...assignment. For some reason, I liked this one probably the best, as it had to do with literature. Again, I could have written more, but I kept short with some main ideas on the topic.
Q: Freud wrote that art was a “palliative measure” that helped people cope with suffering. Discuss his view and how it compares with the views of art or aesthetics of one of the following authors: Baudelaire, Darwin, Nietzsche, Woolf.
A:
Art
as antidote or as an expression of inadequacy with the world's ways (a
''palliative measure'' as Freud names it) in the face of suffering is
nothing new to men and it shall stay with men as long as mankind exists.
Ever since Cro-Magnon man painted the walls of his cave, the human
spirit found ways of escaping everday turmoil. There will always be
prisoners to escape the cave (see Plato's ''Allegory of the Cave'') and
get away from the shadows. In what follows, I'll illustrate how Sigmund
Freud and Virginia Woolf's artistic visions converged into an escapist
ideal, a ''palliative measure'' which leads to that which we call
happiness.
Happiness is an essential pursuit of mankind if not the ultimate purpose. We all set goals in order to achieve it, dream of happy times, live the moment to reach it, immerse ourselves in activities which make us happy, hope for it, feel it when making others happy - not only these are the ways, yet the aim is one only: obtain happiness and make it last. Freud's view regarding the pursuit of happiness pleads in this direction: "(...) what the behaviour of men themselves reveals as the purpose and object of their lives, what they demand of life and wish to attain in it. The answer to this can hardly be in doubt: they seek happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so. There are two sides to this striving, a positive and a negative; it aims on the one hand at eliminating pain and discomfort, on the other at the experience of intense pleasures.'' (Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929p.8) Pain and discomfort are rooted in three main sources of unhappiness in Freud's vision: our own bodies, the external world and the others. Having to deal with these and looking for happiness, most men find themselves caught up in the web of suffering and unhappiness, which is why, one of the ways of searching for happiness is constituted by art, search enhanced also by the pleasure principle of which Freud talked about. Furthermore, Freud pointed out the importance of this search in art for happiness as well as the innate failure which might occur when doing so, yet the perseverance cannot cease, art being one of the attributes of civilisation: ''happiness in life is sought first and foremost in the enjoyment of beauty, wherever it is to be found by our senses and our judgement, the beauty of human forms and movements, of natural objects, of landscapes, of artistic and even scientific creations. As a goal in life, this aesthetic attitude offers little protection against the menace of suffering, but is able to compensate for a great deal. The enjoyment of beauty produces a particular, mildly intoxicating kind of sensation. There is no evident use in beauty; the necessity of it for cultural purposes is not apparent, and yet civilisation could not do without it.'' (Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929, p. 11)
What stands obviously in common with Freud's vision in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, is the manner in which the character Lily Briscoe (a possible self-portrayal of Woolf herself) finds the happiness and fulfillment in her search of integrity and closeness with Mrs. Ramsay through painting; the intensity which leads the character to self-accomplishment and happiness comes through her art as the following lines suggest: ''She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, what she looked it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It is in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas(...)''. (V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse) that Lily grasps happiness through art, escaping her suffering caused by the relation with the outside world, with men in particular (Charles Tansley and William Bankes) and the frustration in not succeeding to paint what she sees, not capturing the essence she can perceive, as illustrated by the author: ''It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.'' (V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse). Clearly, Lily wishes to be happy but it takes her ten years to finish Mrs. Ramsay's portrait, the one which raised such frustration in her creation. She didn't know when starting it that even much suffering has to be endured as ''time passes'' before she could be happy, before she would achieve happiness with a few strokes of her brush: ''(...) if a man thinks himself happy if he has merely escaped unhappiness or weathered trouble; if in general the task of avoiding pain forces that of obtaining pleasure into the background.'' (Sigmund Freud - Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929).
Bibliography:
(1) Freud, Sigmund - Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929 ( archive.org/details/CivilisationAndItsDiscontents )
(2) ''Selected Works of Virginia Woolf'' ( To the Lighthouse), Wordsworth Limited Edition, 2005.
Happiness is an essential pursuit of mankind if not the ultimate purpose. We all set goals in order to achieve it, dream of happy times, live the moment to reach it, immerse ourselves in activities which make us happy, hope for it, feel it when making others happy - not only these are the ways, yet the aim is one only: obtain happiness and make it last. Freud's view regarding the pursuit of happiness pleads in this direction: "(...) what the behaviour of men themselves reveals as the purpose and object of their lives, what they demand of life and wish to attain in it. The answer to this can hardly be in doubt: they seek happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so. There are two sides to this striving, a positive and a negative; it aims on the one hand at eliminating pain and discomfort, on the other at the experience of intense pleasures.'' (Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929p.8) Pain and discomfort are rooted in three main sources of unhappiness in Freud's vision: our own bodies, the external world and the others. Having to deal with these and looking for happiness, most men find themselves caught up in the web of suffering and unhappiness, which is why, one of the ways of searching for happiness is constituted by art, search enhanced also by the pleasure principle of which Freud talked about. Furthermore, Freud pointed out the importance of this search in art for happiness as well as the innate failure which might occur when doing so, yet the perseverance cannot cease, art being one of the attributes of civilisation: ''happiness in life is sought first and foremost in the enjoyment of beauty, wherever it is to be found by our senses and our judgement, the beauty of human forms and movements, of natural objects, of landscapes, of artistic and even scientific creations. As a goal in life, this aesthetic attitude offers little protection against the menace of suffering, but is able to compensate for a great deal. The enjoyment of beauty produces a particular, mildly intoxicating kind of sensation. There is no evident use in beauty; the necessity of it for cultural purposes is not apparent, and yet civilisation could not do without it.'' (Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929, p. 11)
What stands obviously in common with Freud's vision in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, is the manner in which the character Lily Briscoe (a possible self-portrayal of Woolf herself) finds the happiness and fulfillment in her search of integrity and closeness with Mrs. Ramsay through painting; the intensity which leads the character to self-accomplishment and happiness comes through her art as the following lines suggest: ''She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, what she looked it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It is in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas(...)''. (V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse) that Lily grasps happiness through art, escaping her suffering caused by the relation with the outside world, with men in particular (Charles Tansley and William Bankes) and the frustration in not succeeding to paint what she sees, not capturing the essence she can perceive, as illustrated by the author: ''It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.'' (V. Woolf, To the Lighthouse). Clearly, Lily wishes to be happy but it takes her ten years to finish Mrs. Ramsay's portrait, the one which raised such frustration in her creation. She didn't know when starting it that even much suffering has to be endured as ''time passes'' before she could be happy, before she would achieve happiness with a few strokes of her brush: ''(...) if a man thinks himself happy if he has merely escaped unhappiness or weathered trouble; if in general the task of avoiding pain forces that of obtaining pleasure into the background.'' (Sigmund Freud - Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929).
Bibliography:
(1) Freud, Sigmund - Civilisation and Its Discontents, 1929 ( archive.org/details/CivilisationAndItsDiscontents )
(2) ''Selected Works of Virginia Woolf'' ( To the Lighthouse), Wordsworth Limited Edition, 2005.
very well written!
ReplyDeleteThank you, m'lady! :)
ReplyDelete