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.

Within racial* boundaries, and perhaps within the limits of certain very general types,* many impulses are common to all men. Their stimuli and the courses which they take seem to be uniform. At the same time there are many other impulses which are not uniform. It is difficult to give instances, since there are so few names for impulses, but sounds are fairly uniform while words used in isolation are fairly ambiguous stimuli. Impulses could, if we knew enough, be arranged in an order of general uniformity or stability. Some impulses remain the same, taking the same course on the same occasions, from age to age, from prehistoric times until to-day. Some change as fashions change. Between the two extremes are the vast majority; neither, when the nervous system is vigilant, very fixed nor very erratic; set off by a given stimulus and taking the course they do because other impulses are also active or have just been active.

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.

There is nothing peculiarly mysterious about imagination. It is no more marvellous than any other of the ways of the mind. Yet it has so often been treated as an arcanum that we naturally approach it with caution. It is desirable at least to avoid part of the fate which befell Coleridge,* and our account will be devoid of theological implications.

Given some impulses active others are thereby aroused in the absence of what would otherwise be their necessary stimuli. Such impulses I call imaginative, whether images occur or not, for image-production is not at all essentially involved in what the critic is interested in as imagination. Which other impulses are brought in is in part determined by which were co-operative together originally when all the impulses had their own stimuli, that is to say, in the non-imaginary experiences from which the imaginary experience derives. In so far as this factor comes in the imagination may be said to be repetitive. The imagination we are concerned with may be called formative* by way of distinction. For present circumstances are at least as important. Remember in a changed mood a scene which took place under a strong emotion. How altered is its every aspect! The selection of the impulses which take effect is changed; the impulses are distorted, they run in different courses. The imaginative construction is always at least as much determined by what is going on in the present as by what went on in the past, pasts rather, whence it springs.

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 theory of value outlined above indicates some of these differences. If the artist’s organisation is such as to allow him a fuller life than the average, with less unnecessary interference between its component impulses, then plainly we should do well to be more like him, if we can and as far as we can. But the qualification, if we can, has far-reaching consequences. Politically it might be better for the community to be organised on the model of ant and bee communities, but, since it cannot, the question whether we should try to make it so does not arise. Similarly, if the artist’s organisation* is so eccentric as to make general approximation to it impossible, or if a general approximation would involve (people being what they are) greater losses than gains, then however admirable it may be in itself, we shall be justified in neglecting it. The case, if it indeed occurs, is exceptional but instructive theoretically. What is excellent and what is to be imitated are not necessarily the same. But it is interesting to note that mentalities to which the usual and ordinary man is not capable of approximating without loss can almost always be shown to be defective, and that the defects themselves are the barrier to approximation. Certain mystical poets are perhaps as good an example of this as any. However admirable the experience of a Boehme or a Blake, of a Nietzsche or of the Apocalypst, the features which prevent general participation in it, the barriers to communication, are not the features upon which its value chiefly depends. It is the inchoate part of Blake’s personality which makes him incomprehensible, not the parts which were better organised than those of every one else.

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.

But the advantages may be localised or general, minor as well as major. The artist stands at the parting of a multitude of ways. His advance may be and often is in a direction which if followed up would be generally disadvantageous although for the moment it leads to an increase of value. The metaphor is of course insufficient. We can improve it by substituting a manifold of many dimensions for the cross-roads. Which way is the mind to grow and which ways are compatible with which is the question. There are specialist and universal poets, and the specialist may be developing in a manner either consistent or inconsistent* with general development, a consideration of extreme importance in judging the value of his work. Its bearing upon the permanence of his work will be discussed later.

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.