Poetry as Representation

 

Whatever else it may do, art must represent something of the outside world. That something cannot be the whole world, of course, but we often feel that the part represented should be made intelligible, memorable, and important to us. Even the abstract arts, music and modern painting, involve the emotions, and must in some way re-present them. And if representation then fidelity, truth of some sort. "Life isn't like that" is a damaging criticism to make of a play or novel.

But how much of life should art represent? That which educates us in moral truths, said Plato. Children (i.e. boys) were to learn the great poets and dramatists by heart, appropriately, with gesture and feeling through imaginative identification with their parts. Thereby they would gain a true perspective on the world — true being for Plato, as no less for Aristotle, not matters of opinion. Behind the shifting appearances of things, argued Plato, lay the eternal Forms, of which everything we apprehend with our senses are imperfect copies. Only intellect and scrupulous morality will guide us to the truth, and Plato elaborates in "The Republic" the ways these should be strengthened by State and individual.

Aristotle was more systematic and down to earth. All the arts have their own techniques and rational principles, and it is through mastery of these that the artist/craftsman brings his conceptions to life. Yes, the arts do copy nature, but their representations are fuller and more meaningful than nature gives us in the raw. That is their strength. We do not therefore need to insist on some moral purpose for art, which is thus free to represent all manner of things present, past, imagined or institutionally-required. Correctness in poetry is not correctness judged on other grounds like politics or morality. The artist's task is to create some possible world which the audience will grasp and evaluate much as they do the "real" world outside. The artwork needs to be internally consistent, and externally acceptable.

What then is "real life"? Perhaps what we describe informally to ourselves and friends. But that description is not without its expectations and correct forms. The yarn we spin in the pub is very different from our statement in the witness box. And when speech carries an additional burden — developing character and plot in a novel, for example — very formidable skills are required. Authors and actors in their quest for the seemingly natural, fresh and inevitable have indeed long understood what stylistics and sociology are now uncovering. The most artless expressions make use of a complex web of verbal skills and social expectations. Neither in art nor in real life is there a simple "naturalness", but only a familiarity born of practice.

That there are no surefire recipes for success is obvious to anyone who has worked in the arts, from scriptwriter to media tycoon. Books, films, sitcoms are constantly being analyzed for market appeal, but the smash hit takes everyone by surprise. The work was expected to do well, but not that well. One small feature happened to hook into the public interest, and the thing snowballed. Or the work dropped into a vacant niche, unrecognized at the time. Or it was the artist, working beneath current conventions, who found his own concerns, honestly portrayed, were also those of the wider community. Every original work of art has upset the ideas of some critics, who have been obliged to widen their use of the term.

Not all writers have consulted the market. Some indeed have done the very opposite, producing work so different that all established conventions of style and subject matter seemed thrown to the winds. The avant garde prized originality above all things, and zealously guarded their work from acceptance by the profane majority. Modernism was highbrow, and though it presupposed familiarity with the great works of the past, it consciously set out to overturn traditional values. Art was not to serve society, but the self-admiration of small but prestigious cliques.

Moreover, Modernism itself had to move on. Already absolved from any responsibility to tell the truth, or even to represent the outside world, art looked into the tortuous paths of its own thought processes, coming finally to question its own status. Art was not representation, but a reflecting mirror of codes that had to be deciphered.

A much fuller article can be found on TextEtc

 

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Art as Representation

 

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