- “We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”—Henry James, The Middle Years
- “To find no contradiction in the union of old & novel—to contemplate the Ancient of Days with Feelings new as if they then sprang forth at his own Fiat—this marks the mind that feels the Riddle of the World, & may help to unravel it.”—Samuel Tayler Coleridge, Notebooks, October 1803
- “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”—Francis Bacon, “Of Beauty,” in Essays (1625).
- “I look upon tags and labels as prejudices. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.”—Anton Chekhov, letter to Alexei Pleshcheyev, (October 1888)
- “After all, aesthetics is nothing but a kind of applied physiology.”—Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche Contra Wagner
- “And there is nothing whereby the cleane strength of a horse is more knowne, than to make a readie and cleane stop.” —Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, “Of Liars,” translated by John Florio
I’ve called the above statements “pointers” so that no one will regard them as rules set in concrete. The citation from Henry James reminds us we aren’t entirely in control of the artworks we make. We try to do as well as we can, always knowing that our personal limitations and unconscious drives have more of a say than our conscious will. We push against our limitations by reading, pondering our experience carefully and deciding we will go further than we’ve gone in the past. Coleridge tells us that we are entitled to try for artistic excellence with the same assurance and risk that the classics experienced. And that we can combine the old and the new, to show that they are not incompatible. Then we may discover that the new can have the solid strength associated with tradition, and the old can have the freshness we find in innovation. That blend may work to produce the strangeness that Bacon praises—to the array of familiar phenomena, our individuality happens on something unexpected, something that may appear odd or even awkward until we get used to it. We live with what we produce for a while, without a rush to judgment. There is an ethical component in all great literary works, but the statement by Chekhov shows that ethics can be on the side of freedom, that it does not necessarily require self-inflicted repression or conformity with the norms usually applied to life and work. Still, it’s good to remember that human beings all have more or less the same kind of brain and the same kind of body. Nietzsche rightly says that artworks must enter into a contract with our neurons, our heartbeat and our breathing as these exist. Not just any creative effort will be found stimulating and pleasurable to the human mind and body genetics has given us. We test and appraise a new work with our senses and our pulse rate, good critics that should be listened to. Some works will produce gooseflesh and a speeded-up heartbeat; others will have no physical effect at all. Finally, I like Montaigne’s observation about horses, one which can be applied to artists as well. When we have said what we had to say, without fanfare or fuss, we simply stop.
—Alfred Corn