The Act of Creation (41 page)

Book Two, XV
). The unconscious mind, the mind of
the child and the primitive, are indifferent to it. So are the Eastern
philosophies which teach the unity of opposites, as well as Western
theologians and quantum physicists. The addicts of
Coronation
Street
who insist on beheving in the reality of Ena Sharples have
merely carried one step further the momentary split-mindedness experienced
by a sophisticated movie-audience at the climax of a Hitchcock thriller;
they live in a more or less permanently bisociated world.

 

 

 

The Value of Illusion

 

 

But where does beauty, aesthetic value, or 'art' enter into the process?
The answer requires several steps. The first is to recognize the intrinsic
value of illusion in itself. It derives from the transfer of attention
from the 'Now and Here' to the 'Then and There' -- that is, to a plane
remote from self-interest. Self-assertive behaviour is focussed on the
Here and Now; the transfer of interest and emotion to a different time
and location is in itself an act of self-transcendence in the literal
sense. It is achieved through the lure of heroes and victims on the stage
who attract the spectator's sympathy, with whom he partially identifies
himself, and for whose sake he temporarily renounces his preoccupations
with his own worries and desires. Thus the act of participating in an
illusion has an inhibiting effect on the self-asserting tendencies,
and facilitates the unfolding of the self-transcending tendencies. In
other words illusion has a cathartic effect -- as all ancient and modern
civilizations recognized by incorporating various forms of magic into
their purification-rites and abreaction therapies.

 

 

It is true that illusion, from Greek tragedy to horror comics, is also
capable of generating fear and anger, palpitations and cold sweat,
which seems to contradict its cathartic function. But the emotions thus
generated are
vicarious
emotions derived from the spectator's
participation in another person's existence, which is a self-transcending
act (cf.
pp. 278-9
). Consequently, however exciting
the action on the stage, the anger or fear which it generates will always
carry a component of sympathy, an irradiation of unselfish generosity,
which facilitates catharsis -- just as a varying mount of high-voltage
current is always transformed into heat. At a later stage, when the
climax of the drama is passed, and the tension ebbs away, the whole
mount of the current is consumed in a gentle inner glow.

 

 

 

The Dynamics of Illusion

 

 

In the comedy, the accumulation of suspense, and its subsequent
annihilation in laughter take place at distinctly separate stages
(although the two may overlap in the smiling, anticipated pleasure of
the joke to come). In the tragedy, on the other hand, exaltation and
catharsis are continuous. Laughter explodes emotion; weeping is its
gentle overflow; there is no break in the continuity of mood, and no
separation of emotion from reason. The hero, with whom the spectator has
identified himself, cannot be debunked by slipping on a banana-skin or
by any sudden incongruity in his behaviour. The gods of the Greek and
Hindu pantheon might change into any shape -- a swan, a bull, a monkey,
a shower of coins -- and yet their paramours would lovingly surrender
to them. On the bas-reliefs of Indian temples, Shiva is often seen
making love to Parvati while standing on his head, without appearing
ridiculous. When the events in epic or drama take an unexpected turn --
Odysseus's companions transformed into swine or chaste Ophelia singing
obscene songs -- emotion, if aggressively tainted, refuses to perform
the jump and explodes in laughter; if sympathetic, it will follow the
hero through all viscissitudes. The abrupt change of situation which
required an equally quick reorientientation of the mind to a different
associative context, led in the first case to a rupture between emotion
and reason, in the second to a transfer of emotion to the new context
whereby its harmonious co-ordination with reason is preserved.

 

 

Thus incongruity -- the confrontation of incompatible matrices -- will
be experienced as ridiculous, pathetic, or intellectually challenging,
according to whether aggression, identification, or the well-balanced
blend of scientific curiosity prevails in the spectator's mind. Don
Quixote is a comic or a tragic figure, or a case-history of incipient
paranoia, depending on the panel of the tryptich in which he is placed. In
all three cases the matrices of reality and delusion -- of windmills and
phantom-knights -- confront each other in the reader's mind. In the first
case they collide, and malice is spilled in laughter. In the second, the
two universes remain juxtaposed, reason oscillates to and fro between
them, compassion remains attached to it and is easily transferred from
one matrix to the other. In the third case, the two merge in a synthesis:
the (emotionally 'neutral') diagnosis of the clinician.

 

 

Thus compassion, and the other varieties of the participatory emotions,
attach themselves to the narrative told on the stage or in print,
like faithful dogs, and follow it whatever the surprises, twists, and
incongruities the narrator has in store for them. By contrast, hostility,
malice, and contempt tend to persist in a straight course, impervious
to the subtleties of intellect; to them a spade is a spade, a windmill a
windmill, and a Picasso nude with three breasts an object to leer at. The
self-transcending emotions seem to be guided by the maxim "tout comprendre
c'est tout pardonner"; the self-asserting emotions are designed for
assertion, not comprehension. Hence, when attention is suddenly displaced
from one frame of reference to another, the self-asserting impulses,
deprived of their raison d'être, are spilled in the process,
whereas the participatory emotions are transferred to the new matrix.

 

 

The physiological considerations which lend support to this view
I have already discussed (
pp. 56
ff;
274
,
283
). Anger and fear
owe their persistence and momentum to the sympathico-adrenal machinery,
which causes them to become occasionally dissociated from reasoning. The
self-transcending emotions, on the other hand, are accompanied by
parasympathetic reactions which are in every respect the opposite of the
former; since they are devoid of massiveness and momentum, there is no
cause for their falling out of step with the higher mental activities,
and the normal co-ordination of thought and emotion will prevail. If
your mind has the nimbleness of migrating, at a moment's notice, into
Romeo's in sixteenth-century Verona, then you will also be capable of
shedding tears at Juliet's death.

 

 

We must remember, however, that emotions are complex mixtures; our
amusement at Charlie Chaplin's adventures is full of compassion. All
that is required for a mildly comic effect is that an aggressive factor
should be present of sufficient strength to provide a certain inertia
of feeling -- or anaesthesia of the heart.

 

 

 

Escapism and Catharsis

 

 

Illusion, then, is the simultaneous presence and interaction in the mind
of two universes, one real, one imaginary. It transports the spectator
from the trivial present to a plane remote from self-interest and makes
him forget his own preoccupations and anxieties; in other words, it
facilitates the unfolding of his participatory emotions, and inhibits
or neutralizes his self-asserting tendencies.

 

 

This sounds like an escapist theory of art; and in spite of its derogatory
connotations, the expression contains a grain of truth -- though no more
than a grain. The analysis of any aesthetic experience requires, as said
before, a series of steps; and the escape offered by transporting the
spectator from his bed-sitter in Bayswater to the Castle of Elsinore
is merely the bottom step of the ladder. But, nevertheless, it should
not be under-estimated. In the first place, if illusion offers escape
it is escape of a particular kind, sharply distinguished from other
distractions such as playing tennis or bingo. It teaches us to live on
two planes at once. Children and primitive audiences who, forgetting
the present, completely accept the reality of the events on the stage,
are experiencing not an aesthetic thrill, but a kind of hypnotic trance;
and addiction to it may lead to various degrees of estrangement from
reality. The aesthetic experience depends on that delicate balance arising
from the presence of
both
matrices in the mind; on perceiving the
hero as Laurence Olivier and Prince Hamlet of Denmark at one and the same
time; on the lightning oscillations of attention from one to the other,
like sparks between charged electrodes. It is this precarious suspension
of awareness between the two planes which facilitates the continuous
flux of emotion from the Now and Here to the remoter worlds of Then and
There, and the cathartic effects resulting from it. For when interest is
deflected from the self it will attach itself to something else; when the
level of self-assertive tension falls, the self-transcending impulses
become almost automatically dominant. Thus the creation of illusion
is in itself of cathartic value -- even if the product, judged by more
sophisticated standards, is of cheap quality; for it helps the subject
to actualize his potential of self-transcending emotions thwarted by
the dreary routines of existence. Liberated from his frustrations and
anxieties, man can turn into a rather nice and dreamy creature; when
he changes into a dark suit and sits in a theatre, he at once shows
himself capable of taking a strong and entirely unselfish interest in
the destinies of the personae on the stage. He participates in their
hopes and sufferings; his frustrated cravings for communion find their
primeval outlet in the magic of identification.

 

 

To revert to Aristotle, the cathartic function of the tragedy is 'through
incidents arousing horror and pity to accomplish the purgation of such
emotions'. In cruder terms, a good cry, like a good laugh, has a more
lasting after-effect than the occasion seems to warrant. Taking the
Aristotelian definition at face value, it would seem that the aesthetic
experience could purge the mind only of those emotions which the
stage-play has created; that it would merely take out of the nervous
system what it has just put in, leaving the mind in the same state
as before. But this is not so. The emotion is not created, but merely
stimulated by the actors; it must be 'worked up' by the spectator. The
work of art does not provide the current, like an electricity company,
but merely the installations; the current has to be generated by the
consumer. Although this is obvious once we remember it, we tend to fall
into the mistake of taking a metaphor at face value and believing that the
stage 'provides' us with a thrill against cash payment for a seat in the
stalls. What we buy, however, is not emotion, but a sequence of stimuli
cunningly designed to trigger off our latent participatory emotions which
otherwise would remain frustrated or look for coarser outlets, and to
assure their ultimate consummation. Life constantly generates tensions
which run through the mind like stray eddies and erratic currents. The
aesthetic experience inhibits some, canalizes others, but above all,
it draws on unconscious sources of emotion which otherwise are only
active in the games of the underground.

 

 

Thus the concept of catharsis assumes a twofold meaning. Firstly, it
signifies that concentration on the illusory events on the stage rids
the mind of the dross of its self-centred trivial preoccupations; in
the second place it arouses its dormant self-transcendent potentials and
provides them with an outlet, until they peacefully ebb away. Peaceful,
of course, does not necessarily mean a happy ending. It may mean the
'earthing' of an individual tragedy in the universal tragedy of the
human condition -- as the scientist resolves a problem by showing that
a particular phenomenon is an instance of a general law. It may dissolve
the bitterness of personal sorrow in the vastness of the oceanic feeling;
and redeem horror by pity. Tragedy, in the Greek sense, is the school
of self-transcendence.

 

 

 

Identification and Magic

 

 

The projections of a single cine-camera with its rotating Maltese
cross arouse anger, terror, and righteous indignation in up to five
successive audiences on a single day, as if it were a machine designed
for the wholesale manufacture of adrenalin. Yet the emotions aroused
even by a cheap thriller-film are vicarious emotions derived from one
of the primordial games of the underground: the transformation of one
person or object into another (
Chapter VIII
,
p. 187
f). The fear and anger experienced by
the audience is experienced on behalf of another person; the adrenalin
secreted into their bloodstream is secreted to provide another person with
excess energy for fight or flight; the magic of identification is at work.

 

 

It enters into illusion in two stages. The first is the partial
identification, in the spectator's mind, of the actor with the character
he is meant to represent; the second is the partial identification of
the spectator with one or several of the characters. In both cases
the identification is only partial, but nevertheless the magic is
powerful enough to provide the palpitations and activate the supra-renal
glands. And when I speak of magic, I am not speaking metaphorically;
the 'magic of the stage' is a cliché which originates in the
sympathetic magic practised by all primitive and not-so-primitive
cultures, rooted in the belief in the substantial identity of the masked
dancer with the demon he mimes; of the impersonator with the power he
impersonates. The unconscious self, manifested in the beliefs of the child
and the dreams of the adult, is, as we saw, immune to contradiction,
unsure of its identity, and prone to merging it with others'. 'In the
collective representations of primitive mentality, objects, beings,
events can be, though in a way incomprehensible to us, both themselves
and something other than themselves.' [2] This description of tribal
mentality by a Victorian anthropologist could be applied almost without
qualifications to the audiences of