Of Me and Others. Alasdair Gray

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СКАЧАТЬ struggle, without struggle there would be no life. Though life can often relax a little while from the struggle it can only finally abandon it by dying. Our inducement to continue this struggle is, that those who are most active and use all their faculties to the fullest stretch are occasionally rewarded by the heightened sensation of eternity stretching itself through them. The delight of this usually justifies life for those who feel it.

      A mind is a piece of eternity enclosing (as a balloon encloses air) an expanse of unknown and evil eternity, which is part of itself, and enclosed (as air encloses a balloon) by an expanse of unknown and threatening eternity of which it is part. Life is the mind’s struggle to explore the unknown and lessen the threat. When a mind has done a little of either it recognises its own eternity in what was previously ordinary, remote and horrible, and enjoys the short delight of extended consciousness.

      Note: throughout this thesis the words “God” and “eternity” are interchangeable.

      THE CONDITION OF THE ARTIST AMONG MEN Only a few men in any age are capable of the most rewarding sort of struggle to compel eternity from its dens inside the ordinary, the remote and the horrible. The majority prefer the comfort of acceptance to the delight of prolonged struggle. Delight is always a dubious, flickering thing. Comfort is stable, and can be protracted. It is got by accepting the result of a struggle (often somebody else’s struggle) and then struggling only enough to stay alive. It is essential that the majority should prefer comfort to delight, because the few who prefer delight are seldom given to that toil which supports a society – they are too busy forwarding it; besides, they often make poor parents. But adherence to comfort sometimes prompts men to muffle the discoveries of those who prefer delight, because acceptance of a new discovery often modifies an old one, and robs us of some of its comfort. When men need to defend their ignorance with censors, jails and executions it is a virtue to undermine their comfort, for the good has gone out of it.

      A short time ago “human progress” was an over-rated concept, now it is an under-rated one. Unluckily so, because it contains an important truth. Both failures to understand the nature of human progress come from measuring it in terms of comfort. Shelley and Wells – who mark the beginning and end of the 19th century optimism – thought they were pioneers of a society where comfort would be universal, struggle unnecessary and delight cheap. They believed they were preparing for a concerted human effort that would plant a garden where the ordinary, the remote, the horrible prevailed. We of the 20th century have learned that life always borders upon these enormities, and that even the bit of eternity which is our birth right can sometimes only be kept with a hard fight, and that without such a fight the unknown and evil can encroach on us and make us bestial. This lesson has been made so hideously true to us by two World Wars that we are inclined to disparage the idea of progress, especially social progress. But if progress is measured in opportunities for delight – or more precisely, in opportunities to struggle for delight – then we have reason to believe that a modern society such as our own is superior to most of the societies preceding it – even the slave-supported but magnificent society of classical Greece. Those who gave our society everything that most furthers it preferred delight to comfort. The great painters belong among such men.

      Anyone who classes painting with alcohol, nicotine and other expensive luxuries will see little reason to lump great artists with the scientists, politicians and religious enthusiasts usually regarded as the pioneers of civilization; for though no society has lacked great artists it is not easy to see how these influenced the events of their time. Perhaps artists do not influence the events of their time to any important degree. They do something altogether as solemn and important. They penetrate the external essence of contemporary events, make a lasting beautiful shape out of it and let that shape broadcast the significance of the event. Without artists there could be no history. Delight can be communicated and preserved through music, words, pictures and shaped minerals, but in not many other ways. Without being embodied by art in something we have made, no social delight would survive those who first enjoyed it:

      London’s pride is tumbled down,

       Down-a-down the deeps of thought,

       Greece is fallen and Troy town,

       Golden Rome has lost her crown,

       Venice pride is nought.

       But the dreams their children dreamed

       Fleeting, wild, romantic, vain…

       These remain.

      This poem (I have misquoted it slightly, not remembering the whole) contains everyone’s justification for making what they do as well as they can. The artist expresses, and by expressing, perpetuates, the actions and discoveries by which his people glimpsed eternity. A society which does not make such things will add nothing inspiring to history, and be commemorated only in footnotes to books about other societies, as the Spartans are commemorated.

       THE VISUAL ARTIST CATEGORY

      Good pictures are maps of districts where an artist discovered eternity. “This is where I found eternity” says Turner “in rain and steam and speed.” Michelangelo found it in the bodies of athletes, the artists of Altamira in the bodies of bulls they hunted. Poussin found it in the organisation of a civilised landscape, Bosch in the tumult of a phantasmagoric subconscious one. Bad pictures are faulty maps of districts where the painter has never been but where he believes eternity is to be found, because some good painter of the past has struggled for it and won it there. Bad paintings shine with reflected delight. Bad artists often find it easier to sell their work than good ones, because they are peddling the comfort of the accepted. They rarely try to crib from contemporary good artists because in doing so they run the risk of joining the struggle and becoming good.

      When we look at the world’s good paintings with the intention of putting them into categories we are depressed by their variety. Each painting seems a window into a different world, a world with its individual colours, proportions, inhabitants and emotional climate. The only common element is that each painting has an irrefragable unity. No line, tone or colour can be altered in any one without impairing the delight we feel in it. Apart from this it is clear that there are as many different sorts of artist as there are different sorts of men. Any likeness between the artists of a particular age is imposed by social pressure. The Byronic anarchic bandit painters of the past 100 years have been produced by a society which has not come to terms with its image makers, just as the priest painters of ancient Egypt were produced by a society which came too thoroughly to terms with them. To discover a way through the diversity of subject matter and attitude we will begin by resorting to the old over-simplifications. Here comes some jargon.

       Visual artists are Classic, Romantic, Realist.

       Classical artists subdue their passions through cool reasoning, test their subconscious intuitions against social analysis. Such artists ride on their emotions like rowing boats on calm water, their social consciousness adjusting and steering. Their politics are conservative. When they fail it is by turning their best ideas into repetitive academic forms. They often die rich and respected.

       Romantic artists make their powers of reasoning and social analysis serve their passions and instinctive feelings. They are moved like yachts by the wind of their passions, the conscious intellect working to stop them overturning, which sometimes happens. Their politics are radical, sometimes revolutionary. They sometimes die through poverty and neglect, while delighting posterity.

       Classical artists convey delight through the equilibrium of broad, general views. Romantic artists convey delight through the impetus of deep, intense views. Realists differ from both by their subject being СКАЧАТЬ