Artist as wicked, immoral and selfish?

[PDF] Some people, I think, might be a bit shocked by the bold claim that the true artist represents a higher type of humanity than the ordinary, decent citizen. Some people might even be tempted to point out, very nicely of course, that only too often the artist unfortunately, most regrettably, is wicked and immoral and selfish. So it is worth perhaps looking into this a little. One can readily admit that the artist, whether painter, poet or musician, can be rather difficult to live with, but this I think is usually due to the fact that very often the artist is concerned, rightly concerned, to safeguard from intrusion his own privacy and his own conditions of work. We know, too, that there are well-meaning people who try to make the artist conform, try to make him like other people, to make him live, dress, look, write, paint like other people, etc. and it is only natural perhaps that the artist tends to rebel against these well-meaning attempts, sometimes even violently. And rather ungratefully, he insists upon being himself.

We also often find that the artist is in revolt against conventional morality. Now this is especially conspicuous in the case of a poet like Shelley, who flouted all the conventional moral canons of his day, and was ostracised for so doing. But one might say, is the artist's flouting conventional morality wrong? Only too often we have to recognise that it is conventional morality itself which is at fault, and the artist's rejection of it is in fact, in many cases if not most cases, simply an expression of his own more healthy and more normal mental attitude.

We must not also forget, this is very, very important, that the artist of whatsoever kind is only too often a deeply divided person; that is to say, divided within himself. And sometimes, the greater the artist, the more deeply divided he is within himself. And this deep division, this cleft, sometimes in the depths of his own being, is productive of tension and of lack of balance, bordering even, sometimes, on madness. The artist, by very definition perhaps, has access to higher states of consciousness, higher states of being than most other people, or than almost all other people, but this does not mean that he has access to them all the time. To quote Shelley, he says or sings in one of his poems: 'Rarely, rarely, comest thou, spirit of delight'. And this is only too often the experience of the artist, the creator, poet, musician; that this spirit of delight, this higher experience, this experience of a higher mode of being and consciousness, comes only rarely, only sometimes. The artist does not live in these higher states all the time, and in this the artist differs from the true mystic who tends to dwell in these states much of the time. And in the case of the artist, sometimes in these higher states of consciousness and experience, sometimes in more ordinary states, it is only too often as though the artist were two people. When he creates, he is one person. When he is not creating, he is another person. We all know that sometimes you read a book by somebody, you think, what a wonderful book, what a wonderful person the author must be, how you would like to meet him, and when you go along, full of gratitude and willing to be full of admiration for this wonderful book which has uplifted you so much, you find some dry, withered, mean little man and you are sorry that you ever set eyes upon him, you are so disappointed. And this is because of this sort of split, division, between the higher experience of the artist and his more ordinary, more normal experience. It's as though the artist is two people, as though he has an artistic self and an ordinary self, and a division between them.

This is why, today, we often speak in terms of inspiration. The artist's inspiration comes to him from on high, as it were, comes from above, it is not him. There is a well-known story in connection with Handel; when he finished the manuscript of the Messiah, when he read it over, he was astonished himself that he had written anything so good, and he was so astonished, we are told, that he put down his pen, looked up, and said, 'It came from above, it is not me'. Now he is back in his ordinary state of consciousness, It is not me, I did not produce this, it came from above. It came, that is to say, from the artist himself when he was in this higher, this supra-normal state of consciousness. This is also one of the reasons why traditionally we refer to the artist as a genius. We speak of a poetic genius, of an artistic genius in general, or a mystical genius, and so on.

Art and the spiritual life:

1. Art and the Spirtual life.
2. The Artist as more Aware or Self-Conscious.
3. The Artist as Creative.
4. What is Art?
5. The Artist as wicked, immoral and selfish?
6. * Nabokov and the word Genius.
7. Values that can transform our lives.
8. When an Artist creates he objectifies.

By Urgyen Sangharakshita.

[in French] [Introduction] [Buddha] [Buddhism] [Meditation] [Sangharakshita] [FWBO] [the Centre]

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Dernière mise à jour:
04 avril, 2007.