Writers, experience and their time

[stlukesguild]

A writer doesn't think "i'm going to make a Romantic piece"; Sure, that does happen sometimes but it is really those artists that are often forgotten about hundreds of years later.

Exactly. While Picasso and Braque survive, those who jumped upon the Cubist bandwagon are far more likely to be forgotten than any number of artists who did not make any such attempt at being fashionable. How many of the composers who jumped upon the innovations of Stravinsky or Shoenberg are still listened to today? How many heirs of Eliot and Pound seem painfully dated?

[JCamilo]

It is not like Borges, even if he after the progression of blindness wrote more poems than prose, more ryhime poetry, using more traditional forms, is any different from the young borges. The technical capacity even improved (Borges discovered more oriental forms, more aspects of germanic language) but the old borges is a living dead person. Not inovative at all, but the same person. Even if he had dialogues with himself, they certainly can not split their personality in a productive line. It is us.

[Quark]

Do you think writing should always express a certain viewpoint on the social, political and economical times the writer lives in, or do you feel that writing about a time - say a medieval era in which a 21st century writer could have no first hand experience of is, too, good writing?

That's a hard question, but I would think that the answer has to be both yes and no. It seems pretty obvious that a good writer writes for an audience, and the audience is by definition a contemporary, or an anticipated, one. No one would write for a past audience, since past readers can't read a book printed today. And, therefore, one can't write a book about past controversies and expect his or her work to have the same reaction it would have had when those topics were fiercely debated. For example, arguing that we should repeal the navigation acts of the 18th century probably won't hold readers' attention like it used to. I think that extends to most bygone social, political, and economic viewpoints. If those views are truly outdated and past relevance, then, no, I wouldn't write a novel about them.

All novels set in the past, though, don't necessarily have to appeal to social, political, or economic viewpoints--nor do I think readers only care about those kinds of issues. Many, and I would agree with them, believe that understanding the past has intrinsic value. There's a whole discipline devoted to the study of it. Historical fiction often taps into that interest. A novel like Vanity Fair--published in the late 1840's but set about thirty years earlier--makes its fair share of sociological points, but it also appeals to our desire for a vivid, coherent past and it even forestalls attempts to manipulate what happened. Some of the best paragraphs in the novel do all of these things at once:

But the writer of these pages, who has pursued in former days,
and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable journey,
cannot but think of it with a sweet and tender regret. Where is
the road now and its merrv incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or
Greenwich for the old honest, pimple-nosed coachmen? I
wonder where are they, those good fellows ? Is old Weller alive
or dead ? and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited,
and the cold rounds of beef inside, and the stunted ostler, with
his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and where is his
generation ? To those great geniuses now in petticoats, who shall
write novels for the beloved reader's children, these men and
things will be as much legend and history as Nineveh, or Coeur
de Lion, or Jack Sheppard. For them stage-coaches will have
become romances — a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus
or Black Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as the stablemen
pulled their clothes off, and away they went; ah, how their tails
shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they demurely
walked away into the inn-yard. Alas ! we shall never hear the
horn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more.
Whither, however, is the light four-inside Trafalgar coach carry-
ing us ?

Clearly Thackeray is making a point about the rapid industrialization of his country--something for a then contemporary sociologist--but he's also calling attention to how reality will be romanticized by future generations. He's lamenting that the next wave of writers will have lost what it's like to ride in a coach, and will replace the actual experience with an idealized version of it. Far from fantasizing about the past, the narrator is giving the actual sensations stirred by it: a horn at midnight, a gate opening. The text is full of little observations like that which recall the way life was lived before. That's part of what historical fiction tries to do. One could make the argument that it ultimately fails at representing the past, and it only presents a tempting illusion of what really happened. Yet I think you could argue the same thing about any sociological point that was made in the text. Is it representing or distorting? That's unclear, but what is known is that audiences want a sociological point, just as they want a vivid, coherent depiction of the past. Both are desires that a good author can aim to gratify.

Of course, all stories set in the past don't always enlighten readers about the period they're set in. No doubt, some of them are anti-feminist fantasies. I'm just arguing that there can be reasons for writing a historical novel beyond fantasy and allegory.

As for this stuff about "the conversation"--an ambiguous term, to say the least--I would say that if there is one conversation it has to include more than just political, economic, and social considerations. Part of "the conversation" has to relate to the past and how it's perceived. Some historical fiction contributes to this part of the conversation, and seems valid if for no other reason.

[JBI]

A writer doesn't think "i'm going to make a Romantic piece"; Sure, that does happen sometimes but it is really those artists that are often forgotten about hundreds of years later.

Exactly. While Picasso and Braque survive, those who jumped upon the Cubist bandwagon are far more likely to be forgotten than any number of artists who did not make any such attempt at being fashionable. How many of the composers who jumped upon the innovations of Stravinsky or Shoenberg are still listened to today? How many heirs of Eliot and Pound seem painfully dated?

No, but they do think "I'm going to do something no one has ever done before", or "I'm going to write better than these poets", or even "I'm going to try this new style out, and see what the results look like."

[Mathor]

No, but they do think "I'm going to do something no one has ever done before", or "I'm going to write better than these poets", or even "I'm going to try this new style out, and see what the results look like."

I think this is just one opinion against another opinion. I don't believe that such artists had to really think about "being different", for Picasso it just came to him, that was how he expressed himself. He didn't think "i'm going do something no one has ever done before", he thought, "I'm going to make an art piece and hopefully it'll get shown in a gallery and perhaps published". If the art is true, then there is no huge deliberation beforehand about what kind of art is going to be made. A great artist wants to make a great piece of art, and, if anything an art piece that can live up to the work of their own favorite artists. I don't believe it took Picasso any real effort to be different. He just was. And so he just made art the way he wanted to make it. And later it started a movement. There is no deliberation needed. Historians at the time might have tried to put him in some group with other artists, or talk about how his art was going to change the face of art, but historians are far from artists.

[stlukesguild]

A writer doesn't think "i'm going to make a Romantic piece"; Sure, that does happen sometimes but it is really those artists that are often forgotten about hundreds of years later.

SLG (quoted)- Exactly. While Picasso and Braque survive, those who jumped upon the Cubist bandwagon are far more likely to be forgotten than any number of artists who did not make any such attempt at being fashionable. How many of the composers who jumped upon the innovations of Stravinsky or Shoenberg are still listened to today? How many heirs of Eliot and Pound seem painfully dated?

No, but they do think "I'm going to do something no one has ever done before", or "I'm going to write better than these poets", or even "I'm going to try this new style out, and see what the results look like."

I think this is just one opinion against another opinion. I don't believe that such artists had to really think about "being different", for Picasso it just came to him, that was how he expressed himself. He didn't think "i'm going do something no one has ever done before", he thought, "I'm going to make an art piece and hopefully it'll get shown in a gallery and perhaps published". If the art is true, then there is no huge deliberation beforehand about what kind of art is going to be made. A great artist wants to make a great piece of art, and, if anything an art piece that can live up to the work of their own favorite artists. I don't believe it took Picasso any real effort to be different. He just was. And so he just made art the way he wanted to make it. And later it started a movement. There is no deliberation needed. Historians at the time might have tried to put him in some group with other artists, or talk about how his art was going to change the face of art, but historians are far from artists.

JBI is writing from the perspective of a future critic. I am writing from the perspective of an artist (painter). The reality, as I have experienced it myself and witnessed it in the artists I know, is not unlike some of what T.S. Eliot suggests in his essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent, or what Harold Bloom suggests with his concept of the "anxiety of influence". In other words the artist, if he or she is not an outsider with little of no education, chooses a number of artists who represent an ideal of a sort. Initially the artist begins with attempts to emulate what his or her predecessors have done. At a certain point the artist recognizes that he or she can admire a predecessor, but still must take his or her own path. This path may build upon the work of these predecessors or rebel against them. Such a rebellion may take the form of seeking out the shockingly new... or turning back to a style thought of as archaic. In painting, for example, German Expressionism built heavily upon early Renaissance and medieval art. In classical music Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was modeled heavily upon ancient Russian folk music and rituals while contemporary composers such as Gorecki and Arvo Paart have built upon pre-classical medieval/modal musical forms.

Where the art falls short is when the artist is too reverent of his or her models... (academicism) to the point of bringing nothing new... or rather nothing of him or herself to the conversation. This academicism can be found in the work of the artist following the latest cutting-edge concepts as well as in the work of the artist overly reverent to the work of some "old master" to the point that he or she puts nothing of him/herself into the work. It is also a question of aesthetic merit. Picasso and Braque were both working with the same ideas... developing the same shockingly new ideas about space and form... yet in the long run Picasso is the greater artist by far (not to undervalue Braque... but any 20th century artist outside of Matisse pales along side of Picasso).

If we take Cervantes, for example, it is clear that he deeply admires the tradition of the Romances and Epics that his Don Quixote builds upon and parodies. He loves The Poem of the Cid and Tirant Lo Blanc, but insists upon bringing something of himself to the conversation. Contrary to what is generally thought, Pablo Picasso deeply admired the work of his predecessors... however he obviously brought a great deal of himself to the conversation... he could not help but see his predecessors through the eyes of a man living in the 20th century.

I don't imagine that there is a conscious attempt to be of one's time or to do something new for the sake of novelty... rather there is a struggle to find a language that best speaks to how one perceives the world. In some cases this involves an apparent iconoclasm or shocking "newness"... in other cases the artist may build upon existing traditions in a manner that is not obviously "new"... but perhaps digs deeper at some aspect of what his or her predecessors had achieved.

In the end if it were only the newness or novelty of the art that held our attention all art would rapidly be forgotten. It would be like a joke that once heard loses its impact... and yet art is not like this. We continue to read Shakespeare and listen to Mozart and marvel at Michelangelo because they achieved something within the artistic language of their time that goes far beyond novelty.

[Quark]

The reality, as I have experienced it myself and witnessed it in the artists I know, is not unlike some of what T.S. Eliot suggests in his essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent, or what Harold Bloom suggests with his concept of the "anxiety of influence". In other words the artist, if he or she is not an outsider with little of no education, chooses a number of artists who represent an ideal of a sort. Initially the artist begins with attempts to emulate what his or her predecessors have done. At a certain point the artist recognizes that he or she can admire a predecessor, but still must take his or her own path. This path may build upon the work of these predecessors or rebel against them. Such a rebellion may take the form of seeking out the shockingly new... or turning back to a style thought of as archaic. In painting, for example, German Expressionism built heavily upon early Renaissance and medieval art. In classical music Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was modeled heavily upon ancient Russian folk music and rituals while contemporary composers such as Gorecki and Arvo Paart have built upon pre-classical medieval/modal musical forms.

That may be true, but it seems like we're spiraling away from the OP. The question that I thought was raised is about the author and the "social, political, and economic times the writer lives in." "The conversation" that's been imagined isn't one between artists, but one that's carried on by the rest of society about current issues. It isn't so much about whether a poet can write a Romantic poem in the age of Realism, but rather about whether someone today could write a good novel about the nineteenth-century without linking it back to now contemporary "social, political, and economic" issues. And could they write it with only scant knowledge of that time period? At least, that's what I think was asked--the wording is a little garbled in places.

[stlukesguild]

The question that I thought was raised is about the author and the "social, political, and economic times the writer lives in." "The conversation" that's been imagined isn't one between artists, but one that's carried on by the rest of society about current issues. It isn't so much about whether a poet can write a Romantic poem in the age of Realism, but rather about whether someone today could write a good novel about the nineteenth-century without linking it back to now contemporary "social, political, and economic" issues.

Returning to the OP I stand by my initial response in that a vast majority of art is set in a time or place well removed from the direct experience of the artist. If it weren't we'd be stuck with nothing but poems of domesticity and paintings of still-life objects or landscapes out the artist's back door with the few exceptions of those artists like Hemingway or Rimbaud who actually led rather eventful lives. At the same time, admittedly, no artist can help but be of his or her time. Our view of the middle ages, for example, is certainly far removed from how the artists of that era experienced the here and now that was their era. Does a writer need to infuse a work set in the historical past or the imagined future or some non-existant fantasy with some layers of allegory and symbolism... some comment on themes that touch upon the present? I don't know that the artist needs to employ such consciously... but I rather suspect that bringing a contemporary view to the past cannot be avoided. For example... I think we need only look to how different a film of the 1930s or 1950s might portray a specific historical era or historical drama in contrast to the same era or drama as portrayed in a later film. Certainly, we could not imagine the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights being produced today.

[JCamilo]

Pierre Menard, Pierre Menard
It is different from portraits of his own time from aesthetic experience and from tematics experience.
The question is a mistake. Being from his own time is not giving up influence and past. My time is the sucession of times before me. So, I am also everything before us. All the rest is fictional.

[stlukesguild]

Pierre Menard...

Exactly!