Susan Sontag made her case against interpretation in her titular essay in a 1965 book on art.
Billy Collins has this to say about interpretation in poetry.
Gulzar, talking of love, so similar to art, urges us not to name it.
Kabir goes further to say that it simply cannot be talked about.
- Akath kahani prem ki, kuch kahi na jaaye
Goonga keri sarkara, baithe muskaye
Wittgenstein said as much and foreclosed philosophy.
But we cannot resist it, can we? We will try and hold that moonbeam in our hand. It is a pathological urge with humankind, especially so of our age, to try and demystify the sublime. In the forty odd years since Sontag wrote her piece we have only learnt to talk more; dissect, evaluate, codify. A sportsman can no longer aspire to the “zone” without the cacophony of flashbulbs blinding him out of it. An artist lumbered with weight of prospective interpretations can hardly ever manage to keep his inspiration unsullied by second-guessing. Pure thought has to battle pure ambition.
But like all good paradoxes the solutions are not simple. While it is somewhat easy to be introverted and silent about love and god, because they are inherently personal tools of transcendence, Sport, Art, Thought, on the other hand face a tricky dilemma. Each of these is an instrument of transcendence that engages with the world. They are by their nature, social; they deal at the very foundation, with ‘the other’.
An artist job, or a thinker’s job, or a sportsman’s job is tougher by far than a lover’s job or the believer’s job. The former set has to maintain eye-contact with the world while simultaneously attempting to break free of its limitations. Resist the attempts that the very same world makes, to lump you with identity via opinion, classification and interpretation.
Resisting identity is the fundamental problem of transcendence. It seems a particularly tall order in a postmodern world of splintered identities, a world whose workings are characterised by a near-constant evaluation of status and identity. The artist who second-guesses his critics, the sportperson who internalises the post-mortem, the scientist who scopes out trends - these are people deserving of our pity and our guilt, not our contempt.
It makes me infinitely more grateful now than ever before for the kind of genius that strives and wins this battle against our adulation, our contempt, our gross codifications, our interpretation. The kind of genius that soars free of articulation and identity, even as it ungrudgingly turns back to the world that attempted to bind it down and generously shares with it moments of real art, real spirit and real inspiration.
4 comments:
But more often than not, what happens, I think, is that the artist turns his back on the world, rather than turn back to it.
Sontag again, talks of that silence.
Arfi: thanks for the link; I found it most interesting. Sontag is articulate isn’t she? But I think like a lot of articulate people she allows words to turn into thoughts instead of the ideal way round.
I don’t think I actually share her concerns about the language of art. Classical representation versus what she calls the modern/postmodern obscuration tending to ‘silence’ are just historical biases, that have to do with the changing consciousnesses of society.
I have a problem with falseness of intent within the chosen medium. A falseness, which I think, creeps in from a disability to separate the spirit that drives art from all the murkiness that results from identity and authorship.
I think, I know what you mean by words taking over thoughts. A problem, that perhaps plagues most critics.
The way I see it, I think the 'silence' Sontag talks about is wielded as a tool of protest, against attempts to interpret and label. And not that these attempts are directed at the work (which they should be, if they must), but rather at the artist himself. But is it only an aberration of the times ? I don't know; but I suspect it has always existed in one form or the other.
And I agree about 'the falseness of intent'; of presupposing and giving what is expected; and which again perhaps, is in large parts due to what has now become, the 'cult of the artist'.
vyas, can u fit this into a 140-character tweet for me, please?
did u read about rahman's plea to the world? the man wants to be left alone.
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