Chapter XXIV · The Normality of the Artist

CHAPTER XXIV The Normality of the Artist

Prose is an uninterrupted, polite warfare with poetry . . . every abstraction wants to have a jibe at poetry and wishes to be uttered with a mocking voice.—The Joyful Wisdom.

If the availability of his past experience is the first characteristic of the poet, the second is what we may provisionally call his normality. So far as his experience does not tally with that of those with whom he communicates, there will be failure. But both the sense in which it must tally and the sense in which the artist is normal need to be carefully considered.

For successful communication a number of impulses with their effective stimuli must be common to the communicators, and further the general ways in which impulses modify one another must be shared. We evidently cannot expect that many total situations and responses will have been common, and it is not necessary that they should be. Within limits the disparities can be overcome by what is called imagination.

Many of the most curious features of the arts, the limitation of their number, their formal characteristics and the conditions of impersonality, detachment and so forth, which have given rise to much confused discussion of the ‘æsthetic’ state for example, are explained by this fact. In difficult communication the artist must find some means of so controlling a part of the recipient’s experience that the imaginative development will be governed by this part and not left to the accidents of repetition which will differ naturally from individual to individual. As a basis for every art, therefore, will be found a type of impulse which is extraordinarily uniform, which fixes the framework, as it were, within which the rest of the response develops. These are among the most uniform impulses, among those which come nearest to having a one-one correlation with their stimuli, of all those which we experience.

In poetry, rhythm metre and tune or cadence; in music, rhythm pitch timbre and tune; in painting, form and colour; in sculpture, volume and stress; in all the arts, what are usually called the formal elements are the stimuli, simple or complex, which can be most depended upon to produce uniform responses. It is true that these responses are not so uniform as the reflexes, as sneezing or blinking for example. But even these are to a considerable extent subject to interference and modification by impulses of higher levels. What communication requires is responses which are uniform, sufficiently varied, and capable of being set off by stimuli which are physically manageable. These three requisites explain why the number of the arts is limited and why formal elements have such importance.

They are the skeleton or scaffolding upon or within which the further impulses involved in the communication are supported. They supply the present dependable part of the experience by which the rest, the more erratic, ambiguous part of the imaginative development, is controlled. By themselves (although there has been a natural tendency in criticism to maintain the contrary opinion) they are often quite inadequate. As we have seen, differences of all degrees, both between and within the arts, exist.

The fashion in which the poet’s impulses must tally with those of his readers, will now be moderately clear. The poet is in the least favourable position, perhaps, among the artists, but as a compensation the range and fullness of the communications open to him is, if he can overcome the difficulties, very great. But evidently the least eccentricity on his part, either in the responses which he makes to rhythms and verbal tunes, or in the ways in which these govern and modify his further responses or are modified by them, will be disastrous. It is the same for all the arts. A defective or eccentric colour sensibility, a common defect as is well known, may play havoc with an artist’s work, qua communication, without necessarily involving any deficiency of value in his own experience. It is theoretically possible for an individual to develop in himself states of mind of very high value and yet to be so unusual in his own sensibility as to seem ridiculous or be incomprehensible to others. The question then arises as to which is in the right, the artist or his uncomprehending critics. This frequent dilemma raised alike by great innovating artists and by nincompoops brings us back to the problem of normality.

To be normal is to be a standard, but not, as things are and are likely to remain, an average; and to inquire into the characters of the norm or to ask who are normal is to raise a question as to value. The artist departs from the average, but so do other people. His departure, however, is one of the reasons why we attend to his work; other people’s departures may be reasons why we should not. What are the main differences which decide whether a departure is a merit or a defect?

The explanation of the rarity of admirable though utterly eccentric experience is not difficult. The metaphorical remark that we are all branches of the same tree is its most compendious form. So much must be alike in the nature of all men, their situation in the world so much the same, and organisation building upon this basis must depend upon such similar processes, that variation both wide and successful is most unlikely. That we are apt to exaggerate the differences between men is well known. If we consider what is usually called mind, alone, we may well suppose that minds may differ toto cœlo, but if we look more carefully, taking account of the whole man, including his spinal reflexes for example, seeing his mind as but the most delicate and most advanced part of his total organisation, we shall not be tempted to think him so diverse. People of course do seem extraordinarily different in the ways in which they think and feel. But we are specialised to detect these differences. Further, we tend constantly to overlook differences in situation which would explain differences in behaviour. We assume to a ridiculous extent that what is stimulating us will stimulate others in the same way, forgetting that what will happen depends upon what has happened before and upon what is already happening within, about which we can usually know little.

The ways then in which the artist will differ from the average will as a rule presuppose an immense degree of similarity. They will be further developments of organisations already well advanced in the majority. His variations will be confined to the newest, the most plastic, the least fixed part of the mind, the parts for which reorganisation is most easy. Thus his differences are far less serious obstacles to communication than, shall we say, such differences as divide the hypochondriac from the healthy. And, further, so far as they require reorganisation there will commonly be good reasons why this should be carried out. We should not forget that finer organisation is the most successful way of relieving strain, a fact of relevance in the theory of evolution. The new response will be more advantageous than the old, more successful in satisfying varied appetencies.

At any moment, in any situation, a variety of attitudes is possible. Which is the best is decided not only by the impulses which gain organised satisfaction in the attitude but also by the effect of the attitude upon the rest of the organisation of the individual. We should have to consider the whole system and all the possibilities of all probable situations which might arise if we were to be sure that any one attitude is the best. Since we cannot do this, but can only note the most obvious objections to some, we have to be content if we can avoid those attitudes which are most evidently wasteful.

For the normality of the poet is to be estimated in terms of waste. Most human attitudes are wasteful, some to a shocking degree. The mind which is, so far as can be seen, least wasteful, we take as a norm or standard, and, if possible, we develop in our degree similar experiences. The taking of the norm is for the most part done unconsciously by mere preference, by the shock of delight which follows the release of stifled impulse into organised freedom. Often the choice is mistaken, the advantage which leads to preference is too localised, involves losses in the end, losses round the next corner as it were.

Little by little experience corrects such illusory preference, not through reflection—almost all critical choices are irreflective, spontaneous, as some say—but through unconscious reorganisation of impulses. We rarely change our tastes, we rather find them changed. We return to the poems which made us weep tears of delight when we were young and find them dusty rhetoric. With a tender hurt inside we wonder what has happened.

Sometimes, of course, experience corrects nothing. There may be nothing which needs correcting, or too much. The localised advantage, the sweet aching thrill of the Boosey Ballad—

The localised advantage may be irresistible in its appeal; the personality will not surrender it, no matter what, of greater worth is forgone for its sake, or what possibilities passing by are lost, unglimpsed in the enthralment.