Should we separate the author from the work?

[WampusCat]

So, Ax, are you saying that anything that is truly beautiful is grounded in pain, sorrow and the brokenness of being human?

If so, that's an interesting thought. I'd be inclined to agree, except that I think there is a kind of beauty that transcends the imperfect but is far deeper, far more real than a postcard. It's the kind of beauty that reasonates inside the viewer or hearer or reader, evoking a perfection that we don't experience but that seems somehow familiar. A dream held in common.

This conversation reminds me of the movie "Amadeus," where Salieri rages that such perfect music can come from the impious, arrogant Mozart.

Great art is great art, no matter who is touched by the fire of inspiration.

[anthriel]

I absolutely disagree. A morally perfect person would, in fact, be incapable of empathy. Empathy is understanding what others feel on a visceral--NOT intellectual--level. How would a morally perfect person understand what it is to feel guilty? Or remorseful? Or vengeful?

Is morality not a choice? Do you mean to imply that moral people are moral because they have never been tempted? They don't understand what it means to want to do that which will harm themselves and others, selfish things, dark and mean things, but instead choose a harder, different, more moral way?

Of course, morally "perfect" people do not exist, and that might be the point you are driving at, here.



Sorry, Al. I am hopping down the bunny trail, here...

[yovargas]

I feel very comfortable and confident that even a human who has never even been tempted to do anything immoral could still have deep, powerful, meaningful things to say to and about life and the human experience. I'm frankly baffled and somewhat shocked that anyone who cares about art could think otherwise. There are such vast swaths of the human experience that have not one wit to do with our ability or desire to inflict harm on each other.

[narya]

Say, could we define "art", "true beauty", and "morality" before we go any farther?

[yovargas]

Say, could we define "art"...

No.

[Passdagas the Brown]

I find that most of what is truly beautiful has little to do with human pain or sorrow. Lay outside on a pristine plain at night and view the stars, look out at an untouched glacier, spend some time deep in a cave, watch a sunset over a mountain range, or walk over the canopy of a cloud forest.

Pictures of these things are postcards. But witnessing them, exposed and out in the wild, have been the most beautiful and awe-inspiring experiences of my life.

Though contemplation of our place in the cosmos is a deeply human thing. But pain and sorrow do not have a monopoly on the human experience. There is great wonder and reverence in that experience as well.

Among filmmakers, I think Terrence Malick captures this best. And among writers, Tolkien.

[axordil]

Say, could we define "art"...

No.

Pretty much this.

[axordil]

So, Ax, are you saying that anything that is truly beautiful is grounded in pain, sorrow and the brokenness of being human?

If so, that's an interesting thought. I'd be inclined to agree, except that I think there is a kind of beauty that transcends the imperfect but is far deeper, far more real than a postcard. It's the kind of beauty that reasonates inside the viewer or hearer or reader, evoking a perfection that we don't experience but that seems somehow familiar. A dream held in common.

This conversation reminds me of the movie "Amadeus," where Salieri rages that such perfect music can come from the impious, arrogant Mozart.

Great art is great art, no matter who is touched by the fire of inspiration.

Beauty moves us as it does is because of the insatiable yearning humans feel for anything we cannot have.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Or it moves us because we feel a profound connection to it?

I concede that a "yearning" for something deeper is part of that, but yearning is different that pain or sorrow.

[yovargas]

Beauty moves us as it does is because of the insatiable yearning humans feel for anything we cannot have.

Beauty moves us as it does is because of.......lots of reasons, many of them very complex, some very simple, and most of them very different for different people.

But even if you are right - the morally "perfect" person still cannot have all they desire and can still desire what they cannot have. Unless one considers desire itself a moral failing but I think very few amongst us would.

[axordil]

I absolutely disagree. A morally perfect person would, in fact, be incapable of empathy. Empathy is understanding what others feel on a visceral--NOT intellectual--level. How would a morally perfect person understand what it is to feel guilty? Or remorseful? Or vengeful?

Is morality not a choice? Do you mean to imply that moral people are moral because they have never been tempted? They don't understand what it means to want to do that which will harm themselves and others, selfish things, dark and mean things, but instead choose a harder, different, more moral way?

Of course, morally "perfect" people do not exist, and that might be the point you are driving at, here.

A morally perfect person wouldn't be a person, true. But in my experience, people who have never failed have been insufficiently tempted. This can be due to circumstance or to avoidance of situations where temptation can happen (and the two often overlap).

A person who has not experienced major moral failure may understand the abstract concept of temptation, and of giving in, and of the choices that follow--but there are aspects of it they just can't get. It's the opposite of explaining a rainbow to a person blind from birth--it's explaining the abyssal dark to someone for whom the sun is always bright.

[axordil]

Beauty moves us as it does is because of the insatiable yearning humans feel for anything we cannot have.

Beauty moves us as it does is because of.......lots of reasons, many of them very complex, some very simple, and most of them very different for different people.

But even if you are right - the morally "perfect" person still cannot have all they desire and can still desire what they cannot have. Unless one considers desire itself a moral failing but I think very few amongst us would.

Buddhists do.

[yovargas]

Which is precisely why I qualified with "few amongst us".

[Alatar]

Right. So that's a no then?

[axordil]

Or it moves us because we feel a profound connection to it?

I concede that a "yearning" for something deeper is part of that, but yearning is different that pain or sorrow.

Pain can be inflicted by happenstance, but sorrow can only come from unfulfilled--or unfulfillable--desire. We want justice or mercy or kindness and we receive none of it. We want the company of those we have lost and they do not return. We want to live without the terrible self-knowledge of our own mortality, our own limitations, our own poor choices, and they remain with us.

We want, we want, we want, and we do not get, and it wounds us as slowly and as surely as ill-fitting shoes on a forced march.

I think that's why the most profound reactions are to music, which depends so deeply on the struggle between the timelessness of the sublime moment and the relentless push of time past it.

[axordil]

Right. So that's a no then?

I can ignore an artist, unless the artist jumps in between me and the work and waves their arms around and demands I pay attention. Which is, alas, the fashion these days to some extent.

[Cerin]

if the artist's values are reprehensible to the audience, this will be evident in the work itself

I strongly disagree with this. It would be kind of nice if it were true, but I don't believe it is. I think the fact is that artistic gifts are transcendent and miraculous. If they were tethered to our excellence as human beings, none of art would exist, imo. For myself, knowing someone was a cruddy person does tend to tarnish the enjoyment of the art, probably in proportion to the degree of perceived cruddiness. It certainly does not affect the artistic merit of the art. How could it? And therefore it can't affect it's intrinsic value. What it affects is it's value to us, personally.

But also, Wagner's views were certainly terribly anti-semitic, but nothing exceptional for the time in which he lived. Much of it comes from his ideas being later used by the Nazis in their most extreme interpretation and it is not sure that even Wagner himself would have agreed with that.

I wanted to reiterate this, because it is surely, in large part, Hitler and his fondness for Wagner, and his physical sullying of Bayreuth and Wagner's music applied to Nazi pageantry that has made Wagner unpalatable to so many. There's a lovely and touching (imo) documentary released recently ('Wagner and Me'), featuring and narrated by Stephen Fry (who is Jewish), about his personal struggle over Wagner (whose music he loves and credits for awakening him artistically).

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[Passdagas the Brown]

I agree with the Buddhists regarding desire, despite my agnosticism.

But the emphasis there is on desire for material possessions, and on too much 'attachment' to that material sphere.

Yearning for a greater sense of meaning, or for a deeper understanding of the cosmos and our place in it, is a healthy thing, and is different than desire. And IMO, it is the most fundamental characteristic of the human condition.

For me, the artwork, literature and music that speaks to this yearning is the most compelling.

[narya]

if the artist's values are reprehensible to the audience, this will be evident in the work itself

I strongly disagree with this. It would be kind of nice if it were true, but I don't believe it is. I think the fact is that artistic gifts are transcendent and miraculous. If they were tethered to our excellence as human beings, none of art would exist, imo. For myself, knowing someone was a cruddy person does tend to tarnish the enjoyment of the art, probably in proportion to the degree of perceived cruddiness. It certainly does not affect the artistic merit of the art. How could it? And therefore it can't affect it's intrinsic value. What it affects is it's value to us, personally.

For which I offer again Caravaggio, whose work is magnificent and whose work I have been attracted to for a long time. But after I saw the movie about him, I started to feel uncomfortable about the attraction.

I agree with the Buddhists regarding desire, despite my agnosticism.

Me, too:

Buddhist nonattachment doesn’t imply complacence or indifference, or not having committed relationships or being passionately engaged with society, but rather has to do with our effort to defy change and resist the fact of impermanence and our mortality. By holding on to that which in any case is forever slipping through our fingers, we just get rope burn.

[axordil]

For me, the artwork, literature and music that speaks to this yearning is the most compelling.

I agree--but it's still yearning.