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Acolyte, vol 1, issue 3, whole 3, Spring 1943
Page 4
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and nervous reactions are exceedingly complex, contradictory, and imperious in their nature; and subject to rigid and intricate laws of psychology, physiology, biochemistry, and physics which must be realistically studied and familiarly known before they can be adequately dealt with. So real and fixed is the state of things, that we may easily see how futile it is to expect anything to produce emotional satisfaction---or to pretend that it does---unless all the genuine laws of emotion and nerve-reaction are recognized and complied with. False or insincere amusement is the sort of activity which does not meet the real psychological demands of the human glandular-nervous system, but merely affects to do so. Real amusement is the sort which is based on a knowledge of real needs, and which therefore hits the spot. This latter kind of amusement is what art is--- and there is nothing more important in the universe. you may clearly see that there can be no frivolity in this element, because it implies a close knowledge of real psychological demands, and a strict adherence to them. As soon as the artistic expression diverges from the sphere of natural demand it becomes trivial, insincere, and artificial---ceasing in fact to be artistic at all. This means exactly the same thing that you mean when, using the older conventional terminology, you speak of art as "the very language of the soul". What used to be called the "soul" in the days of religious myth, is in fact simply the fixed sum total of human instincts and emotions, as motivated and directed by sense-impressions, gland-secretions, and nerve-reactions. Art is, surely enough, the one authentic language of this sharply-patterned, exacting and complex congeries of natural processes; and as such is as serious as anything else in life. But life itself is not very serious---not even worth counting in a general survey of the cosmos---so we must not make ourselves ridiculous by imputing too grave an importance to anything we do or feel. And as I have said, the fact that art is the natural language of the "soul" or sense-gland-nerve system, does not by any means imply that it depends for its effectiveness upon an audience. It is a serious matter as such things go---but its only true province is to satisfy the producer's emotions. And when its producer takes it too seriously, he defeats its purpose by annulling its possible satisfying effect through a fresh load of worry! As for art's relation to "prophecy and truth"---not much can be said for that. Truth is something which can't be got at except by a slow piecing together of data, little by little, through the gradual, cautious operation of those rigid cognitive processes whereby we know that two and four are different things, and that black and white are not the same. Any other use of the word is elliptical, figurative, relative, or emptily meaningless---though we often employ it to express the real conformity of a work of art to the emotions it is designed to satisfy. This "truth to the emotions" of a work of art of course has nothing to do with the actual, absolute truth as a delineator of what is or isn't so in the domain of reality. What is "true" to is merely the emotional demands of the average sense-gland-nerve system of average people---and these demands have no relation to the absolute facts of the universe. A work of art must be "true" to human feeling, but it need not be at all true to actual objective fact. This sounds like ambiguity until we stop to consider that we use the word "true" to express to antipodially different things---a circumstance which leads me to condemn the use of the word except in its literal sense of objective, scientific reality. "Prophecy" is the business of the scientist and philosophic historian---not of the poet. All the poet can do is to guess, absorb other people's conclusions, and set forth his feelings in symbolic form. Naturally he is quick to absorb impressions---the quality that makes him a poet gives him this facility---and sensitive in his reaction to them; so that when he sets them forth symbolically he -- 4 --
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and nervous reactions are exceedingly complex, contradictory, and imperious in their nature; and subject to rigid and intricate laws of psychology, physiology, biochemistry, and physics which must be realistically studied and familiarly known before they can be adequately dealt with. So real and fixed is the state of things, that we may easily see how futile it is to expect anything to produce emotional satisfaction---or to pretend that it does---unless all the genuine laws of emotion and nerve-reaction are recognized and complied with. False or insincere amusement is the sort of activity which does not meet the real psychological demands of the human glandular-nervous system, but merely affects to do so. Real amusement is the sort which is based on a knowledge of real needs, and which therefore hits the spot. This latter kind of amusement is what art is--- and there is nothing more important in the universe. you may clearly see that there can be no frivolity in this element, because it implies a close knowledge of real psychological demands, and a strict adherence to them. As soon as the artistic expression diverges from the sphere of natural demand it becomes trivial, insincere, and artificial---ceasing in fact to be artistic at all. This means exactly the same thing that you mean when, using the older conventional terminology, you speak of art as "the very language of the soul". What used to be called the "soul" in the days of religious myth, is in fact simply the fixed sum total of human instincts and emotions, as motivated and directed by sense-impressions, gland-secretions, and nerve-reactions. Art is, surely enough, the one authentic language of this sharply-patterned, exacting and complex congeries of natural processes; and as such is as serious as anything else in life. But life itself is not very serious---not even worth counting in a general survey of the cosmos---so we must not make ourselves ridiculous by imputing too grave an importance to anything we do or feel. And as I have said, the fact that art is the natural language of the "soul" or sense-gland-nerve system, does not by any means imply that it depends for its effectiveness upon an audience. It is a serious matter as such things go---but its only true province is to satisfy the producer's emotions. And when its producer takes it too seriously, he defeats its purpose by annulling its possible satisfying effect through a fresh load of worry! As for art's relation to "prophecy and truth"---not much can be said for that. Truth is something which can't be got at except by a slow piecing together of data, little by little, through the gradual, cautious operation of those rigid cognitive processes whereby we know that two and four are different things, and that black and white are not the same. Any other use of the word is elliptical, figurative, relative, or emptily meaningless---though we often employ it to express the real conformity of a work of art to the emotions it is designed to satisfy. This "truth to the emotions" of a work of art of course has nothing to do with the actual, absolute truth as a delineator of what is or isn't so in the domain of reality. What is "true" to is merely the emotional demands of the average sense-gland-nerve system of average people---and these demands have no relation to the absolute facts of the universe. A work of art must be "true" to human feeling, but it need not be at all true to actual objective fact. This sounds like ambiguity until we stop to consider that we use the word "true" to express to antipodially different things---a circumstance which leads me to condemn the use of the word except in its literal sense of objective, scientific reality. "Prophecy" is the business of the scientist and philosophic historian---not of the poet. All the poet can do is to guess, absorb other people's conclusions, and set forth his feelings in symbolic form. Naturally he is quick to absorb impressions---the quality that makes him a poet gives him this facility---and sensitive in his reaction to them; so that when he sets them forth symbolically he -- 4 --
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