Ideas in the Air
Two scholarly approaches, one totally unfair and one totally overwhelming, present difficulties for modern researchers. One approach is to judge a work or an artist on the basis of contemporary prejudice, that is to say, on the prejudices of the present. The other is to try to establish influence by one artist over another.
The first of these judges a creator and his works through the lens of contemporary prejudices. To further complicate this issue, some critics use events in history that took place after the death of the artist as interpretive tools for speaking about his creations; this seems to me unjust, unfair, and unconscionable. Ultimately we have critics who go so far as to accept unpopular interpretations of a work or an artist based on those feelings (however scandalous) or on the ideas or ideologies of people who later admired the work or the artist. This is simply ridiculous.Just because Dickens was admired by the Communist critics of the Soviet Union for his cries for social justice, must we assume that Dickens was a closet communist? Just because Nietzche spoke of men and supermen and was admired by the Nazis as the definer of the “Master Race,” should we make Nietzche the true founder of the Nazi party. The events, the ideas, the culture of an artist’s own time and that which came before him/her are what the critic and scholar need to use as tools for understanding, not the events of more recent time. This is not to deny that some artists are so influential that their works impact events which follow—this is clearly a different position and the works then become helpful in understanding the later events, but to work in the other direction is a serious mistake, since it clearly violates the concept that Hegel identified as zeitgeist, the spirit of the time. Bryan Magee in his The Story of Philosophy explains it this way: “If a great genius in the year 2000 tried to write plays like Shakespeare’s, or compose symphonies like Beethoven’s, his work would be inauthentic, imitation, pastiche, no matter how brilliantly gifted he was. You cannot jump out of history; that is to say, you cannot make yourself independent of the dialectical process” (161). Even though we search for timeless, eternal, and universal ideas in a work, that work is a product of its time and cannot be held accountable to the prejudices or sensibilities of the present,. Yet we constantly do this with many of the creative geniuses of the last two centuries and before. While we must never be apologists for works that display behavior we find deplorable, we must also understand that different times had different viewpoints.Kipling, though he may not have liked it, took Colonialism for granted, as did Dickens. Remember that Pip in Great Expectations goes to Egypt after his “rebirth” to repair his fortunes and expectations. Should we despise Kipling and Dickens and their works because we now find Colonialism to be an abomination? We need to be looking at the work to see if there is something there beyond the disgusting behavior. As we will see, the ideas in the air at the time of conception and creation are what count, not later events. To allow Hitler’s enthusiasm, however shallow or misguided, to prejudice us against Wagner’s artistic works is a terrible mistake and leads us to another error.
This equally misguided approach is a variation of the Intentional Fallacy (the work can only be evaluated on the basis of the author’s intent). This approach tries to interpret the work on the basis of the character of the artist. Several years ago a much respected scholar made a presentation in which he noted that Thackeray should be placed above Dickens in the writers’ pantheon, because the former had never had an extramarital affair. Such Ad Hominem criticism adds nothing to scholarship and clouds an understanding of the artist’s work. What ideas was the artist inhaling as a part of the thinking society in which he or she lived, in his or her milieu; these are the ideas of which we need to be aware. Should I despise the work of Hieronymus Bosch because a Pope found his work objectionable, or should I despise the work of Tolstoy because Stalin enjoyed his work? Those of us with axes to grind make just such decisions. Furthermore, while Wagner was certainly never bashful about expressing his dislike for Jews in his essays, he never drew a Fagin or Shylock in any of his creative works despite efforts by critics to make Klingsor and Beckmesser into Jewish stereotypes.
The second bothersome approach is often almost impossible. One of the great philological themes for scholars in the last three centuries has been to trace influence among writers, artists, and musicians. Many hours have been spent searching libraries, journals, diaries, and other writings to see if one artist had access to the writings of another, or better yet, wrote something describing actually reading, seeing, or hearing another work of art, or best of all, describing the effect that other work had on him/her. This has always been the philosopher’s stone of influence.
Many of my students will gladly debate chaos theory with me, even though they have not read any of the mathematical philosophers who build the fractals or work with non-linear equations. Some of my students have read or seen versions of Jurassic Park and the Lost World. Others have just been at parties where the topic came up and they absorbed as much from the discussion as possible, making the information their own. Some have even been curious enough to search out “Ian Malcolm’s Homepage” on the Internet and get a superficial introduction to a complicated philosophy. They have, in fact, breathed the air of the milieu. Having done so, they feel sufficiently informed to discuss the ideas and employ them in their own arguments and writings. We have seen, however, that even without this direct evidence of actual exposure to a specific work, artists breath the air of their milieu sometimes to the level of intoxication.
Perhaps a more contemporary example is the recent popular discussion surrounding the marital status of Jesus. Individuals who have not read the DaVinci Code will argue and discuss the true nature of the Sacred Blood because, thanks to Dan Brown, the ideas are in the air. As this debate plays out in Western Society, more and more is published, videoed, and broadcast exposing even more people to the discussion. While it may seem to many of us that almost everyone has now read the Da Vinci Code, few people have read the library of books that ignited Brown’s imagination or those that are the result of Brown’s imagination and success. After its initial success, Holy Blood, Holy Grail languished on bookstore shelves for over a decade. However, Ladies Church Circles across this country in their Bible studies debate the importance and status of Mary Magdalene with rancor and intensity. The ideas are in the air.
Granted these are not weighty examples, but they are contemporary. We could discuss how in the first half of the twentieth century, artists who hadn’t read a word of Freud used psychoanalytical ideas in their works—the ideas were in the air. Consider also that the air can be filled with all kinds of ideas. Sartre inhaled Communism and Existentialism, and exhaled the combination to infect other artists like Camus, if I may continue the metaphor. During the Viet Nam War, Thoreau’s “Essay on Civil Disobedience” was repopularized and cited as justification for almost every act of antiwar protest. Many of us suspect this essay helped link the antiwar movement with the civil rights movement—ideas dating back a full century were still in the air.
Ideas once let loose seem to live in the air like bacteria or a virus. Two millennia ago, when the Greeks threw off their superstitious chains and invented all of the ologies we still study, something was in the air that kept these new ideas spreading and growing. When the pent-up genius of humanity broke free after a 1000 years’ sleep in the Tuscan city of Florence, something was in the air. We know that there was a conscious effort to return to the Classical past, but this Rebirth opened the door to the future and Mankind became the measure of all things. Ideas seem to live in the very air of certain times like viruses waiting to infect the deep breathers and thinkers of those ages.
More to come
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