8/12/2019 On the Ambiguity of a Distinction
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104 MORRIS GROSSMANare here dealing with remain
fundamen-tallyestranged and violently disconnected. The
awareness of this makes the moralist, theartist of life,
discontent. (There is noth-ing
that brings things together so much as thepoignancy of their
separation, suitablysensed.) The moralist is pressed to
question
the nature of the artistic achievement, the
masterpiece, which heightens disconnect-edness, and the
definition and conception of
art which gives intellectual fortification to
that disconnectedness.Just what are we about when we turn
parts
of life into art, separate art and life
practically, and distinguish between them
tlheoretically?Are we sacrificing man for his
art or saving man from his life? In choosingto perfect art at
the expense of life, does itperfect man to make this choice, or
only his
art? Though we can conceal the clutter of the
workshop from others, can we conceal itfrom ourselves? Where are
the parings we
omit from our purview, the unorganized
residue which does not get into our art?What remains of the
large substance of an
artist's, or any man's, life which never hangsin a museum or
sounds in a concert hall or
gets into a novel, or is simply never anoccasion for worthwhile
remembrances?
These are difficult questions, but once weknow the agony of the
quandary the an-swers will come forth of themselves. If anartist is
an artist by virtue of what he candiscard, a man remains a man by
virtue ofwhat he cannot discard, and this is alwaysthe bulkier, the
more challenging, the moreproblematic part of himself. What remains
isthe hair and the dirt and the ugliness of
existence, the rubbish he knows is under therug, the bugs in
hiding, the guilts thatburgeon from buried places, the boredom
and the pain,the waste and the claptrapof life, and its
oppressive and random andsheer et ceteras. Here is what waits to
bereckoned with, not colors to be squeezedfrom tubes, not tones to
be plectrumed andplucked, not words to be rhymed and ca-denced.
There is a vale of soul-making that isbeyond all media, which
symphonies and
canvases and poems barely touch. It is a valein which we are
pressed beyond mere
arts to where art and life fuse in a single
strategy and a total task.In plainer language we can say that
the
materials discarded in fashioning art are no
loss to the art, and yet they remain a con-tinuing burden. With
respect to life there isno context, no place for waste, no way
ofgetting rid of what might metaphorically becalled the radioactive
debris and the blackoil slicks. Man's condition is like
earth'scondition-limited, closed in, contamina-ble. There can only
be arrangements and
rearrangements of what there is, total ma-
nipulations of total accumulations, a volu-
minous burden which must be carried and
projected to an uncertain end.Life apart from art-and there
would be no
apartness apart from the following con-siderations-consists of
opposites unseen andconflicts unreconciled. It consists of
momentswhich are not reflected upon andassimilated, which intrude
on us when we donot want them to, which randomly dis-tractand
oppress. They are our accumulat-ing butunaccumulated selves. We
cannot shed them;because we cannot use thempositively, they weigh
on us negatively. Life
apart from art, inartistic life, is the negativeweight, the
tiresome burden, the existential
stress of being, the tragic sense of the unen-
compassed.The tragic sense, tragedy understood this
way, is not, as it is so often taken to be, a
reconciliation with death, or a reconcilia-
tion of specific moral claims. Tragedy,
rather, is a reconciliation with those mo-
ments of life which resist a coming together
in some organizing purpose. Tragedy is the
sense of, and the ideal victory over, the liv-ing dissolution
that continuously pervades
us, not victory over the actual extinction that
eventually terminates us. Termination and
extinction are no great loss when they come
in due time. The silence at the end of a
symphony is as necessary as any other part
of it; indeed, it is sometimes the best part of
it and a great relief. Dissolution and discon-
nectedness are the real tragic losses. The
tragic sense reaches out to those intransi-
gent elements of our being which otherwiseresist containment,
and they become con-
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8/12/2019 On the Ambiguity of a Distinction
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106 MORRIS GROSSMANalways a work in progress, always in need
ofrevision, always modifiable in the directionof an unrealized and
unrealizable goal.These men invite the force of life, with
itsraging fires and its unshored fragments, tooverwhelm the
temporary ramparts of theart medium. They are writers like
Proust,
for whom a proof sheet was simply anocca-sion for ever-renewed
correction andexpan-sion. They are sculptors likeGiacometti, who
was always "failing" anddestroying what he did, and for whom it
wasapparent agony to face the false finality ofallowing a work to
be exhibited. "There is nohope of achieving what I want, of
expressing
my vision of reality." said Giacometti. "I goon painting and
sculpting because I am cu-rious to know why I fail."
For these artists, the separation of art andlife is
"performatively" denied by virtue ofthe way in which ongoing
artistic activity(not a mere series of art works) is a con-
scious grapplingwith life. All glimpses ofreality are repudiated
for being glimpses,discrete perspectives, less than unitary
vi-sions and unitary accomplishments. As Gia-
cometti put it, "All I ask is to be able to goon and on." He did
not, of course. Like therest of us he was mortal. And the
various
pieces he produced, the fragments of his life,
will make their way into various hands,never to be shored up or
united. And yet this
knowledge of failure, this tragic sense
constantly alive, is success beyond all art.The best art, the
best artists are pervaded by
the tragic sense, which is awareness of the
sort of defeat and recalcitrance that life itselfhas always
imposed upon the living of it.
And so artists love to leave loose ends,ambiguities, elements of
randomness, as a
tribute and echo and reminder of what life is
like and what needs to be done.Art is better than life, and
should be; but
not so much better that it neglects life's
challenges or departs life's memories. The
task of great art has always been to tran-scend life but to
remain relevant to it, tofocus enjoyment but not to forget sorrow,
to
surmount the futility of blind righteous-ness
but not to be blind to prevailing evil. This too
has been the task of the good life, which is a
self-regenerative process in which art is that
part which is also the ongoing measure of the
whole. There is a poem by Yeats with a line
in it in which he asks, "Shall we perfect the
life or perfect the art?" To care about the
question and to sense its poignancy is all theanswer that it
needs.
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