II. Talk on the Common Course (1952)
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If it is true that myth and art are so closely interconnected that we can describe myth as unfree art, then the invention of myths must itself be a creative activity. But can an unfree activity be creative? Did we not maintain that all the creative powers of man are developed only if man freely decides to follow them, that they involve a decision for freedom? Creativity and freedom seemed to be almost identical, freedom being the only atmosphere in which creative transcendence seemed at all possible. Against this stands the fact that mankind lived, survived and created before any of our creative powers were discovered and established. Mankind first created, lived and survived by myth. Mythical creation preceded the emergence of the first two free creative personalities, Laotse and Buddha. Both Laotse and Buddha reached into freedom by turning against myth; they liberated the human mind from the authority of myth by drawing certain consequences from mythology itself; they discovered the liberating forces in the myth-creating activity itself. That a liberating force can be hidden in an otherwise still unfree activity is only another version of the old paradox that there exists a compulsion toward freedom.
Mythological action is the immediate re-action of man to the primary fear which overcomes him when he is first confronted with the reality of Being. This reaction is blind and without reason, it is provoked by the human condition in the universe and as such is more than reaction: it is counter-action. Mythology bears witness to man's greatest counter-attack against the unbearable attack by the reality of Being. Against the sheer weight of existence, man mobilizes a kind of blind and reckless transcendence. Against his own overwhelming original fear of Being, man summons up an overpowering, reckless courage to transcend it. Here he uses artistic power for the first time (which from then on remains the purest and most immediate of all his creative capabilities); he engages in the possibilities of free imagination, day-dreaming, creative world-dreaming. Yet, while he indulges in this dream-like imaginary life, man does not become aware of this power as free transcendence which enables him to take his position in reality. He does not accept the reality of Being as it is given to him in order to transform it, but he uses his imagination in order to jump, as it were, over reality and hide from it. Against the real world he constructs an entirely irreal world of fiction, and since reality can never be completely kept out of it, he uses magic to rid himself of reality altogether and change it into fiction. Magic is mythological practice, it is myth applied to reality. Mythology always uses art as its most powerful instrument of thought and life; this art, still embedded in myth, usually deforms real features until they fit into the mythical dream of another world. That the element of deformation is so entirely absent in Greek sculpture is due to Homer's liberation of art from myth. Nothing shows clearer the free artistic life which the Greeks led within their own mythology than the statues of Greek gods. (Here the artistic principle of style is reformation of reality; and this is no longer a mythical art.).
We all begin life by reacting to the shock of waking up to the overwhelming reality of Being with wild and arbitrary dreams. Most people forget these early dreams; a few attempt to realize them later in life by developing free creative powers of transcendence out of the first blind impulse to replace reality by irreality and thus hide from it. The artist is the man who transforms his early dream into a free world-image. Neurotic and insane people have fallen victim to it and perish in irreality. (Reference to Andre Malraux Psychology of Art: "The child is possessed by his art, the artist possesses his art."). Gradually and in the course of a long process, mythology takes possession of reality and draws more and more of it into its own realm. Scientific observations of nature, reflections on society, observations and experiences of all kinds, as well as rational explanations and philosophical speculations, are assimilated and incorporated into mythology and specifically deformed by it. (This process can best be observed in the wonderful development of Indian mythical religion, philosophy and art. See Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India.). This is a process in which thought and figure penetrate into each other to such a degree that the great mythologies of mankind seem to be related to everything; they are open to interpretation from all points of view and abound in figurative significance for all tines. Mythology owes this quality to the one great magic tool which it borrows from art: the metaphor, which is the hallmark of artistic creativity and whose early appearance in myth bears witness to the intimate relationship between myth and art. The early conglomeration of mythical and artistic thought resembles the origin of all other creative capabilities; as though while still in their mother's womb, they begin to grow, but are undistinguishable from each other, a shapeless mass where everything points to and may signify everything else.
All our great originators are post-mythical and pre-metaphysical. They brought about the great event of the emergence of man into creative freedom, an event which we call transcendental because it took place within the human mind. It is as though each of them liberated one of the human creative faculties from the womb of the myth, so that from now on it could grow in free independence. Everyone of these liberations implied the rejection of the mythological irreality and involved the conscious facing of the reality of Being, of life and the human condition. Together, they freed the human mind from its involvement in an irreal, fictional world, as blind and fearful transcendence had first created it, thus enabling man to take position in reality, not outside of it. The original deeds of our originators were like explosions of the shapeless mass of mythical thoughts, out of which the individual stars of human capabilities could now form their own dynamic constellations. But these explosions were possible because in the center of the shapeless mass of mythical thoughts was the double star of mythical and artistic power, which had revolved around each other, as it were, and remained almost undistinguishable from each other. When this mass exploded and the new constellation began to take form, a singular fate befell the double star of artistic and mythical power: the mythical star fell into its artistic twin, that is, artistic power attracted and united with mythical power. Since then, free art is myth and free myth is art. This event took place with Homer.
The unique triumph of Homer's art, that it was being lived as mythology, was followed by the unique triumph of the artist Homer, who himself has become a myth, a living legend. The legend of Homer can help us answer our question: What is artistic creativity? The legend tells us that Homer was blind. (Reference: Rembrandt's portrait which presents the blind seer, the blind man who sees everything on earth and in heaven.). The blind seer plays a great role in Greek mythology and the legend of Homer's blindness in itself makes him a mythological figure. The very paradox of the blind seer shows a profound insight into the structure of the artist and the power of art. Both myth-maker and art-maker behave as though they are blind to reality and both are said to possess the faculty of second sight. The myth-maker is blind because he looks away from Being; he is a seer because he perceives a different fictional world by looking in another direction. The artist is blinded by reality itself, the very miracle of Being, and he becomes a seer because he sees through everything in reality and perceives behind it what Being could be or become. The metaphor (as created by maya, which can be imagination or illusion or delusion) is the tool of both art and mythology; but the mythological metaphor is like a carpet hung over Being to hide it; it is illusion, while the artistic metaphor is like a transparent veil through which we look at Being itself with creative eyes, it is illumination.
The legend tells us that Homer knew everything. Many generations accepted him as the best educator, the best ruler, the best strategist, the best agriculturist, etc. Just as mythology contained everything because it had gathered everything into its realm, so Homer became a mythical figure who knew and understood everything. This may have been a matter of course to Homer's contemporaries or his immediate successors, since Homer, emerging directly from a mythical world order, brought to light all the accumulated knowledge and experience contained in it. Yet, Homer's superior wisdom was not doubted even when free scientific inquiry and experience had greatly developed in Greece. And the reason for this lasting authority of Homer is an artistic one and not an historical one. Nobody with political experience reading Shakespeare can help feeling that Shakespeare knows more about the essentials of political action than any statesman. Napoleon believed seriously that Corneille was the only human being who had ever known as much about government and strategy as he himself. We all know from experience that a great work of art is open to new interpretations ad infinitum and will always yield new insights. It is as though art still contains the mythical power of comprehending and encompassing everything. The solution of this riddle is of course -- since we do not think that art is a supernatural mystery and the artist a super-human monster -- that myth had borrowed from art its power of all-comprehension, that it could encompass everything because it always worked with artistic means. The mystery is no mystery, it is a miracle, the miracle of artistic creativity.
The truth of Napoleon's estimate of Corneille as a statesman lies in the fact that Napoleon derived some of his best political ideas from reading Corneille. His own creativity had been strengthened and stimulated by art. Corneille created for him the quintessence of political experience. (And Shakespeare may have done this even better).
It is the miracle of art that it stimulates and enriches each of the creative capabilities so that the more creative a man is, the more he is likely to be inspired by art. Nothing is as characteristic of an individual as the works of art he loves; while we pretend to "judge" them, we usually are unaware of the fact that we are being judged by them -- and frequently with more justice.
Experience with works of art is an artistic not an aesthetic experience; it requires the mobilization of our own artistic capability and although we are not artists ourselves, it remains the nourishing force of all other creative capacities. Artistic creativity is often mistaken for man's only creative capacity. The reason for this error is the fact that artistic creativity nourishes all others and is in constant communication with them. As such, it works in all directions at once, can be guided by any other creative capacity but has no direction of its own. Artistic creativity can never become the dominant and organizing force in life; the artist therefore easily submits to any argument or direction given him by others, not because he lacks character or strong convictions, but because he is sure to use it in a different way. (It is very interesting to see how artists, especially modern artists, misunderstand ideas and misuse theories, how they even formulate absurd doctrines of their own, and yet manage to make good use of all of them.).
The miracle of art is the miracle of beauty. The creation of beauty is closely connected with the artistic use of the metaphor. Every work of art is a web of metaphors. Nietzsche once formulated -- in terms of a philosophy of art, not of the aesthetical sciences -- the quintessence of all artistic inspiration: "Here I can ride on the back of every metaphor to every truth."
What is the connection between Beauty and Truth? What is Beauty? What is a metaphor? -- We shall begin with a saying of Heraclitus about Apollo, the god of art: "The Lord who owns the Delphian oracle neither reveals nor conceals, he signifies." (Diels, Fragm. der Vorsokratiker, B. 93). This is the oldest statement on art and we shall compare it with a very recent one made by Clive Bell who defined art as "significant form." Modern aesthetics generally accepts this definition without however being able to reply to the questions arising from it: What is form? What does "significant form" signify? The inability to answer these questions shows that the definition itself leads into an impasse. Artistic form is significant because it is form, and it is form because it is significant. "Significant form" can mean either: form made significant, or: significance made into form. To this the artist will reply that art creation does not consist of forming content or of filling a form with content, because the two are not separated in the original artistic vision. This first vision may only be the nucleus of what the work of art eventually will be, but it already contains the whole, not parts of a whole. The first nucleus of a work of art, as conceived by the artist himself, is a metaphor which spins itself out into a definite web of metaphors; it contains in itself a continuous and consistent composition, which we call artistic form.