The Act of Creation (44 page)

Among the simplest metaphors are cross-references from one of the senses
to another: a 'warm' colour, a 'sweet' voice, a 'sharp' light; the 'blind
lips' of Swinburne, the 'blind hands' of Blake. Such combinations of
different sensory matrices lend a new richness or multidimensionality
to experience so that, again with Swinburne, 'light is heard as music,
music seen as light'.
The aesthetic satisfaction derived from metaphor, imagery, and related
techniques (which I shall treat as a single category) depends on the
emotive potential
of the matrices which enter into the game. By
emotive potential I mean the capacity of a matrix to generate and satisfy
participatory emotions. This depends of course partly on individual
factors, partly on the collective attitudes of different cultures, but
also on objective factors: on the intrinsic 'calory value', as it were,
of some associative contexts -- mental diets the ingredients of which
have, for instance, a religious or mythological flavour.
On the simplest and most general level, the emotive potentials of the
sense-modalities -- sight, sound, odour, touch -- differ widely with
different people. Robert Graves [2] has confessed that his favourite poems
have 'without exception' a tactile quality. He quoted as an example for
it the Early English:

Cold blows the wind on my true love
And a few small drops of rain --

'where', he comments, 'I feel the rain on my hands and hair rather than
see it.' He goes on to say that he always liked Keats and disliked Shelley
because 'the characteristic of Keats is, I find, his constant appeal to
the sense of touch, while Shelley's appeal is as constantly to the sense
of movement'. Graves's stimulating essay (published in 1925) ended with
the suggestion that psychologists should engage in 'intense research' on
this question; it is a pity that it has not been followed up. (My guess
would be that more people than one suspects can
smell
poetry -- but
that, needless to say, is a generalization based on personal experience,
for I can always smell the dust-cloud raised by the galloping horses in
a Western film; and the lines 'Cold blows the wind' convey to me mainly
the fresh smell of the rainy wind and of True Love's wet hair.)
However, granted such personal idiosyncrasies, man lives primarily
by his eyes and ears. The emotive potentials of patterned sound I have
already discussed; it adds to the virtues of language the dynamism of the
dance, the melody of the song, and the magic of incantation. It may even
happen that the magic makes us forget the message -- as when (quoting
Graves) 'people read Swinburne for the mere glorious rush of his verse,
without any more regard for the words than will help to a vague scenic
background'; and with Blake one often feels that the emotive calories
generated by the matrix have burnt up the meaning.
The Picture-strip
Much the same could be said of the emotive power of some visual imagery
-- including Blake's own. We have seen (
Chapter
VII
) that 'thinking in pictures' dominates the manifestations of
the unconscious in the dream, in hallucinatory states, but also in the
creative work of scientists. In fact, the majority of mathematicians
and physicists turned out to be 'visionaries' in the literal sense --
that is, visual, not verbal thinkers.

 

 

But we have also seen that pictorial thinking is an earlier and more
primitive form of mentation than conceptual thinking -- in the evolution
of the individual as in that of the species. The language of children is
'picturesque' -- again in the literal sense of the word; and the langauge
of primitives is 'like the unfolding of a picture strip, where each
word expresses a pictorial image, regardless as to whether the picture
signifies an object, an action, or a quality. Thus "to strike" and "a
blow" are expressed by the same word. These languages are not merely
deficient in the more abstract type of imagery, but in practically all
higher grammatical construction' (Kretschmer). [3]

 

 

Let me give a concrete example from Kretschmer's textbook, followed by the
comments of that excellent German psychiatrist -- whose work, comparable
in importance to Jung's, is far too little known to the English-speaking
public. The example is a simple story told in the Bushman language. It
is about a Bushman who worked as a shepherd for a white man until the
latter ill-treated him; whereupon the Bushman ran away, and the white
man engaged another Bushman, to whom the same thing happened. Translated
into Bushman language, this story is picturized as follows:

 

Bushman-there-go, here-run-to-Whites, White-give-tobacco,
Bushman-go-smoke, go-fill-tobacco sack, White-give-meat-Bushman,
Bushman-go-eat-meat, get-up-go-home, go-merry, go-sit, graze-sheep
Whites, White-go-strike-Bushman, Bushman-cry-much-pain,
Bushman-go-run-away-Whites, White-run-after-Bushman,
Bushman-there-other-this-graze-sheep, Bushman-all-away.

 

Kretschmer comments:

 

The thought of primitive peoples allows of but little arrangement
and condensation of separate images into abstract categories; but the
sensory perceptions themselves, retained directly as such in memory,
unwind themselves before us unchanged, like a long picture roll. The
discrete visual image dominates the scene throughout, whilst the
relation between the separate pictures is barely indicated. Logical
connections are as yet quite tenuous and loose. If we wish to conceive
of speech at a slightly lower level still, we shall have to dispense
with even those slight hints of a syntax which are present; we shall
then find that the thought-processes of a people using such a language
would consist entirely of an asyntactical series of pictures.

 

Some passages in the Old Testament seem to reflect the transition from
predominantly pictorial to abstract thought:

 

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor
yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill;
but time and chance happeneth to them all. (Ecclesiastes.)

 

The tendency to stick to concrete visual images is still evident; but
the characters in the picture-strip no longer represent individuals
-- the swift, the strong, the wise are collective nouns, abstracted
universals. Incidentally, George Orwell once wrote a parody of this
passage in modern academic jargon to highlight the contrast between
vivid imagery and desiccated abstraction:

 

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion
that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency
to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable
element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

 

While dreaming, even a paragon of normality regresses in time not
merely to Ecclesiastes, but to the earlier mythological creations of the
Babylonians and the visual concreteness of the Bushman's statements. But
on awakening 'all the charm is broken, all that phantom world so fair,
vanishes' -- as at the call of the gentleman from Porlock. It may be
just as well -- the quick effacement from memory of the majority of our
dreams may be a normal protective device of the mind (as distinct from
pathological repression). In the hallucinatory psychoses, however, the
regressions are more intense, realistic, enduring, and unforgettable in
a painful sense; hence the remarkable affinities between the paintings
of schizophrenics and primitive art. To quote Kretschmer again:
'Schizophrenic symbols, like primitive and dream symbols, are the
pictorial antecedents of concepts and are not developed beyond that
stage.' He then relates the case of one of his patients, a gifted young
man who, between periods of normality and abnormality, lived through a
prolonged transitional phase, enlivened by what he called his 'picture
show':

 

In these phases he passively experiences the outcropping of a mass of
images which arise from abstract concepts, or which appear to exist
in concrete objects. The images often 'resemble old Norse ornaments
or Roman sculptures'; sometimes they are grotesque figures, sometimes
sensible film-like scenes of knights and soldiers who occupy a real old
castle which lies in the valley. Most interesting are the images which
arise directly out of abstract thought. For example, he is reading a
philosophical work of Kant, and as he reads, the abstract thoughts are
continuously converted into imagery. Whilst reading Kant on the question
of the infinity of space he had the following experience: 'The pictures
crowded on me -- towers, circles behind circles, a cylinder which thrust
itself obliquely into the whole picture. Everything is showing movement
and growth; the circle acquires depth and thus becomes cylindrical;
the towers become higher and higher; everything is arbitrary as in an
experimental picture or a dream.'

 

In case-histories like this we see the extreme development of tendencies
which on a moderate scale are present in the normal imaginative person;
just as we saw in the punning and rhyming patient on the operating table
the pathological extreme of the poet's urge to convey his meaning in
rhythmic patterns. And just as rhythm is not an artificial embellishment
of language but a form of expression which predates language, so
visual images and symbols are not fanciful embroideries of concepts,
but precursors of conceptual thought. The artist does not climb a ladder
to stick ornaments on a façade of ideas -- he is more like a pot-holer
in search of underground rivers. To quote Kretschmer for the last time:

 

Such creative products of the artistic imagination tend to emerge from
a psychic twilight, a state of lessened consciousness and diminished
attentivity to external stimuli. Further, the condition is 'one of
"absent-mindedness" with hypnoidal over-concentration on a single
focus, providing an entirely passive experience, frequently of a
visual character, divorced from the categories of space and time,
and reason and will. These dreamlike phases of artistic creation evoke
primitive phylogenetic tendencies towards rhythm and stylization with
elemental violence; and the emergent images thus acquire in the very
act of birth regular form and symmetry.'

 

 

On Law and Order

 

 

Some images seem to appeal more to the intellect than to emotion because
of their logical and didactic character -- but nevertheless evoke an
emotive response:

 

And how dieth the wise man? as the fool
(Ecclesiastes)
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
(Cymbeline)
When Adam dolve and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman?
(John Ball?)

 

Each of these quotes may be described as a particular illustration of
a general truth: the first and second affirm that all men must die,
the third proclaims that all men are equal. If we wish to be pedantic,
we can enumerate the various bisociative techniques which enter into
them: sense and sound in the last two; or in the first two, the joining
of habitually incompatible opposites in the focal concepts 'dying' and
'dust'. We may further note the archaic, or archetypal, resonances of
Adam, Eve, the sage, the fool, and the golden lads. Finally, the
technique of condensation and implication in the third quote poses a
kind of naïve riddle which enhances its effect. But when all these
points are made, the main feature which the three quotes share remains
their didactic intent of driving home a message, of demonstrating a
universal law by means of concrete imagery.

 

 

Now such reductions of particular instances to universal causes or
abstract laws are supposed to represent a purely intellectual pastime
which has nothing to do with art and emotion; in fact, however, they give
rise to the most powerful emotional release. When John Ball exhorted the
peasants at Blackheath to rise against their Lords, he advertently chose
'When Adam dolve' as his text, because it enabled him to prove that their
particular grievances were based on a Law ordained by the Creator: that
there should be no privilege of birth. It is significant that this same
text, with its indirect affirmation implied in a riddle, should have such
an explosive effect -- not only in England, but also during the peasant
risings in Germany, where it became the marching song of the rebels
(
Als Adam grub und Eva spann, -- Wo war da der Edelmann?
). Blake's

 

There came a voice without reply --
'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die,

 

might serve as a motto for all appeals to the emotions which are explained
and justified by reference to divine law -- the Voice Without Reply.

 

 

The Will of God, or the Laws of Nature, as the organizing and harmonizing
principle of the universe is one of the most powerful archetypes of
human experience. No doubt it originates to a large part in feelings
of insecurity, of cosmic anxiety, the need for protection -- hence the
reassurance and relief which are felt whenever a threatening or merely
puzzling phenomenon can be 'explained' as a manifestation of some
universal law or divine order. For the opposite of order is chaos --
which means unpredictability of events, absence of protection, exposure to
the whims of incomprehensible forces. The emergence of order from chaos
is a leitmotif of all mythologies; even the bloodthirsty goddesses of
the Hindus and the choleric deities of the Pantheon provided a measure
of reassurance, because they were moved by human passions which could
be comprehended by the mind; so that everything that befell one was
satisfactorily explained.

 

 

Thus virtually any explanation -- valid or not -- which commands belief
has a calming and cathartic effect. It can be observed on every level:
from the sudden, smiling relief of the small child when some startling
appearance is shown to be related to something familiar, and recognized as
part of the general order of things -- to the euphoria of the scientist,
who has solved his problem. Even painful experiences are tempered with
relief once they are recognized as particular instances of a general
law. To lose a relative by a 'stupid accident' is more painful than to
lose one 'lawfully', through old age or incurable illness. The only
effective consolation in the face of death is that it is part of the
cosmic order; if chimneysweepers were exempted from it, we should resent
it very much indeed. The idea of 'blind chance' deciding our fate is
intolerable; the mind abhors gaps in the lawful order as nature abhors
the vacuum.