A LIE SANCTIFIED OR NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

(This entry is a direct continuation of the previous one, even though it may not seem that way at first. But it is Nietzsche, who provides the close connection. Having just dismissed science as a credible antagonist to the ascetic ideal, he finds art to be a much formidable opponent to it. This is an extremely interesting line of thought, and its implications are numerous and striking.)

Is art a lie sanctified, as Nietzsche calls it in Genealogie 3-25, or, as I prefer to see it, nothing but the truth (although not the whole truth)? This is a matter of opinion of course, but, strictly speaking, of philosophical opinion, and as such, eminently debatable.

First, here is the Nietzsche excerpt I have in mind. Curiously, Nietzsche says it all parenthetically, and I am obviously keeping his physical parenthesis intact:

(Art, in which precisely the lie is sanctified and the will to deception has a good conscience, is much more basically opposed to the ascetic ideal than is science.--- This was instinctively sensed by Plato, the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced. Plato versus Homer--- the genuine antagonism. To place himself in the service of the ascetic ideal is, therefore, the most distinctive corruption of an artist possible, also one of the most common, for nothing is more easily corrupted than an artist.)

Am I missing something? It appears that Nietzsche and I have suddenly become irreconcilable antagonists. To him, art is a lie. To me, art, being creative fiction, is the truth. This is, however, a healthy disagreement: it is precisely such conflicts which give an impetus to human thought.

Is Ebenezer Scrooge, whom I remembered just recently, a lie just because a man by that name never lived, and even if by a sheer coincidence there happened to live someone by that name, it is highly inconceivable that he was engaged in anything described in Dickens’s story? Is Hamlet a lie just because his tale has not been recorded in the annals of old Denmark? I would suggest, using Mayakovsky’s words said on another occasion, that these two are definitely more alive than the billions of factual persons walking today on our planet… So is Santa Claus, for that matter!

To be honest, the truth of some famous fictional character is far more universally acceptable than the truth of the Living God, which argument to the numbers says nothing substantial about the veracity of anything, but explains the fact, perceptively raised by Nietzsche, that the ascetic ideal, or, to put it more commonly, the established Church, does see fictional characters, and art as such, as a threat to its monopoly on truth. Harry Potter for instance has been famously denounced by numerous religious leaders for this very reason and not for the wildly improbable suggestion that his magic can lead anybody away from the true faith.

And lastly here, how should we interpret Nietzsche’s concluding words in the passage above, that “to place himself in the service of the ascetic ideal is the most distinctive corruption of an artist possible, also one of the most common, for nothing is more easily corrupted than an artist”?

There are two general reasons why Nietzsche may be right in his assertion, although the latter must not be taken too literally to heart. One is that the best pasture for the artist’s genius is far away from the palace of the authority, as much as from the crowds of the vulgar populace. It is not the Church per se, that corrupts the artist, but his proximity to power, and the irresistible temptation to offer his talents for lucrative hire.

The other is the reverent nature of religious truth, and here my theory of truth of creation serves better than anything else to explain the artist’s problem. How can he, if employed in the service of an Absolute Truth of religion, be capable of creating an alternative truth, which is in the nature of all creation? In such a case we can expect a paltry shadow of religious truth, a “plagiarism” of sorts, rather than an independent and proud creation of an enduring artistic value.

Such, probably, was the essence of Nietzsche’s grudge against Wagner for the latter’s religious in spirit last opera Parsifal. I can understand Nietzsche’s attack against Wagner’s drama of Parsifal, but, in so far as the music is concerned, music is a distinctly independent creative art judged not by any kind of dogma which it purportedly expresses, but exclusively by the beauty and originality of its expression (in which respect, by the way, Wagner’s genius is supremely unimpeachable!), and in view of such a standard it is totally exempt from the previous negative consideration… And so are the visual arts, by the way! It is only in the domain of the letters that the criticism raised by Nietzsche, and subsequently discussed by me, would apply.

An important postscript.

I have already explained myself, I hope, with regard to my seemingly inordinate obsession with Nietzsche, that the reason for his attracting so much of my attention in this book is the enormous scope of his vision of things plus the fact that, although a bona fide established philosopher, he is so close to being the epitome of a Russian philosophizing Intelligent that it is no wonder that I am giving him a prominence above all others including the majesty of the Holy Bible itself.

Parallel to this, although having no other connection to Nietzsche, except for this parallel, is the question of why I have chosen to give such great prominence to J. K. Rowling and to her creation “Harry Potter”? The present entry is a case in point. In order to illustrate a literary point, I am drawing examples from such colossi of the world literature as Shakespeare and Dickens, and then, rather than continuing with another titan, if the first two have not been enough, I suddenly introduce her and Harry as my third example! The reason here is not that I am inordinately obsessed with Rowling, like, say, I am with Nietzsche, but only to make an important point. It would not have been even noticed had I used an established classic of world literature as my example, but in the case of Rowling, I am making a deliberate and salient statement to the effect that, in spite of her being so recent, and, in fact, even much younger in years than I am (one does not expect this from a classic!), she is on a par with the greatest literary classics, in my estimation and this non-trivial point compels me to make more frequent non-specific references to her and her Harry Potter (such as using her as a broad example of literary work) than to any of the host of established classics who do not require such a promotion.