"'I do not share you son's point of view, Bergotte is what I call a flute-player: one must admit that he plays very agreeably, although with a great deal of mannerism, of affectation. But when all is said, there's no more to it than that, and that is not much. Nowhere does one find in his flaccid works what one might call structure. No action - or very little - but above all no range. His books fail at the foundation, or rather they have no foundation at all. At a time like the present, when the ever-increasing complexity of life leaves one scarcely a moment for reading, when the map of Europe has undergone radical alterations and is on the eve, perhaps, of undergoing others more drastic still, when so many new and threatening problems are arising on every side, you will allow me to suggest that one is entitled to ask that a writer should be something more than a clever fellow who lulls us into forgetting, a mid otiose and byzantine discussions of the merits of pure form, that we may be overwhelmed at any moment by the double tide of barbarians, those form without and those from within our borders. I am aware that this is to blaspheme against the sacrosanct school of what these gentlemen term "Art for Art's sake," but at this period of history there are tasks more urgent than the manipulation of words in a harmonious manner.'"
Marcel Proust, With a Budding Grove, p. 510
In this passage M. de Norpois is holding forth, as he often does, this time on the relative merits of Bergotte. It really hits home with me on several fronts. As a historian it is a reminder of thee age in which Proust wrote, the aptly named Age of Anxiety, when the Europeans stood on the edge of World War I but were also dealing with the repercussions of the intellectual world being transformed by the thought of Marx, Freud and Darwin. Was the capitalist world doomed and was revolution inevitable? Are we actually driven primarily by dark mysterious drives beyond our ability to understand as compared to the world of reason promised by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment? Are we just bipeds with oppose-able thumbs, which allow us to hold weapons, as compared to divinely created beings with a higher moral purpose? If the Europeans were already worrying about these issues the horror of World War I seemed to provide a dark answer to all of those questions.
More philosophically, M. de Norpois' rant raises the essential question: what is the point of art? Does it have to be "important?" On Facebook - and in way too many bars - I've plagued my friends with the question of whether or not R.E.M. was an important band as compared to just being an influential band or a great band? Or, to ask the question another way, does a band have to have produced "important" songs, that is songs with a social relevance, to be considered a great band? Most of the singers or bands that I truly admire produced beautiful or moving or heartbreaking songs, but also songs that were important, that is socially significant. I will be utterly predictable by bringing up Neil Young. I think songs like Ohio and Rockin' in the Free World captured key moments in time or forced the audience to ask tough questions about their world. Obviously, you could say the same thing about Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen or Marvin Gaye. So, it came down to this point - R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands, but did they ever produce an "important" songs, and so were they then an "important" band, and thus a "great" band? It's an interesting discussion over beers with great friends, but it hints at the bigger question of what is art supposed to accomplish? I used to have this discussion with my ex-wife Brenda, who, as I've pointed out repeatedly, had much better and sophisticated taste in music than I have, and I would argue that songs had to be about something, as compared to just being beautiful. As with most things, in the end I suspect that she was right, and I've come to believe that in the end maybe beauty is enough, and, what is more, maybe it's actually the most important thing. As Rumi reminds us, "judge a moth by the beauty of its candle." Anything that takes us away form the mundane world and toward something more profound and transcendent is justification enough, and doubtless representative of human nature at its finest.
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