“No Donny, these men are cowards.”
It is no simple thing to take on the subject of censorship in our morally confused age. I had thought perhaps to write at length about Mr. Chaucer’s “Retraction” appended to his Canterbury Tales at the end of his life, but, while I think his example a laudatory one, it is too difficult to keep writing around the center of this controversy. My favorite philosopher Socrates once said something relevant to poeticizing and fiction-writing that has long stuck with me, as recorded in his student Plato’s Republic:
When a moderate [poet-storyteller] comes upon the words or actions of a good man in his narrative, he’ll be willing to report them as if he were that man himself, and he won’t be ashamed of that kind of imitation. [Socrates is contrasting poetic imitation to poetic narration, the latter of which lends the poet an emotional distance from his subject. -JM] He’ll imitate this good man most when he’s acting in a faultless and intelligent manner, but he’ll do so less, and with more reluctance, when the good man is upset by disease, sexual passion, drunkenness, or some other misfortune. When he comes upon a character unworthy of himself, however, he’ll be unwilling to make himself seriously resemble that inferior character—except perhaps for a brief period in which he’s doing something good….
As for [a poet] who is not of this sort, the more inferior he is, the more willing he’ll be to narrate anything and to consider nothing unworthy of himself…. And this man’s style will consist entirely of imitation in voice and gesture, or else include only a small bit of plain narration. (Republic III)
I do not quote this controversial passage simply for the purposes of controversy, but because Socrates makes some important points about the moral quality of the writer. A writer who already has a morally good soul, argues Socrates, will happily delve into the mind and heart of a moral (fictional) character, but will only recount the actions and thoughts of a wicked character with great reluctance and with a stylistic brevity that keeps this evil at arm’s length.
In my own writing, which mainly consists of lyric poetry these days, I have often considered the subjects I am comfortable or uncomfortable writing about to be indicative of the state of my own soul. If my writing begins turning, shall we say, a bit goth, I begin to worry about the disorders in myself that are searching for expression. If I am content to write about joyful and generally undistressing things, I worry much less about my own moral state. Socrates put into words what I had intuited long before.
I realize that this puts me at odds with many other philosophies of artistic creation, maybe even Miss O’Connor’s. She believed that a bit of distress was healthy for the soul in the long run, and I think some of the other editors who have chimed in would argue that distressing art might even be the only truly honest kind worthy of the craft.
[There is a] distinction between Evil known by pure intelligence and Evil known by experience. (Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, 103)
Evil is a kind of nothingness. It is not something that can be understood in its own merits, but only by the goodness it lacks. Likewise, the more a person tends towards evil, the more he tends towards nothingness, towards unbeing, and a storyteller needs to recognize this when writing about evil persons. (As does a lyric poet when waxing, umm, poetical about evil subjects.) It is a common mistake to have good people fictionally described as dull and boring, and bad people as vividly colorful and interesting—an easy enough mistake to make when your subject is sexually charged.
But nothingness is not advantageous, any more than losing a limb is an advantage in and of itself. Amputees often do come to a newfound appreciation of bodily health and strength, even of athleticism, but it cannot be doubted that they would have been even stronger if they had found the will before the loss of limb. Likewise, someone who has lived a life of sin (like St. Paul) can sometimes end up living a more virtuous life than those who never sinned greatly, but only because those non-sinners never cared enough about their virtue to make it great, not because sin is itself good. More often, unfortunately, someone who lives a life of grievous sin never turns away from it, or turns away too half-heartedly to be saved.
It is a confounding thing to look into nothingness with the hope of understanding it. The problem is that nothing is… nothing. You cannot empathize with nothingness without being torn by its abysmal absence. Look into the pit, and the pit stares back, etc.
Love your characters unconditionally. All of them. Not just the soulless vampire who longs to be human, but the even more depraved soulless vampire who created her. For a Catholic, there are no throwaway people. If your character is Judas Iscariot or Adolf Hitler, love him. (Karen Ullo, “Empathizing with Demons”)
Pardon me for suggesting that a Christian perhaps ought not to love the Devil. (I know that a vampire is a sort of half-breed of demon and human, thus giving it a freer moral agency than fallen angels. Bear with me.) God loves all his creatures inasmuch as he wills their existence. He loves certain creatures in greater ways for the aspects he has given them, such as power and free will. He loves those most greatly who love him and freely choose his will.
As Christians we must love our enemies, but not the Devil—at least not literally. We must extend charity towards those who are capable of receiving that spiritual friendship, even if they are ultimately unwilling to do so, but the fallen angels are beyond the reach of charity.
Likewise, the human damned are beyond the reach of charity. They are so committed to the nothingness of their evil that they have made themselves incapable of receiving charity. We might imaginatively empathize with The Iscariot in a work of fiction, but once he reaches his narrative death we must as Catholics concur with the judgment that it would have been better for him not to have been born. To conclude otherwise would be to literally place our judgment above God’s. As Pope Pius III once said, it is blasphemous to even pray for the damned.
Nothingness has a magnetic draw to it, a gravitational pull that latches onto the concupiscence of fallen human nature. When we extend charity towards our fellow man and woman, it must not be with the intent of participating in their sins, or else it is not charity. It is also not, preferably, with the intent of empathizing with their sins, unless it is to simply admit that we are all weak and sinful, and to encourage them thereby to a better life.
If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) ‘No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank’? That advantage—call it ‘unfair’ if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself? (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 59)
Maybe we cannot convince a dying world that it is wrong by simply insisting that we are better than it. But certainly we cannot help the world without actually being better than it. God has never asked us to wallow in our sins, not even for the sake of appearing empathetic to the sinful. A drowning man cannot help another drowning man, at least not without drowning, himself. The old moral principle that a man must see to the health of his own soul before he can help others (“Remove the plank from your own eye…”) applies even to the artist.
In all of this I have said almost nothing about poetic inspiration: whether it comes from God, the Devil, the Muses, or the Collective Unconscious. Nor have I opined about whether inspiration justifies writing otherwise morally untenable prose or poesy, although attentive readers will conclude that I would answer in the negative. (I don’t disagree that there is a fair amount of grey area in what is and isn’t morally tenable, but I won’t belabor that again right now.)
What I think is missing in this conversation, and what I have been getting at since “What has Rome to do with Iowa City?”, is a serious grappling with the moral responsibilities of the writer towards the spiritual good of his neighbor. Do we include in our regular examination of conscience a serious consideration of whether or not we caused others to sin? Do we consider whether or not whether any occasions of sin we artistically create are justifiable (for some occasions of sin are indeed justifiable and even necessary)? Do we discern the spirits, not assuming that every artistic inspiration comes from God? Do we work towards Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, not just what is aesthetically pleasing? Are we aesthetes at the expense of these transcendentals?
Again and again, I am no moral theologian. My point in “Iowa City” and later was that none of the authorities previously considered competent are stepping up and taking responsibility for offering moral guidance, so now we have to do that for ourselves. I don’t know what else to do except make a regular examination of conscience and include my artistic endeavors in that examination. A few artists are lucky enough to have attentive and wise spiritual directors, but the rest of us must fend for our own well-being.
But don’t fret. There’s nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all.
Hi Johnathan – on point as always. You’ve pointed out some of the flaws in my post, for which I’m grateful. One is that I didn’t define what I meant by “love your characters” precisely enough. When I said that the author’s love should mimic divine love, I meant that the author ought to see that person the way God would see him. Whatever he does that God would judge harshly, so should the author – only not at the expense of seeing the goodness for which the person was created, even if he never attains it. God justly and rightly condemns the devil, but I can’t help thinking that when He looks at him, He still sees the magnificent angel He meant him to be. That’s not nostalgia; it’s love.
I also didn’t talk about the fact that staring into darkness ought to lead you to the light, or else it’s worthless. In hindsight, it’s a pretty big oversight. You’re right – evil is nothing. It’s the good still buried inside the evil that matters, and if you never find it… well, that way lies madness. In fact, the only way I was able to finish my own book was that I knew from the beginning how it would end, which is not in darkness. Mea culpa, and thank you.
However, I would take issue with Socrates’s approach. It’s an approach that makes sense for him, a non-Christian seeking goodness, but for us, the model to follow is Christ. He “became sin” and entered into our fallen world in the most intimate way possible in order to save us from our own darkness. He engaged with the worst, the least, those who were possessed by demons – and He loved them. How can a Christian author do less?
You and I ultimately reach the same conclusion. I call it discernment, you call it examination of conscience, but it’s the same thing. If we hold ourselves accountable to God who gives us our words, we will be doing what is right. I think that’s probably as close as we’re ever going to get to a definitive answer about the author’s responsibility to his audience. If the first member of our audience is God, and God approves, what more could any of us want?
I’m not going to write any full-length defense of Socrates’ approach to poetry, by any means. He does end up banishing the poets from his perfect republic, after all. His pre-Christian morality is overly simplified largely because it is pre-Christian, but many of his principles were taken up by later Catholic theologians, and demand more serious consideration than is usually given to them.
The point of Jesus “becoming sin” goes back to Lewis’ passage that I quoted above. He “became man” fully and literally, but only “became sin” in a kind of metaphorical way. Christ was not a sinner, nor did God the Father perceive him literally “as sin” on the Cross, as Fr. Luther believed. The doctors of the Church insist that the slightest amount of obedience or suffering on the part of the God-Man could have redeemed the world. He engaged with the worst of humanity, but in the sense of the man on the bank who can help the drowning man because of his superior footing.
Also, I’m unsure how to know if God approves of one’s writing. I’ve never noticed angelic choirs nor demonic screeches whenever I finish writing something. 🙂
Any thoughts on the sources of artistic inspiration?
For our purposes, I don’t even think it’s necessary to answer the theological question of what “becoming sin” means because no one here is advocating that an author commit any actual sins in the process of writing. I’m only advocating empathy, which is not the same thing as acceptance or giving sin a free pass – although our society often tries to paint it that way these days.
As for knowing when God approves, isn’t that what developing a well-formed conscience is all about? You practice, you fail, you succeed, and you learn from both. With respect to my book, I actually did receive a completely un-asked-for sign beyond anything I would have dared to ask for, but I didn’t need it any more than I needed angels to tell me I was called to marry my husband or to serve as a music minister. I prayed… and I knew. Maybe I’m simplistic, but I’ve always found that to be enough.
As for inspiration, obviously the desire to create is an image of God’s creativity, a vestige of being made in His image, which, like everything else humans do, is easily perverted by sin. Beyond that, I’m pretty much content to just call it a mystery. What are your thoughts?
You wrote, “If my writing begins turning, shall we say, a bit goth, I begin to worry about the disorders in myself that are searching for expression. If I am content to write about joyful and generally undistressing things, I worry much less about my own moral state.”
You are the best guide to how your own creative process interacts with the state of your soul. However, as a rubric for others, this seems rather ableist, for instance toward people with depression and trauma. Happiness is not in itself a moral or immoral state, nor is it preferable to being in denial.
Certainly I am not applying the “happiness factor” as a moral standard. Socrates’ point is that a writer who begins wallowing in the vices of his fictional characters is on his own way to corruption. I wasn’t using “goth” and “generally undistressing” as referring to depression vs. jollity (which are not moral categories), but as shortcut for vice vs. virtue; my apologies for the lack of clarity.
Jonathan, your practical conclusion is right on target, I think. It also speaks to a really crying need for intelligent, well-formed spiritual directors capable of working with these kinds of complex questions — although as crying spiritual needs go, it does sometimes seem that at least some guides think of the artist’s peculiar challenges as the spiritual equivalent of First World Problems. Which, okay, fair enough: but then, so many wider cultural challenges are compounded and magnified by the creation and consumption of art, especially narrative art, that has been debased by being bent to the service of self-indulgence or ideological ends or cynicism or all of the above. At the same time, there remains a deep hunger for narrative art that affirms life and goodness and beauty through and despite darkness and evil, and well-crafted stories that truly do this (not just pretend to do it) have real staying power, if they can only manage to get themselves made first.
Which means, I think, that we need to be as much on guard against scrupulosity as against laxity. The scrupulous artist (*raises hand*) is likely to pick apart and tear down and tear up and finish nothing, while the lax — who may refuse to self-censor, but may at the same time be a masterful self-editor and a fine artist — meanwhile publishes left right and center, since self-censoring isn’t exactly a quality much in demand. I also want to point out that “scrupulous” and “lax” here, as terms relating to conscience, don’t precisely map onto Socrates’ categories of “moderate (i.e. virtuous)” and “inferior” artists, in case there might be any temptation to transpose those terms. But mainly, I want to point out that among Catholic artists who want to affirm the totality of the Faith and at the same time create excellent art [insert Tobias Funke meme: “There are DOZENS of us!” ;)], it seems that one is far more likely to bump up against the scrupulous type, whose art suffers from the tendency to wrinkle its nose and hold unsavory things out at arm’s length between pinched fingers (what Gardner would have identified as “frigidity”), and that the lax seem more likely to succeed both at finishing work in the first place and at originating work that meets the criteria of artistic excellence when they do. So that it seems that, within our very small bubble, the lax need only to be gently invited to come “further up and further in” w/r/t belief, and the scrupulous need more encouragement to simply write and less incitement to pressure and belabor their already wrung-out consciences about it. But who knows: that could be nothing but my own wrung-out conscience and my book envy talking. As Josh pointed out in comments on his recent post, examination of conscience is very necessary, but the trouble is that we often don’t see ourselves very well. We need community, and we need accountability. Without these, vision suffers.
Finally, a word about discernment: I’d agree with J.B. above that while the lack of inner turmoil you describe sounds likely to be a sign of artistic and spiritual health for yourself and many others too — I wouldn’t dare dispute that, being in no position to read consciences — I have found for myself that, to paraphrase Hemingway and others, the ability to “write toward where it hurts” has often been a signal that both personal healing and artistic growth are taking place. Both paths can be valid, I think.
I think I would argue that, while our era is notable for many moral errors, scrupulosity is not an error indicative of our time. If anything, moral laxity is our most serious error. Moral scruples exist most prominently among small, reactionary religious groups, not in the mainstream.
However, the Gardnerian worry about “frigidity” is still a real thing, but I think it more often has to do with an overly exalted view of Art than of the moral law. Artists worry about meeting the standard of Art, a pseudo-transcendental that demands much but is never clear when its demands are actually met. For instance, the demand that art ought to exploit the deepest hurts of the artist is a strange one, and also peculiar to our times.
“Arrested Development” memes are always welcome. I wish I had thought to include some in my posts.
Jonathon, I agree with Socrates and you. For an even more authoritative source of wisdom, let’s look at the words of Jesus: “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Jesus was simply saying for example, that someone who contemplates fornication or murder in his heart is a fornicator or murderer in reality. A man or woman who contemplates evil while writing or reading or viewing becomes what he is thinking about in his heart
St. Paul wrote, “For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.”
Writing about vampires, for example, is just another type of romance novel writing, where a desirable man is described in a not so subtly prurient way. What makes vampires desirable to some benighted women is their offer of eternal love. It’s an example of the devil turning things upside down. A vampire offers a damned form of eternal love, while Christ offers the blessed eternal wedding feast in Heaven. The fact that vampires are damned is shown in how they abhor the Cross. To spend hours reading about a walking dead hero whose love would lead to your own living death is a waste of a woman’s time, and a serious danger to her soul. Writers have better things to write about than evil in any of its many forms.
Roseanne, I completely agree with your assessment of what vampires represent. It is precisely because they offer a twisted, damned version of Christ’s eternal love that I chose to write about them. I wanted to dramatize true eternal love by showing it in direct contrast to its opposite. You’re absolutely right that a vampire can only lead to darkness and damnation. That’s actually a good summary of the first half of my book. But who ever said the story has to end there?
I’m a bit late to the game, here, but there are some interesting thoughts circulating on the nature of evil as nothingness when it comes down to making art with dark themes.
I follow with the whole evil is nothingness thing, and I think it makes a work of art profoundly hollow when it merely recounts or glorifies the nature of evil itself. And, in addition to that, it becomes quite boring. But I would strongly suggest that 98% of writers who claim “evil” as their subject (from Baudelaire to George R.R. Martin) are actually mislabelling their interest – it’s in the effect of evil upon people. Which is indeed a noble subject – in fact it might actually be the only subject out there. The heart of a good novel is conflict, which is why I think so many people in recent years have found books like “The Lord of the Rings” so unsatisfying – it has mythic grandeur (and many other virtues) in spades but very few examples of realistic characters dealing with actual, identifiable inner struggles. With the exception of Gollum, Denethor, Grima and a few other notables, the main characters seem like moral soap – their struggles mostly come off as superficial, and so people wonder what they can actually learn from their virtue. Virtue that comes too easy comes off as cheap and doesn’t provide hope to people seeking it out.
Plato may be right when he quotes Socrates about what his “good man” looks for out of a piece of art, but that “good man” might not correspond to every “good”* person we come across. There are folks (and I know several) who mainly want to go to literature to be inspired, and that’s a legit function of art. But then there are others who go to grapple, to find something of themselves in the text, to bridge the gap between themselves and the world so as to feel less alone. That’s also an inherint capacity of art to do, and if a person is struggling with particular darknesses then it may be an absolute godsent to meet characters who are in the very same throes. A character addicted to heroin (whose struggles are portrayed graphically) might scandalize and harm a person who has no experience of that darkness, but that same protagonist might act as a lifeline to someone in the same hole. Some may decry the focus on that addicts struggles as an empty darkness, and evil better left unexplored, but it might be an attempt to speak the language of a person struggling through their own dark on the way to light.
I think situations like these are the crux of why people have been responding so strongly to Jonathan’s original “Iowa City” article – yes, we obviously all recognize the truth of not deliberately (or accidentally) leading your readers into sin by means of your writing, but what some of the contributers/commenters have been concerned about is that this principle be drawn (as has been attempted in past and present) into a blanket guard against writing explicitly about the very real evil out there. If those depictions are lost, then methods to reach out to people in those darks are also lost. Not all methods of course, but a particular bridge would be irrecovably burned.
Dark art should never have been necessary – and it will not be necessary in Heaven – but our concupiscience has made it so. While evil may be a hollow nothingness, the people who struggle with it (which amounts to: everyone in history minus two) are anything but. While some may be motivated by morbid curiosity in their depictions, others are driven by Mission.
(*I wonder, on a side note, if it’s even proper to call people good or bad at all – our decisions can certainly be classified as more good or evil, but I hesitate to define a person by their actions. To call someone a do-gooder or a murderer is reductionist and fails to take the person for who they are as a whole, and the same comes when calling a person good or evil. This might be what so much prestige television is reacting against – culturally we’ve heard for so long about “these evil folks” and so some of the most talented writers on screen are creating sympathetic characters who commit monstrosities. It’s all for the sake of complicating categories that might have been better to never have been applied at all. And so to classify our characters as “good” or “evil” might actually be a huge step backward. Not to mention potentially unchristian. Not to mention, of course, the actual difficulty of knowing how much evil a person needs to do to be evil, or vice versa.)
*ugh*
It’s way too late over here.
*reminds self to spell-check all uneditable comments before commenting*
*reminds self to spell-check all uneditable comments AGAIN before commenting*
*cowers in shame*
A hearty Amen to this whole comment — typos and all 🙂