On "the value of art"

Tranquil scene with fish, colored pencil, from the sketchbooks
of Laura Murphy Frankstone at Laurelines

Yesterday I read Michael W. Clune's article, "Bernhard's Way," and have been thinking about his summation of art (in part borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu and his ideas on language as a mechanism of power, reflective of one's position in a social space) as viewed by "the tradition," "the postmodern case," and "the new aesthetic criticism." As presented, the three compose a sort of Gordian knot that needs the simplicity of a sword to solve--at least from a writer's point of view.

Poetry and stories may exhibit what is called "formal relations within the work," and may at times appear to emerge from antagonistic "social relations," but for me these do not determine what critics call the "value" of a work of written art. Surely this "value of art" is deeper and more essential than either antagonistic relations without or formal relations within.

So how do we find the "value of art?"

Whether a piece of writing is stillborn, dies away with the progress of time, or flourishes is a measure of the amount of life captured in a net of words. Creation is alive; sub-creation must also contain life. It's that simple.

But catching such a bright, silvery fish is nigh-impossible. The effort of capturing life in words demands the dedication of the writer's own years, and even then there's no assurance. It's that precarious. It's that strange a goal.