Morning thoughts on character and "a free artist"--

I'm starting the day by polishing The Book of the Red King but all the time thinking about how it is a personal fault and also a strength in writers that we are drawn to and insanely curious about the drama and mystery of the compelling, contradictory person--drawn to trying to understand the crux of opposing beliefs and forces... Because that's a place of power. No grasp is possible, so we bridge the gap in imaginings, creating character.

And I'm still thinking about the Chekhov quote I mentioned before, here and elsewhere, and some of the responses of people to his words. I've also been pondering lives of artists who were "not free" in some way, even if they seemed more free than most people, and how those self-set limitations through ideology or -ism work (or don't work.) Chekhov's letters are full of fascinating tossed-off remarks and confident, extended claims, and I've recently used some of that material in an essay. Here's the full passage that I mentioned in brief earlier, as translated by Constance Garnett:

I am afraid of those who look for a tendency between the lines, and who are determined to regard me either as a liberal or as a conservative. I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk, not an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I regret that God has not given me the power to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms, and am equally repelled by the secretaries of consistories and by Notovitch and Gradovsky. Pharisaism, stupidity and despotism reign not in merchants' houses and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the younger generation.... That is why I have no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom—freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great artist.

Poet Dick Jones noted on facebook that "It's for declarations of this nature and quality that I used to love teaching Chekhov to my Theatre Studies students." Yes, the whole passage is full of challenges and sharp assessment, full of riches.

We live in a time of many "trade-marks and labels," a time in which people in the arts are expected to hew to a certain ideology, a set of acceptable beliefs--and we all know what those are. We are definitely not expected to be what Chekhov called free artists, who have no ideology at all but wish to witness all things clearly without taking sides.

Here are some of my questions after reading that bit of Chekhov... Does a time when the elite is mostly in lockstep have a debilitating effect on fiction and poetry? Do we or do we not see the same range of characters as before? Are characters who don't "fit" are in danger of being treated harshly rather than portrayed in fullness? Can we think of cases in which characters are given either more or less than their due as full human beings, depending on their own world view or beliefs? Does varying from accepted beliefs dictate portrayal? Either tendency would be weakening. Do we see people in novels at work much any more? Do we participate in a form of lying? As, do historical settings seem to demand that characters be contemporary with us in their minds and spirits, though physically in fancy dress of another era?

Most of all, can one escape and be "a free artist?" If so, does that also have a great cost? Of course, just being alive comes with great cost... And what exactly would being a free artist look like?

Sixteen Hundred Years

"Trees and moon" courtesy of sxc.hu
and Siddharth Nair of Bangalore, India.

LibraryKris aka Kris Weihipeihana of New Zealand has read another of my poems on Audioboo (it follows her reading of "The Wish for Roses") this time a poem in the current issue of Mezzo Cammin (click to see the text.) It's fascinating to see what poems attract readers, and to hear one's words with the emphasis and accents of another.

A whole series of readings of the same poems would make an interesting site, wouldn't it? To hear the differences in pause and length of syllable, the variety of accents, the subtle changes in sense and emotion that would sometimes occur.

Thank you to Kris!

Bulletin from Hoth

Yes, I have been taking a small break from blogging but will be back soon.

Finding the thread--

detail, The Big Purple. Yolanda Sharpe, 2011.
26 x 80 inches, watercolor on paper

I have been feeling quite unlike myself in my work--wayward, disorganized, unsure of what's next--due to an excess of meets and tournaments, ferryings, volunteering, and extended periods of being a single mother while my husband travels. Sometimes life becomes labyrinthine in complexity and just a little too packed with labor that is tiring, no matter how good it is to do. I expect this sort of over-crammed sensation is especially true of women who pursue the arts, and most especially true of those of us who have children because children are, as Bacon wrote, "hostages to fortune" and must come first.

Ashley Norwood Cooper, "Deer in the Headlights"
casein on board, 2012

And so on Thursday, two friends and I started a project of setting goals, roughly following the International Arts Movement's Working Artist Initiative. I'll be meeting weekly with painters Ashley Norwood Cooper and Yolanda Sharpe. Ashley is, like me, the mother of three children, so we have similar problems with organizing time, though her children are younger than mine. Yolanda has a different set of issues as a full-time academic who is both painter and singer. But the three of us know one another well and won't have to become acquainted with one another's work because we know and like it already.

It's good. I can feel our little project working on me already--the need to organize, the expectation of sharing our progress at the upcoming meeting, and the simple but beautiful idea of that somebody else cares whether I make something of worth this week is energizing and helpful.