On the subject of literature and faith: is the author's life relevant?

[El pasado dia 8, Barbara Nicolosi publicó un comentario en su weblog acerca de un tema semejante al presentado aquí por Miguel Castellví, y -no deja de ser interesante la coincidencia- con explícita alusión a Greene. Su lectura puede ser enriquecedora en este asunto a veces esquivo. Con el permiso explícito de Barbara para publicar aquí sus escritos, lo incluyo a continuación. Quiza conviene saber que se dirige a escritores. Quien esté interesado en seguir la trama -previa y posterior- de la conexión de este argumento con el de Joan of Arcadia, puede ir a la dirección de Barbara Nicolosi y comenzar desde este post, titulado "ex opere authorato?".]

Someone posted a great question in the comments of the Joan of Arcadia post below, that I wanted to bring out for broader consideration.

The poster (anonymous, otherwise I'd credit you), noted first that Graham Greene lived a degenerate life, and according to the poster, an unrepentant one. My reading of the post is that the charge is Greene was a Clintonian style misogynist. So the poster asks:

What I am wondering is more generally, when thinking about the subject of literature and faith--and teaching it for that matter--is the author's life relevant? Flannery O'Connor wrote quoting St. Thomas, that "art does not require rectitude of the appetite." Can the life of an artist be so depraved as to diminish or even negate the value of his or her art?

A few thoughts...

I am going to go ahead and say, "No, but..."

I think very often that people who have been cracked wide open and made vulnerable by their own sins, can mediate some astoundingly truthfilled art, that the rest of us would be too buttoned down to even dream of.

An artist can comunicate powerfully whatever life has revealed to them. We call it "the Credo" at Act One, borrowing from Prof. Louis Catron of William and Mary. Whatever a writer would list as "This I know to be true" they can bring forth. Artists who have lived in the grip of the dark side, can speak convincingly, as the Pope said in his Letter to Artists, "about what the world without God looks like." The Pope actually said we owe gratitude to pagan artists who have struggled to truthfully convey the misery of the life without grace.

An artist who has had an experience of the Living God (ie. of Mercy, Goodness, Truth, Beauty,...or even just the warm, fuzzy comfort of a purring kitten kneading her little paws in your side...Did I mention I got a kitten a couple of weeks ago?) can convey that powerfully.

But I would not trust someone to tell me about sin through art, just because they happen to be a prodigious sinner. I think you need sin + grief to make something true and redemptive. You need to have a profound sense of falling short of your nature at the least, and ideally the certainty of having turned away from God ("Against You, You alone have I sinned. What is evil in Your sight, I have done."

My sense is, Graham Greene lived in a continual state of grief. As did Dostoevsky. As did Emily Dickinson. As did Lord Byron. (...)

When I first started training Christians as writers, it seemed to me that they were just too virtuous to have anything gritty and real to say. I thought erroneously that sinners have more profound things to say in art. But then one day a lovely woman in Ohio with the shade of suffering just behind her gentle eyes, noted to me that it is not sin that makes someone deep, but suffering. Self-inflcted suffering, ie. the kind that comes from sinning, might sting the most, and in that sense afford the greatest possible depth ("She who is forgiven much, loves much.", but there is no necessary connection between sinning and artistic creativity.

I am reading a book about the connection between artistic talent and psychology, specifically depression, which definitely establishes a connection, but isn't sure if the depression is a result of the demands of creativity, or if creativity is a flight from depression.

I would like to hear from some of you on this

Comments

[Helena Ospina]

Is the author's life relevant? YES, NO, BUT...

YES:

1. I have been reflecting upon this subject since I understood that St. Josemaria ESCRIVA's "unity of life" was an ideal to strive for in all of human activities. And artistic creativity is not an exemption.

2. I fully agree with what JOHN PAUL II says in his "Letter to Artists" when he mentions other representations of Beauty that are "in the way" as "semina Verbi" and allow us to see the light of Redemption fighting for its disclosure "through a glass darkly" until it finds its plenitude.

3. I have been reading Alfonso LOPEZ QUINTAS, Spanish philopher's plight to bring Ethics and Creativity together in order to help artists discover the immense transfiguration power art has (cfr. El poder transfigurador del arte. Ediciones PROMESA, San Jose, Costa Rica, 2003). Lopez Quintas has been able to coin a clue: "vertigo"-"extasis" to help artists understand how art lives under this tension, polarized between these two extremes. Lopez Quintas has initiated a valuable endeavour through his ESCUELA DE PENSAMIENTO Y CREATIVIDAD in order to help artists find their way between these two forces that dispute the artist's heart.

4. Trying to follow St Josemaria's "unity of life" ideal, I "threaded" through Ignacio De Celaya's study of this theme and applied it both to the artists'work and personality (Cfr. Helena OSPINA, "Arte y Persona", Congreso de Cultura Europea, Universidad de Navarra 1996, Actas del Congreso, 1998).

NO:

I have read attentively Jose Migue IBANEZ LANGLOIS' "La creacion poetica" where he mistrusts the validity of a connection existing between "art's worth" and "artist's life". I agree with him that art has its authonomy and has to be valued under this perspective, independantly from "biographical anecdotes" that can clear up some details to understand its "sense", but are in no way responsible for its aesthetic value that has to lie in the harmony existing between "sound and sense".

2. I did my undergraduate studies at Georgetown University and my Senior Essay (1966) was on Paul VALERY: "Mon Faust: De l'idole de l'intellect a la sagesse du coeur". I tackled with his lifetime struggle: the preference of intellect over heart. And showed how in "Mon Faust" he had attained the maturity so long fought for in his own personality. In Poetics, Valery's thesis is that "form" (sound) is what counts. And if he had to choose between "sound" and "sense", he would prefer "sound", although he vouches always for the unity between sound and sense as the true seal of beauty in poetry (as does Ibanez Langlois).

BUT: the unity of person calls for a strife to unite both life and work.