V
As for specifically poetic creativity, probably its most profound aspect comes to a focus in that sense of resolution we commonly refer to as "catharsis." There is also the rudimentary catharsis of getting something said at all, as regards the pressure of a thing, situation, or process that, though affecting us, had not been named. The unnamed is another name for the potentially namable—and all men, even the most reticent, are the kind of animal that is "sentenced to the sentence," so we are moved by the ultimate logic of the summarizing, attitudinizing moment. But the catharsis of getting it well said is something else again, involving all sorts of selfimposed obligations, and corresponding sense of guilt, towards some ideal Audience X (maybe but an especially exacting aspect of one's own person). Further, the creative battle against such harassments does not end with the confronting and overcoming of the difficulties themselves. For there is still the problem of public reception, which may even be withheld not because a work is intrinsically inferior, but because it is good in ways that the author's contemporaries do not take to. Just think: The greatest Creator of them all saw that His Creation was good. Obviously He knew what He was talking about. But think of the endless grumbling that His beloved Creatures have been creatively engaged in ever since. And if a work happens to be of a sort that persons in authority consider subversive or in some other respect reprehensible, its creativity may not be a resolution at all for the author, but rather the source of much distress.
Then too, there may be a subtler issue involved. Often we tend to think of "catharsis" as a mere emetic process, a way of spitting forth undigested problems, as though "Out with it" were the recipe for a cureall and one could be cleansed of repressed vindictiveness by the sheer act of getting it expressed.
To be sure, this is an important part of the recipe; but I submit that it's not all. Total tragic catharsis also involves an attitude that is on the slope of love. If one could intensely love all mankind, by that very condition he would be cleansed. Tragedy provides a surrogate; namely; pity, which is on the slope of love. I have mentioned Sophocles' Antigone. Whereas Creon's conscientious devotion to the state and Antigone's family piety involve them in flatly antagonistic positions, the play is so designed that partisanship is transcended; and we feel pity for them both. I take it that, within the conditions of the form, the imitation of an agon in which one feels equally sympathetic to both antagonists would be the nearest dramatic analogue of universal love, so far as its "cathartic" effects are concerned.
There is a book relevant to our present concerns: Poetry Therapy: The Use of Poetry in the Treatment of Emotional Disorders (edited by Jack J. Leedy; Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969). The various articles consider literary creativity from the standpoint of cures for sick souls rather than as examples of artistic excellence. In an item that I contributed, "Thoughts on the Poets' Corner," I brought up one point that I'd like to try out here, on the subject of "creativity":
Where speculations on these matters are concerned, I would propose one admonitory rule of thumb. Since, in past eras, many of the world's keenest minds treated central problems of human motivation in theological terms, I devoutly join forces with those who believe that one should always ask, at least experimentally, whether any theological account of motives can be shown to have a secular analogue. In the case of our present quandaries, I'd naturally think of the problematical relationship between churchmen's theories of "demonology" and contemporary concerns with creativity.
Thus, at least for heuristic purposes, we should ask whether one possible embarrassing analogue should always be kept in mind. Even if one's dreams had been an ecstatic vision of Christ or Mary, the churchmen admonished that it might be a delusion imposed upon the dreamer by the Prince of Darkness. And, similarly, should we not be on guard lest "creativity" escape proper quizzical inspection? I mean: Creativity should not bear the mask of purely and simply a "good" word.
Rather, keeping in mind possible secular analogues of the demonological should we not always be on the look-out for systematic ways of
― 49 ―distinguishing between "creativity" that heals and "creativity" that endangers (including further twists whereby a poorly paid and poor-paying artist might, through the creative sacrificing of himself, contribute to the comfort of trivial people for whom his dedicated sufferings provide a conversation-piece at cocktail hour)? There is much here still to be-puzzled over.
God only knows how autosuggestive one's work with symbol-systems can become. I know of at least one fellow who wrote a novel about a word-man's cracking up. By the time he had finished, he had got himself so greatly entangled in his plot's development, he barely did escape ending in an asylum himself. Several steps were needed to help him dispel the spell that the sustained engrossment in his fiction had imposed upon him. And among them was a deliberate renouncing of his emergent plans for another novel. He turned to criticism instead—and that subterfuge served him passably. He does not contend that novel writing necessarily produces such results. But he's adamant in his insistence that it worked that way with him.
And writers can develop ways of working whereby their creativity gets bound up with physically exacting habits that they could not abandon without abandoning the mental attitudes intrinsic to such creativity. So they almost necessarily persist in their ways of taxing themselves until they die by what they had most creatively lived by.
Who knows how deep all such matters go? Sometimes I have tinkered with the notion that all courses should be taught under the sign of fear, somewhat as (I assume without any but remote and unreliable knowledge) certain monks in ancient Tibetan monasteries were methodically prepared for the time when each could go into a solitary cell, never again to commune with even one other member of his own order. Things were so arranged that the interchange of food and offal could be managed, without sight or word of any other human. Eventually, there came the day when the food was not accepted. A sure sign! So the cell was opened, doubtless with appropriate ritual, and the dead monk was removed, to make room for the next saintly occupant, who would in turn have been prepared thus to commune henceforth with silence.
Maybe I heard it wrong, or maybe it's a lie in the first place. But are there not aspects in which it is true of all creativity, in principle? Along such lines, purely for preparation, I have asked students to write me three pieces, one praising something, one inveighing against something, and one lamenting. The students were to choose whatever subjects they preferred, for each such exercise. One student, choosing but one subject,
My general notion is that terms are not merely suggestive in their effects upon readers, but also autosuggestive in their effects upon the writers who get used by using them. Hence, where questions of creativity are uppermost, we should above all be quizzical about the field and not just assume that every human creator is to be viewed simply as a fragment of an overall Creator. Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe he is but a victim of faulty self-diagnosis (particularly since it's so much easier to see other people's kinds of self-subjection than one's own).