BS: A Quote To Ponder

Subject: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Pogo
Date: 14 May 04 - 11:12 PM

Thought the musicians, painters etc. would find this interesting. It's a favorite quote of mine.

" Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there [on earth] but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling 'till down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower-become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations. "

-C.S. Lewis " The Great Divorce "

What do you think? :)

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: mack/misophist
Date: 15 May 04 - 12:33 AM

CS Lewis was a strange man. Nice, perhaps, but overly interested in his own reputation as an evangelist.

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Mudlark
Date: 15 May 04 - 01:44 AM

Anthony Hopkins aside, this sounds like a load of rubbish to me. Most of the committed artists I have known have been compelled to their art. Ego may have a part in it but it is the overwhelming need to express that compensates for all the other aspects of life they often miss out on.   And I assume Lewis was speaking of real artists, not poseurs, using art as a stage to strut their stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Allan C.
Date: 15 May 04 - 02:32 AM

I think it is an inastute observation that was extremely poorly worded.

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:23 AM

Classic Lewis.

I think to really understand his thought processes, beliefs, and writing style, you have to read The Screwtape Letters. It's like a "Rosetta Stone" to interpreting/understanding C.S.Lewis.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: mack/misophist
Date: 15 May 04 - 10:49 AM

Read The Screwtape Letters no matter what. It's worth it. Lewis was an excellent writer so I assume he meant what he said. Unfortunately, he let his position as "the defender of Christianity" go to his head.

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Allan C.
Date: 15 May 04 - 11:12 AM

As for The Screwtape Letters, Lewis did very well with an idea that Mark Twain used (far better, IMHO) many years before. Try reading "The Mysterious Stranger; A Romance" and while you're at it, just for fun, read "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven".

BTW, I think Lewis was a great science fiction writer whenever he wasn't preaching and often even when he was.

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Metchosin
Date: 15 May 04 - 11:53 AM

a fair cop, except for when it isn't.

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 May 04 - 12:43 PM

a sweeping genralisation and as geralisations sweep they are hardly specific to individuals - generally. but I could be wrong.......

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: freightdawg
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:49 PM

Reckon it just depends on which pig is being caught as to who does the squealin'.

Actually, I think Lewis is pretty much dead on, as he is in so many of his other writings. Of course any statement can be characterized as a sweeping generalization. The key, as I read the short passage, is that Lewis included the phrase, "but for Grace."

The temptation is, in any human endeavor, be it art or science or education or whatever, that we slip for whatever pure motivation we had when we once started, and as we attain some kind of mastery of any subject, to become more focused on our own mastery of the subject than the subject itself. Lewis was a keen observer of the human situation. If it hurts where he pokes us, maybe it's because there is something wrong with us, not him.

Maybe as an aside, why is it that a pure amateur who writes a song is pleased beyond description if someone later records that song, and a multi-gazillionair who writes a song sues the bejeepers out of that same person who records it? Is it not because the rich feel "threatened" with the loss of their identity, whereas the amateur just wants to see his/her work receive recognition? I dunno, way too many variables involved, but I do know that the higher up the ladder some people climb, it becomes far less about the art that got them there and way too much about the person they are, or claim they are.

Just my opinion, of course.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: *daylia*
Date: 16 May 04 - 08:37 AM

If the reader avoids being distracted by certain religious overtones, the Lewis' quote is seen to describe quite well the suffocating effects that unbalanced minds and egos can have on artistic inspiration and expression.

When a musician, poet or artist allows their work to become less motivated by sheer Love of the art and more by personal competitive, intellectual or ego-based concerns, the art produced loses it's power and will be inferior in quality. The spontaneous, life-affirming qualities of "divine inspiration" intrinsic to great art can become sacrificed to the "gods" of intellectualism, commercialism and the ever-changing fads of artistic technique.

It may be that a poet works without inspiration for six months on a poem, and it gives satisfaction neither to the poet to others, who find it mechanical. And there is another one who receives the inspiration in a moment and puts it down. He can never correct what he has written, he can never change it. No one can change it. If it is changed, it is spoiled. It is something that comes in a moment and it is perfect in itself. It is a piece of art, and example of beauty, and it comes so easily. That is inspiration...

... [Inspiration] comes to the one whose mind is still and whose thought is absorbed in the beauty of the work he is contemplating. The mind of the musician who knows little of this world except music is concentrated and focused on the beauty of his art. Naturally he will draw inspiration. So it is with the poet. But when the mind is absorbed in a thousand things, then it is not focused, then it cannot receive inspiration."

From Hazrat Inayat Khan's The Music of Life


daylia (feeling a little be~MUSE~d by it all :-)

Subject: RE: BS: A Quote To Ponder
From: Pogo
Date: 16 May 04 - 10:47 AM

Interesting thoughts and I enjoy that Music of Life quote, I will have to write that one down :) I was hoping people would not look at it as a strictly religious statement because of the mention of God and Hell and so on because though it is a deceptively simple statement there's more than what you read on the surface, but just in my opinion :) because I greatly enjoy C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters I read ages ago but I want to read them again now...I'll also check out the Mark Twain books.

I interpret it as a cautionary statement more than anything, that that temptation is always there, the tempatation to forget the source of what inspired and motivated one's talent to begin with (whatever individuals might view that ultimate source as) and that talent can indeed be a two-edged sword so handle it wisely.

As a side note interestingly enough I heard that C.S. Lewis was actually an atheist which I have trouble believing. Agnostic perhaps. But then again I don't know. His Out Of The Silent Planet series is also a good read.