Reading the New York Times Book Review, one frequently comes across assertions like:
But
looking at her writing from this perspective misses the most interesting part:
her sentences. No one writing in English today produces anything quite like them. Take, for example, the following passage, early in the
novel, in which the principal narrator, an authorial stand-in named Mimi, looks
east from the track around the Central Park (or, properly speaking, Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis) Reservoir.
ÒWindows
high above Fifth Avenue flashed the bronze setting of the sun. I will never
understand how that brilliant display, mostly blocked by the apartment houses
on Central Park West, leaps the reservoirÕs expanse. And do not care to
understand, demanding magic from this forbidden journey, though the simple
refraction of light at end of day may be grammar-school science.Ó(1)
The reviewer has chosen a
specimen, if you will, in order to demonstrate the author's genius. This hardly
seems offensive to most of us; this is the critic's job, to make statements
like that. But this morning, whether it was because I hadn't slept the night
before or because something had finally occurred to me, I found myself
questioning the way in which we--I do it too--talk about artists and their
work.
Specifically,
their finest work.
We read, "No one
writing in English today produces anything quite like them." And then, a passage that illustrates the reviewer's claim.
The passage is beautiful; I was certainly moved
by it. But let me challenge you to another point of view, a point of view which is provisional and openly philosophical . . .
What we think of as a
writer's unique and individual gifts, those
sparkling sentences that critics extol--in my present understanding--are really
the effervescence of language itself.
What I mean to say by that
is, art in poetry or prose is language in its purest, most accessible, most
fluid form, nearly on a separate wavelength. It's on a wavelength most of us
can hear, just not all of the time. When we hear it, our hearts swoon, our
minds expand.
This is a language that is
common to all, a language that resonates with large numbers of people. My
immediate reaction, like the critic of the New
York Times Book Review, is to elevate the artist
who created these lines, to point to the individual. But there is something
behind this reaction that bothers me.
It seems we like to pick
out the gifted as if they were our own shiny fruit. We like to exclaim,
"Ah, this is genius!" It gratifies us to make these declarations, and
it somehow serves us.
A critic will point to a
work of art, or a beautiful sentence, as if it were possible to isolate
perfection--to sever the part from the whole, the text from the context. I am
doubtful of this ability to zero in on transcendence.
I believe the magical passage,
the stunning work of art, is not the watermark of individual genius, but
instead the reflection of a higher state of mind. The artwork is evidence of
some journey. Art criticism flattens the journey, however, by making it into a
vacation. Now it's as if the artist went on a vacation and brought us back a
souvenir. We grab for the souvenir at our first chance because it really is
magnificent to have such a beautiful thing in our hands. Blinded by the act of
possession, having stamped our names across the material object, we see no
further--
In this mode of
appreciating art, the furthest I can see is not far enough. Fixated on the
individual and her gifts, I lose sight of the deeper meaning or beauty in the
work of art. By reducing art to the individual, and setting a spotlight on the
hand that wrought perfection, I mistakenly short-circuit the whole enterprise
of art.
The author's passages, or
the artist's brushstrokes, should be signaling the opposite reaction. Art is a
universal language, not an individual one. What if we approached the
appreciation of art from the other side, from the side closest to the
collective "we"? Do we even have a universal language to praise art?
Or is our criticism and praise decidedly individualistic?
Furthermore, all art is in
flux, even after its creation. This makes it hard to pin down exact marks of
genius; evidence for genius seems to move around a lot and vacillate. After
all, the concept "art" is in our minds.
In sum, there is no
permanent, eternal art. Art wavers between a radiant work of genius, an emblem
of culture, a historical artifact, and a hundred other possibilities. Art can be
or mean almost anything, as recent -isms have
shown. Culture will continue to see it differently as it passes through the
kaleidoscope of history.
Artists have in fact done
themselves a great disservice by allowing others to praise their works. (I
expect you to disagree with me here.) But, suspend disbelief for a moment, what
if we attributed an author's sparkling sentences to a state of mind rather than
an individual person?
What if we looked upon
great works of art, looking beyond the individual creator, and toward something
common to all--the underlying language that makes this art so moving in the
first place.
Prior to these insights, I
trumpeted individualism. I trumpeted individualism because I felt a strong
sense of being an individual myself, and I felt a strong sense of being able to
identify other individuals. I saw the enterprise of art as essentially
individualistic. The artist works alone, the works are understood alone. Art is
the conversation between two individuals, one real and one imaginary (the
author's ideal reader, or artist's ideal viewer).
But now I'm coming to
believe that individualism in art is not what makes it special. Individualism
is the coat an artist sheds over time, growing closer to the patterns of her
art as she moves further and further away from her individual sense of self.
And those moments of greatness, the superb execution, exists outside of the
artist. What we point to when we declare, "What genius!" is the
second space the artist has created between herself and her work, the plane
onto which the universal occurs. Exquisite sentences arise here, but so do many
other things, such as wisdom and love and a profound synthesis of mankind and
nature.
Could it be that the beauty
we perceive in art is not the mark of an individual genius, but instead
evidence of a higher consciousness, evidence of a God I don't believe in, or
simply the invisible rails between two people who have never met?
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