The Act of Creation (49 page)

Chapter
X
) that the evolution of science is neither continuous nor cumulative
in a strict sense; but it is nevertheless more so than the evolution
of art.

 

 

In the discoveries of science, the bisociated matrices merge in a new
synthesis, which in turn merges with others on a higher level of the
hierarchy; it is a process of successive confluences towards unitary,
universal laws (at least, this applies to a given province of science in a
given period or cycle). The progress of art does not display this overall
'river-delta' pattern. The matrices with which the artist operates are
chosen for their sensory qualities and emotive potential; his bisociative
act is a
juxtaposition
of these planes or aspects of experience,
not their
fusion
in an intellectual synthesis -- to which,
by their very nature, they do not lend themselves. This difference is
reflected in the quasi-linear progression of science, compared with
the quasi-timeless character of art, its continual re-statements of
basic patterns of experience in changing idioms. If the explanations
of science are like streams joining rivers, rivers moving towards the
unifying ocean, the explanations of art may be compared to the tracing
back of a ripple in the stream to its source in a distant mountain-spring.

 

 

But I must once more repeat, at the risk of being tedious, that in all
domains of creative activity intellectual and aesthetic experience
are both present in various mixtures; that 'science' and 'art' form
a continuum; that changes of fashion are common in the zig-zag course
of science, while on the other hand, development of a given art-form
over a period often shows a distinct 'river-delta' pattern.* The modern
atom-physicist knows more than Democritus, but then Joyce's
Ulysses
also knows more than Homer's
Odysseus
; and in some respects this
progress in knowledge, too, is of a cumulative order.
Always bearing these qualifications in mind, we might spin out the
metaphor: if the great confluence towards which science strives is the
universal
logos
, the ultimate spring of aesthetic experience is
the
archetypos
. The literal meaning of the word is 'implanted'
(
typos
= stamp) 'from the beginning'. Jung described archetypes
as 'the psychic residua of numberless experiences of the same type'
encountered by our ancestors, and stamped into the memory of the race --
it is, into the deep layers of the 'collective unconcious' below the level
of personal memories. Hence, whenever some archetypal motif is sounded,
the response is much stronger than warranted by its face value -- the
mind responds like a tuning fork to a pure tone.
One need not be a follower of Jung to recognize the same archetypal
experiences crystallized into symbols in the mythologies of cultures
widely separate in space and time. Examples of such recurrent patterns are
the death-and-resurrection motif; the extension of the sexual duality into
the metaphysical polarities of masculine logic and feminine intuition,
mother earth and heavenly father, etc.; the strife between generations
-- and its counterpoint, the taboo on incest; the Promethean struggle
to wrest power from the gods -- and the imperative need to placate them
by sacrifice; the urge to penetrate to the ultimate mystery -- and the
resigned admission that reality is beyond the mind's grasp, hidden by the
veil of Maya, reduced to shadows in Plato's cave. These perennial patterns
of victory and defeat recur in ever-changing variations throughout the
ages, because they derive from the very essence of the human condition
-- its paradoxes and predicaments. They play an all-important part in
literature, from Greek tragedy down to the present, permeating both
the whole and the part: the plot, and the images employed in it. The
poetic image attains its highest vibrational intensity as it were, when
it strikes archetypal chords -- when eternity looks through the window
of time.
William Empson [3] has given a convincing analysis of the archetypal
imagery in Nash's famous lines -- which, however often quoted, never
lose their power:

Brightness falls from the air.
Queens have died young and fair.
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I  am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy upon us.

'If death did not exist', wrote Schopenhauer, 'there would be no
philosophy -- nor would there be poetry.' That does not mean that either
philosophy, or art, must be obsessively preoccupied with death; merely,
that great works of art are always transparent to some dim outline of
the ultimate experience, the archetypal image. It need not have a tragic
shape, and it may be no more than the indirect reflection of a reflection,
the echo of an echo. But metaphor and imagery yield aesthetic value
only if the two contexts which are involved in the comparison form an
ascending gradient -- if one of them is felt to be nearer to the source
of the stream. Mutatis mutandum, a scientific theory need not be directly
concerned with the ultimate secret of the universe, but it must point
towards it by bringing order and harmony into some obscure corner. To
clinch the argument, I must quote once more Housman's essay on
The
Name and Nature of Poetry
:

In these six simple words of Milton --
Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more --
what is it that can draw tears, as I know it can, to the eyes . . . ?
What in the world is there to cry about? Why have the mere words the
physical effect of pathos when the sense of the passage is blithe and
gay? I can only say, because they are poetry, and find their way to
something in man which is obscure and latent, something older than
the present organization of his nature, like the patches of fen which
still linger here and there in the drained lands of Cambridgeshire.

Cataloguing Plots
Let me mention a few exampks of archetypal patterns in literature --
without any attempt at cataloguing Goethe's thirty-six basic plots.
The Promethean striving for omnipotence and omniscience is symbolized in
Jacob's struggle with the angel, the Tower of Babel, the flight of Icarus,
the Faustus legend, and so on through Voltaire's
Candide
, down to
the broken Promethean heroes of H. G. Wells (Dr. Moreau) or Dostoyevski
(Stavrogin in
The Possessed
). In the modern development of the
theme, it is of course treated in a more allusive, implicit manner;
but in the mass media and pulp magazines, Supermen, Space Cadets, and
Black Magicians are all happily running true to archetype.
The next catalogue-heading would be 'Individual against Society', with
several subheadings, such as 'from Oedipus to Schmoedipus, or shall we
love mamma?' Next would come 'polygonal patterns of libidinous relations'
(triangles, quadrangles, etc.); a title I have actually borrowed from
a learned publication by a field-anthropologist; it shows that if you
collect archetypes methodically, they crumble to dust. Yet under this
heading belongs at least half the total bulk of world literature, from
the Vulcan-Venus-Mars triangle onward. Next might come the War of the
Sexes -- from the Amazon myths through Lysistrata to
Ann Veronica
and Simone de Beauvoir; next, love triumphant, or defeated -- the Song
of Songs alternating with Isolde's
Liebestod
. Lastly, the Conquest of
the Flesh, from the Buddha to Aldous Huxley.
Still under the heading 'Man and Society' would come the subheadings:
the hubris of Power; the hubris of Cleverness; the hubris of the Ivory
Tower and, less obvious, the hubris of Sanctity. The last is either an
offence to God (Job; the ten righteous men who find less favour than the
one repentant sinner) or to society, because the hero's personal scales
of value deviate from the conventional. He must therefore either be an
inspired fool, or play the fool to escape sanction, or suffer martyrdom
-- 'The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to
set it right!' Examples range from the Perceval legend and
The Lay
of the Great Fool
, through Don Quixote, Eulenspiegel and The Good
Soldier Schweik to Prince Mishkin in Dostoyevski's
The Idiot
,
and Camus'
L'Étranger
.
Under the heading 'The Divided Heart' would fall, as sub-categories,
conflicts between Love and Duty; between Self-Preservation and
Self-Sacrifice; between Ends and Means; and between Faith and Reason.
Puppets and Strings
To end this pedantic -- and yet very incomplete -- catalogue, I must
mention one of the most powerful archetypes, which appears in countless
variations in the history of literature: the Puppet on Strings, or
Volition against Fate. In
Oedipus Rex
fate appears in the shape of
malevolent powers who trap the King into performing his disastrous deeds
apparently out of his own free will. In all plots of the "Appointment
in Samara" type, apparent coincidences are the means by which
destiny defeats the will of man (cf. coincidence in comedy,
p. 78
). In Christian theology, the ways of God
become less arbitrary, but more inscrutable; man proposes, God disposes;
original sin chokes his designs. In the Eastern religions he is tied to
the wheel of rebirth; in Islam he carries his fate fastened round his
neck. The great theological disputes between Calvinists and Lutherans,
Jansenites and Jesuits turned mainly on the question of predestination,
or more precisely, on the length of the rope left to man to hang himself.

 

 

With the rise of Natural Philosophy, a change in the character of destiny
began to take shape. Romeo and Juliet still die as a result of fatal
misunderstandings ('One writ with me in sour misfortune's book'). But
in Shakespeare's later works, destiny acts no longer only from outside
but also from inside the personae; they are victims not so much of blind
fate, but of their blind passions: 'the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our
stars, but in ourselves'. These are great, brave words; but they did not
solve the dilemma, they merely polished its horns. Divine predestination
was transformed into scientific determinism, which left man even less
scope than before for exercising his will and making free choices. The
hairshirt of the penitent had allowed him some freedom of movement,
but the laws of heredity and environment wove a strait-jacket so tight
that it became indistinguishable from his living skin. Even the word
'volition' was banned from psychology as empty of meaning. Chromosomes
and glandular secretions took over from the gods in deciding a man's
fate. He remained a marionette on strings, with the only difference that
he was now suspended on the nucleic acid chains determining his heredity,
and the conditioned-reflex chains forged by the environment.

 

 

The most explicit adoption of this schema for literary uses is found
in the naturalist movement of the nineteenth century. Its programme
was formulated in Zola's
Le Roman Experimental
, inspired by
the
Introduction à l'étude de la médicine
experimentale
by the great Claude Bernard (who discovered the
vasomotor system of nerves, and the glucose-producing function of the
liver). Zola urged his fellow writers to take a 'physiological view' of
man as a product of nature devoid of free will and subject to the laws of
heredity and environment. Fortunately, in spite of the naturalist vogue
in Germany, Russia, and Scandinavia, writers accepted his views in theory
only -- as they are wont to do. The creative mind knows how to draw on
archetypal symbols without degrading them by misplaced concreteness.

 

 

You can make an X-ray photograph of a face, but you cannot make
a face from an X-ray photograph. You can show that underlying the
subtle and complex action of a novel there is a primitive skeleton,
without committing lèse majesté, or foolishly assuming
that the plot makes the novel. There is only a limited number of plots,
recurring down the ages, derived from an even more limited number of basic
patterns -- the conflicts, paradoxes, and predicaments inherent in man's
condition. And if we continue the stripping game, we find that all these
paradoxes and predicaments arise from conflicts between incompatible
frames of experience or scales of value, illuminated in consciousness
by the bisociative act. In this final illumination Aristotle saw 'the
highest form of learning' because it shows us that we are 'men, not
gods'; and he called tragedy 'the noblest form of literature' because
it purges suffering from its pettiness by showing that its causes lie
in the inescapable predicaments of existence.*
NOTES
To
p. 351
. Hindu apologists would have us take
Krishna's exhortations to belligerence as allegorical references to
wars fought inside the human soul. The argument is as far-fetched as
the Christian apologists' attempts to represent the Song of Songs as an
allegory of Christ's love for His Church.

 

 

To
p. 352
. Eric Newton (
An Introduction to
European Painting
) actually uses the same metaphor.

 

 

To
p. 357
. At least this seems the most plausible
explanation of the cryptic remark in the
Poetics
that we take
pleasure in tragedy because learning is pleasurable, and tragedy involves
learning.

 

 

 

 

 

XX
THE BELLY OF THE WHALE
The Night Journey
One archetype remains to be discussed, which is of special significance
for the act of creation. It is variously known as the Night Journey, or
the Death-and-Rebirth motif; but one might as well call it the meeting
of the Tragic and the Trivial Planes. It appears in countless guises;
its basic pattern can be roughly described as follows. Under the effect of
some overwhelming experience, the hero is made to realize the shallowness
of his life, the futility and frivolity of the daily pursuits of man in
the trivial routines of existence. This realization may come to him as
a sudden shock caused by some catastrophic event, or as the cumulative
effect of a slow inner development, or through the trigger action of some
apparently banal experience which assumes an unexpected significance. The
hero then suffers a crisis which involves the very foundations of his
being; he embarks on the Night Journey, is suddenly transferred to the
Tragic Plane -- from which he emerges purified, enriched by new insight,
regenerated on a higher level of integration.
The symbolic expressions of this pattern are as old as humanity. [1] The
crisis or Night Journey may take the form of a visit to the underworld
(Orpheus, Odysseus); or the hero is cast to the bottom of a well (Joseph),
buried in a grave (Jesus), swallowed by a fish (Jonah); or he retires
alone into the desert, as Buddha, Mahomet, Christ, and other prophets
and founders of religions did at the crucial turn in their lives.