Nausea (Part 3) – Artist vs Authentic Human Being
“There is no escape. You can’t be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don’t try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself.” ~ Herman Hesse
Hesse was no stranger to the nausea. There were many battles in the mirror. They were serious attacks of depression that immobilised him for weeks. He sought relief from the mental anguish in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy and journeyed East to Sri Lanka and Indonesia in search of spiritual inspiration. But inspiration eluded him. The physical experience depressed him and the nausea returned intermittently for rest of his life. But his quest for a cure through self-knowledge, authenticity and spirituality was not in vain. The ideas that did not stick to his own soul were at least lived by some of the characters he created. And thus we have the rich role models from his novels.
But why did Hesse not learn the lessons his characters eventually did? Because Hesse was not perfect? Because he was only human?
Because he was more than human – he was an Artist. The most human of humans. Sore and swollen with an inflated sense of self. To be closer to perfect he would have had to have been less human, just the right amount of human. He would have had to have been that harmonious character-type that re-appeared continuously in his books; Hermine in Stepenwolf, Gotama in Siddartha, and perhaps Goldmund in Narcissus and Goldmund. But Hesse remained Hesse. Perhaps enduring the nausea for our sake, out of charity. Maybe sacrificing himself like the bodhisattvas he read about. Cooped up in a room, slaving over his scriptures for us, when he instead could have been out there living them… I shouldn’t assume he was so charitable. Surely, the scriptures were for himself too. Or the urge to create art was greater than the pain that it caused him.
What is this all too human desire to make things last that are not meant to? These attempts to make our existence meaningful that so often turn to self-torture. Glorified swipes at the nothingness that the nothingness is not there to witness. Man strikes at himself in a mirror. Or stumbles around with the dead double of himself slung over one shoulder. Hesse tells of this in his novels, but in telling it he undoes the good it does himself of knowing it. But it is because he is compelled to make art.
So I ask myself the question: am I that compelled? Or might some other avenue better deliver me from the nausea.
Rainer Maria Rilke, the early Modernist poet, was in correspondence with a young man trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian Army. From this correspondence emerged a very famous letter in which Rilke asks the man to “confess” to himself whether or not he “must” write.
“There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer… A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.
ArtistVSAuthenticHumanBeingCurrently, I ask the question and I do not know the answer. I have not tunnelled deep enough yet. Perhaps purposefully. My ego fears its own extinction. It fears that I will confess: no, I am not that compelled. And from there – if I was to continue – all that I create would feel hollow and superficial. Inauthentic. Surely I would have to stop. And then what? Face reality? Join normality? …Learn humility, most likely. And in that humility – if I’m lucky – I’ll find authenticity.
Maybe it is not only an unintended, but an unfortunate side effect that the artist often inspires into existence other artists. Inspires more poor creatures to attempt flight in a storm. If only they might inspire us to be less… Looking back on the past year and my encounters with Hesse, I realise he is partly the cause of my current identity crisis. I thought I was an artist, but the harmonious, the wise, the happy and the enlightened characters of his novels inspire me not to be. Only a strange streak of genius that can achieve that.
Phillip K Dick spent his entire career trying to answer his very own life experiences (or mental illnesses). Depression and paranoia, schizophrenic and transcendental experiences. Both he and Hesse sought answers in the same place: spirituality and philosophy. Both openly admit to finding no escape. But both were artists…suggesting the escape route was elsewhere.
“The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.”
There is danger that I may digress here. Dick’s quote might cloud the argument. He talks of the authentic human being, where as Rilke talks of the artist. But somehow these descriptions run parallel. Both require an act of intense courage and sincerity; require the facing of adversity.
The authentic human being instinctively knows what he is and cannot be compelled to be otherwise. The artist also cannot be otherwise. He cannot be compelled to not be compelled! But rather than instinctively knowing what he is or what it is he does, he has to dig to discover it. Dig dig dig and hope that when he finds the thing the hole’s not too deep to get out of.
As Non-artist and inauthentic human being I currently stand. For I’m not sure I “must” write but it also seems I will not “balk” at doing it.
Will I continue or abandon this inquiry? I haven’t even got to Sartre’s novel yet.
Nausea: Unabated.