around the Room persuade one that “good” art is created in a rigorous
way, yet experienced existentially, all the while aiming at catharsis and
causing life to change while imitating art.
First a brief note on the ordering
of argument. Nietzsche discusses concepts which precede Aristotle. However by
viewing the Aristotelian concept of catharsis before Nietzsche, we have a greater
understanding of what Nietzsche means by the Dionysian experience.
Aristotle posits the idea in Poetics that tragedy has a beginning, a
middle, and an end which results in catharsis. More to the point catharsis is
what results when incidents of fear and pity arouse intense emotions (Aristotle
63). This usually would occur at the end of a play after whatever tragedies
befalling the protagonist have occurred. Catharsis would occupy the position of
final cause in Aristotle’s four-cause analysis. And its primary purpose is to
cause some form of purification or purgation in the audience. So what does
Aristotle mean by beginning, middle, and end? Beginning is “that which is
itself not, by necessity, after anything else but after which something naturally
develops” (Aristotle 64). Middle is “that which is itself after something else
and which has something else after it” (Aristotle 64). And logically the end is
“that which is naturally after something else, either necessarily or
customarily, but after which there is nothing else” (Aristotle 64).
In Collins’ poem “Aristotle” this notion is
drawn out on the page. All three stanzas begin with one of the following
sentences: “This is the beginning…This is the middle…This is the end” (Collins
132-133). The first stanza has with it this sense of preparation. “This is the
beginning. / Almost anything can happen…This is the first part / where the
wheels begin to turn, / where the elevator begins its ascent, / before the
doors lurch apart” (Collins 132). All of this as Aristotle says necessitates
something else happening afterward. The middle for Collins is a time of immense
turmoil: “Things have had time to get complicated, / messy, really. Nothing is
simple anymore” (Collins 132). Furthermore:
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle-
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe
avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard
through a wall-
too much to name, too much to think
about. (Collins 133)
The middle looks
back to the beginning to the expectancy of young love, but now experiences the
fights and arguments. Most of life falls into the middle. But with the end
comes finality: “And this is the end / the car running out of road, / the river
losing its name in an ocean…It is me hitting the period / and you closing the
book” (Collins 133-134). The fear of death is palatable in these lines. And
with it the pity for time lost. The notion that we cannot go back, that we
cannot fix what happened in the middle sets in. But the end is “the destination
we cannot help imagining, / a streak of light in the sky” (Collins 134). It is
something “we have been waiting for” (Collins 134). We wait for it, we imagine
it, and we see it as light because it is catharsis. This moment of fear and
pity brings about a purging of the middle. A hope for purity, for cleansing is
in the end. Therefore catharsis must be a central goal, if not the primary
goal, of art. It is for this simple reason that it offers a light at the end of
the tunnel and by experiencing it, it changes the audience, it purifies them.
The development of a poem is done
with great rigor. We see this first in “Advice to Writers” in which Collins
notes “before composing a syllable. / Clean the place as if the Pope were on
his way” (Collins 8). He then mentions “The more you clean, the more brilliant
/ your writing will be” (Collins 8). This pursuit of cleanliness is akin to the
purist of purity in the poem “Purity” which describes the ritualistic removal
of clothing, skin, and organs in the late afternoons, often on Wednesdays,
alongside a pot of tea (Collins 40). The most poignant image is when Collins
says:
Finally I remove each of my organs
and arrange them
on a small table near the window.
I do not want to hear their ancient
rhythms
When I am trying to tap out my own
drumbeat. (Collins 40)
This contrast
between ancient rhythms and his own drumbeat gets right at the center of what
“Purity” is about. It is a near denial of the self in order to create something
new. Much more there can be no interferences. What is most important is that no
other sounds may enter in and in some way corrupt the art; it must follow its
own drumbeat. What astounds me about this poem is its attention to detail. Most
poets, one would imagine, would stop at removing the skin, and possibly even at
that point imagine only a skeleton. But Collins makes us tangibly feel our way
into the organs betwixt the bones.
It is this rigor this attention to
detail which is essential in what Nietzsche identifies as the Apollonian. Nietzsche
describes Apollo as “the god of all plastic powers and the soothsaying god”
(Nietzsche 440). He further restricts him by saying “the image of Apollo must
incorporate that thin line which the dream image may not cross…even at those
moments when he is angry and ill-tempered there lies upon him the consecration
of fair illusion” (Nietzsche 440). He concludes that “Apollo himself may be
regarded as the marvelous divine image of the principium individuationis (the principle of individuation)”
(Nietzsche 440). The principle of individuation is simply that which
differentiates the Self from the Other, the ego from the outside world (440).
The Apollonian then is a dream-like illusion which is what separates the ego.
In art and rhetoric it is akin to logic. Nietzsche views the pitfall of Greek
tragedy as an intense focus on the Apollonian started by Socrates: “The
Apollonian tendency now appears disguised as logical schematism” (Nietzsche
448). Socrates is “compelled to justify his actions by proof and counterproof,
and for that reason is often in danger of forfeiting our tragic compassion. For
who among us can close his eyes to the optimistic element in the nature of
dialectics, which sees a triumph in every syllogism” (Nietzsche 448). Socrates
is therefore pure Apollonian. And the optimism caused by the ‘truth’ his
syllogisms results in the death of tragedy. “The virtuous hero must henceforth
be a dialectician; virtue and knowledge, belief and ethics, be necessarily and
demonstrably connected; Aeschylus; transcendental concept of justice reduced to
the brash and shallow principle of poetic justice with its regular deus ex machina (Nietzsche 448). The
Apollonian, without the Dionysian, therefore seeks a logical purity similar to
the type of syllogisms used by Socrates. This purity is much like the rigor
which the speaker takes in “Purity” to create a pure poem.
However art is not experienced in
this way. Art for the audience is an existential endeavor. Nietzsche urges that
the Apollonian alone does not result in the best art and if we are truly to
escape our fate of insignificance we must become intoxicated in art. This is
what Nietzsche calls the Dionysian. So what is our fate? Nietzsche quotes
Silenus, “What would be best for you is quite beyond your reach: not to have
been born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best is to die
soon” (Nietzsche 442). It is from this pessimism that tragedy develops. It is a
way through catharsis, or as Nietzsche calls it the Dionysian, to cope with
this pessimistic reality. Nietzsche defines the Dionysiac rapture as the moment
when man “begins to doubt the cognitive modes of experience, in other words,
when in a given instance the law of causation seems to suspend itself”
(Nietzsche 440). It is also the “shattering of the principium individuationis” (Nietzsche 440). Where the Apollonian
is a dream-like illusion, the Dionysian is intoxication. The Dionysiac ritual
is one of dancing in an intoxicated state. In it “the slave emerges as a freeman;
all the rigid, hostile walls which either necessity or despotism has erected
between men are shattered” (Nietzsche 441). It is by this moving towards
equality that the principium
individuationis is shattered. What is significant here is that the world is
seen in a new way a way it was not comprehended previously. It is this artistic
experience which is causing this shift of paradigm. And ultimately Nietzsche
concludes “No longer the artist, he
has himself become a work of art”
(Nietzsche 441). The synthesis of these two concepts: the Apollonian and the
Dionysian results in tragedy.
Billy Collins shows a sense of this
in “Marginalia” and “Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House”. “Marginalia”
describes the writing people do in margins of books. At one point Collins
writes “And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, / they say, until you have read
him / enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling” (Collins 95). There is a real
change caused in the text by what has been added by some other reader. It
causes you to see the text, or at least Reynolds work, in a new light. He
concludes the poem describing his reading of The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager:
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was
deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world
before me seemed,
when I found on one page
a few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft
pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but
I’m in love.” (Collins 96)
This girls
stains and margin writing has caused a very serious reaction in the reader, a
concept we will return too, but now we must look at the role this ‘beautiful
girl’ plays. She has re-worked the text, much like Blake previously. It can
never be the same text again. It can never be the text that Salinger slaved
over. Collins work even though he takes off his clothes, skin, and organs is
too subject to this re-working. All texts can be redefined by some offhand
pencil mark you or I make.
In “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep
a Gun in the House” Collins expands this idea. The speaker hears a neighbor’s
dog barking. So he puts on a Beethoven symphony as loud as he can. But he still
hears the barking:
and now I can see him sitting in the
orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if
Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is
still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section
barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who
is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in
respectful
silence to the famous barking dog
solo,
that endless coda that first
established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
(Collins 3)
Magnificently,
the dog has become a part of Beethoven’s symphony. Beethoven, centuries after
his death, is reinvented; in fact we now know why he was labeled a genius even
though the cause only happened moments ago. This paradox is intriguing but even
more so is the title of the poem. No gun is mentioned, but it looms throughout
the text. The title implies that if he did have a gun, the dog would be dead.
So in not having a gun is he restraining himself? And since he has restrained
himself he has now experienced a classic piece of art anew. And with it comes
the realization that no music happens completely in a vacuum. Outside
influences will always exist. Even if the sound is pure, and all other noises
blocked, there are still four other senses to tamper with our perception of it.
There is no such thing as a pure experience of music, and therefore no such
thing as a pure experience of any art. The Dionysian is all about seeing the
slave as a freeman. Seeing things a different way, after being caught up in
intoxication. This is clearly happening in both of these poems. Also, both
poems present outside forces affecting the art and causing the viewer to become
immersed or intoxicated in the art. And most importantly both poems highlight
how the viewer, i.e., the audience re-works the art and thereby becomes a part
of it. “He has himself become a work of
art” (Nietzsche 441).
This all leads towards the real
change in the life of anyone experiencing art. Oscar Wilde argues that “Life
imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” (Wilde 495). He argues that this
“results not merely from Life’s imitative instinct, but from the fact that the
self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it
certain beautiful forms through which it may realize that energy” (Wilde
495-496). Another way he puts it is that “Life is Art’s best, Art’s only pupil”
(Wilde 489). What does this mean? To some degree it must mean that all of our
perceptions and notions about ourselves find their start in art. What I mean is
that if reduced to ‘first things’ as Descartes would do, we would be left with
art according to Wilde. Like I said at the outset these larger philosophical
issues must be left to more ripe minds. What is important is how Collins’ poem
“The Three Wishes” vividly displays this notion. The poem begins by telling the
story of a woodsman who has three wishes. His first wish is wasted on a skillet
of hot sausages, his second wish his wife wastes by wishing for the skillet to
be stuck to her husband’s nose, and the third is therefore wasted as well in
removing the skillet from the poor woodsman’s nose (Collins 154). He of course
could have wished for gold or even golden skillets “and that is the cinder of
truth / the story wishes to place in one of our shoes” (Collins 154). This
story has delighted and instructed the audience of which the narrator is one
of, “Three wishes is three wishes too many, / I mutter piously as I look up
from the story” (Collins 155). But what happens next is quite interesting the
narrator comments:
But every time I think of it,
all
I ever really feel besides a quiver
of sympathy for the poor woodsman
is a gnawing hunger for sausages-
(Collins 155)
The speaker’s
life is imitating art. But even more profoundly, the first time I read this
poem, and even now as I type I have this unbelievable urge to eat sausage! The
poem is effectively working on two levels. It is describing life imitating art
and it is causing it. This makes clear the notion that art is most effective
after it moves beyond delighting and instructing and begins to dictate a
reaction in the audience who is experiencing the art.
The Apollonian art attempts to make
something great, something on the level of the logic of Socrates. “Purity”
shows how this rigor is in pursuit of perfection. Collins, however, seems to
urge that maybe we need to write in the margins, maybe we need a dog to bark
during Beethoven so that we can see it again, maybe even for the first time. It
is through experiencing art in a Dionysian way that we experience something
akin to catharsis. Understanding fear and pity and the finitude of man allows
one to come out on the other side of these truths newly alive. Art affords us
this possibility. Life therefore must imitate art. Art allows life to have
meaning.
