The Writer as Artist

[monk222]

Before I lay aside Fish’s book and pick up the next hot little number to satisfy my promiscuous reading life, I want to bring out a couple of inspirational tidbits on the art of writing immortal sentences. Joseph Conrad gives us this rather romantic vision of the literary goal to which we, even as happy-go-lucky bloggers, might aspire to:

And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting, never discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surfaces of words, of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.

And if one is having a lot of trouble turning plain words into sparkling diamonds and jewels, it could be because of a deeper problem of moral well-being, of a blotted soul, if we heed John Milton’s learned and pious wisdom:

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true Poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that which is praise-worthy.

Which raises an interesting question: do highly moral writers possessed of a religious faith make better artists and writers? Although some skepticism comes naturally in our secular, post-modern age, the literary arts do strike me as possibly being a different sort of field of endeavor than that of rock stars, for instance. It could hardly be called rock and roll without heavy drugs and wild sex. Maybe I just don’t know my poets and authors well enough, but I wonder if greater literature tends to be drawn from a purer well by an imagination that is itself imbued with a sense of divine wonder.