Are There Any Valid Criticisms? (aka Kalessin's Rant)

[Mister Underhill]

Aiwendil, we are starting to go in circles regarding the definition of Art. Thanks or indulging my inquiries with thoughtful replies, though. It’s been an interesting line of discussion.

Without getting too in-depth about littlemanpoet’s Six Levels construct, I’ll simply note that I think Aiwendil has raised an interesting point: “I will grant that quality frequently proceeds from intention. But not always.”

Is it possible that thinking too much about things like “evolution of consistency” and “eucatastrophe” actually creates an atmosphere which tends to stymie the very transcendence which is sought after? Or perhaps put a little more succinctly, does the very act of trying too hard to be Art kill Art?

Roger Ebert recently made this interesting observation during a discussion of the film Amadeus:

True geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them. Great writers (Nabokov, Dickens, Wodehouse) make it look like play. Almost-great writers (Mann, Galsworthy, Wolfe) make it look like Herculean triumph. It is as true in every field; compare Shakespeare to Shaw, Jordan to Barkley, Picasso to Rothko, Kennedy to Nixon. Salieri could strain and moan and bring forth tinkling jingles; Mozart could compose so joyously that he seemed, Salieri complained, to be "taking dictation from God."

This last idea, of “taking dictation from God”, is a phenomenon that is widely reported by great artists. Indeed, Tolkien frequently reports throughout letters that episodes and characters from LotR seemed to come to him without conscience invention, and that he had “very little particular, conscious, intellectual intention in mind at any point” while writing it.

“The general idea of the Lord of the Rings was certainly in my mind from an early stage: that is from the first draft of Book I Chapter 2, written in the 1930s. From time to time I made rough sketches or synopses of what was to follow, immediately or far ahead; but these were seldom of much use: the story unfolded itself as it were.”

“The last volume was naturally the most difficult, since by that time I had accumulated a large number of narrative debts, and set some awkward problems of presentation in drawing together the separated threads. But the problem was not so much 'what happened?', about which I was only occasionally in doubt – though praised for 'invention' I have not in fact any conscious memory of sitting down and deliberately thinking out any episode – as how to order the account of it.”

Kipling gave this advice: “When your Daemon [i.e., Muse] is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.”

I’m not presenting this as a position which I am solidly prepared to defend and debate – I’m only posing the question: at what point does consciously thinking about what makes great art (or, in the case of this thread, great fantasy) create an atmosphere which is counterproductive to the creation of art? In the words of the great Yogi Berra, “Think! How are you gonna think and hit at the same time?”