In a conversation recently with a friend, we discussed what you might call “political philistinism”. This is the conviction that art of any kind is worthwhile only insofar as it is politically useful. Thus Kipling is worthless, because he was an imperialist, Shakespeare nothing more than a cheerleader for patriarchy, and Jane Austen culpable for her narrow focus on the Middle Classes. This conviction is remarkably widepread, and explains why the music you hear at protest marches is so dreadful. It also explains why so many of our politicians are philistines, aware of art only as an engine of tourism, and why fifty years ago, people just like them were banning books which made Ireland look bad abroad. Art is for dreamers; the politician owes his allegiance to the real world, to Life.
Never trust them: such people would burn every painting, every book they could find, if it was politically necessary. Look at what happened in Russia and Germany, two countries run by people who knew they were right, and knew that art’s only purpose was to advance their agenda.
And yet Art will tell you more about Life than politics ever will. My appetite whetted by reviews of Seamus Heaney’s new collection, Circle and District, I recently bought “Opened Ground” a generous selection of his work from 1966 to 1996. It also features “Crediting Poetry”, his Nobel address (here, read the whole thing, it’s wonderful), which contains this stirring defense of poetry:
And yet the platform here feels more like a space station than a stepping stone, so that is why, for once in my life, I am permitting myself the luxury of walking on air. I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible. I credit it immediately because of a line I wrote fairly recently instructing myself (and whoever else might be listening) to “walk on air against your better judgement”. But I credit it ultimately because poetry can make an order as true to the impact of external reality and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet’s being as the ripples that rippled in and rippled out across the water in that scullery bucket fifty years ago. An order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew. An order which satisfies all that is appetitive in the intelligence and prehensile in the affections. I credit poetry, in other words, both for being itself and for being a help, for making possible a fluid and restorative relationship between the mind’s centre and its circumference, between the child gazing at the word “Stockholm” on the face of the radio dial and the man facing the faces that he meets in Stockholm at this most privileged moment. I credit it because credit is due to it, in our time and in all time, for its truth to life, in every sense of that phrase.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what art is for.
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It also explains why so many of our politicians are philistines, aware of art only as an engine of tourism, and why fifty years ago, people just like them were banning books which made Ireland look bad abroad. Art is for dreamers; the politician owes his allegiance to the real world, to Life.
The same goes for the Gaelic language, unfortunately.
I was making a similar point recently about Mr. Kevin Myers with a view to a post I’m planning about his overarching mission to renormalise Edwardian notions of patriarchy. The Colonel is a notorious philistine, confusing his interest in certain politically correct forms with “taste”. The stuff he tends to cite isn’t especially lauded on the basis that it’s good or bad, but on the basis that it is correct in its politics – that it serves the purpose of reinforcing the Colonel’s own notions of what art’s function in society is.
Despite his rapturous references to the occasional cultural highlight, he doesn’t come across as a man who’s particularly interested in art.
Of course, Kevo takes a pretty dim view of the human condition, so any art which reflects rather than constrains it is unlikely to be endorsed.
[…] Poetry, as I mentioned last week, is so filled with distilled meaning that it can be read only at a fraction of the pace of prose. Thus, Seamus Heaney’s Opened Ground, which I bought a month and a half ago, is an ongoing presence in my reading life. The advantage of reading it from start to finish, rather than dipping, is that (a) I can, when I reach the end, be sure that I’ve read all the poems, and (b) it allows me to see Heaney’s work develop over time. […]