Spencer Heath Archive

Item 614..

Random conversation with Heath recorded and transcribed by Spencer MacCallum

September 23, 1955

 

 

In the realm of art, especially in the literary and dramatic arts, there seems to be no universal criterion of excellence. No function seems to be assigned to an art form. Art is regarded as successful, and especially the drama, in terms of its popular appeal; if it strongly appeals to many persons, it is a great success.

 

It is to be noted, however, that there are two different kinds of appeals in dramatic art. One is to the sense of humor. The amusement that comes from humorous and witty things can make a play successful. And the other is the sense of pain, tragedy, grief and dis­tress. A morbid reaction comes from the contemplation of tragedy, classical or modern in form.

The apologist for tragedy usually sets tragedy above every other dramatic form. And his reason for so placing it usually is that it is more moving than any other art form. No doubt that is true, that it has a very great, powerful emotional appeal. But a criterion of this kind is entirely quantitative — as to the quantity of appeal, the strength and magnitude of its effect upon human emotions. There is a com­plete neglect of any qualitative discrimination. The test is not how or what kind of appeal, but how great the appeal is, how strong, and no account seems to be taken as to whether the appeal should be to the beautiful, the inspirational, or to the emotions of despair, dread and pain, or death.

I think that the reason human nature responds so powerfully to the tragic——has such a morbid reaction——is probably due to the fact that human personality through many, many thousands of years had to suffer extreme vicissitudes of nature and environment of all kinds. Their gods were demons. Primitive men had little sense of beauty, or salva­tion; they expected to die. They didn’t know how soon. And all their warfare against death was a kind of delaying action. In that situation, with tragic circumstances on every hand, human nature developed psychological powers of resistance, nervous mechanisms, no doubt, similar to the mechanism that causes a person to become unconscious when his actual physical pain would be so devastating as to wreck his nervous system. Nature has her own anodyne to protect and prevent catastrophe. And so at the psychological level, nature had her mechanisms of resistance to prevent the personality being completely dis­integrated from its sufferings, dangers and vicissitudes of all kinds.

Now modern man, and rather recently as the centuries go, has achieved such greater security from the ills, the “slings and arrows,” so to speak, “of outrageous environment,” ——if I may change the last word——that they live nowadays some­thing like seventy years on the average, whereas /for/ primi­tive man and for nearly the whole course of human existence, it is highly probable that the average age was very much below thirty years. In this modern condition of life in which men can live two times or more than twice as long as they have habitually done throughout the ages and ages of their existence, they have had little occasion to use the defenses built into their nervous organization, the defenses against the tragic, the painful, the horrors of life, and so they suffer from want of exercise for these faculties. And when they are presented with a vicarious tragedy, tragedy that is only imaginary, it brings these faculties into play and relieves their tension or strain from their lack of use. That gratifies and relieves the human nature from the stress brought about from the insufficient use of a once powerful and necessary defense mechanism.

As Aristotle put it, there is a catharsis, and that fits in fairly well with the biological hypothesis that I have just advanced——that it is cleansing of the personality, purging——because the effect would probably be similar although the mechanism is not the same. There is a relief from the tension of inactivity, letting the emotional nature have a little field day, so to speak, at the expense of imaginary heroes and horrors and the tragedies which they encounter in the dramatic form.

/Can you think of some examples of other faculties that are exercised in compensation of their having lapsed out of their original functions into disuse?/

 

Yes, I think we have a great deal of it. Nearly all play is the practice of something that was once a necessary activity. Play by very definition means something that we do for fun, and not from any necessity or for any useful purpose. And nearly all play takes the form of imaginary conflict, or combat, and we get a similar relief from mock battles, from sports, games of contest and conflict, football, fencing, pugilism and all of those things which are done not with the expectation of really defending one’s self or of hurting anybody. But it gives us an imitation of the conditions in which that kind of activity was necessary and useful to the saving of our lives.

It seems to be rather more in the psychological side of things. The nervous mechanism seems to be the one most concerned, and that is no doubt why people who have been very successful in modern life are inclined to resort to the primitive; the nervous system hasn’t caught up with modern conditions, and it can only be exercised adequately in make-believe hunting and fishing, as well as other sports. Men go primitive because they have the primitive capacity to carry on, let us say, hunting and fishing, and this tendency, this bred-into-them capacity, or taste or talent for that sort of thing doesn’t get exercised in the ordinary affairs of life, and so they resort for certain seasons of the year to these adventures. The same is true of mountain-climbing, and exploration——seeking the poles of the earth. These out-of-door adventures and all are attempts to exercise artificially capacities that were once very necessary in order to preserve their lives.

For modern man, it might be suggested that art should take not the form of satisfying ancient urges but rather the form of inspiring him, because the difference between the ancient man and the modern man is this, that the ancient man was the creature of his environment and sub­ject to all kinds of tragic circumstances which he was not able to any great degree to overcome, whereas modern man, through his practice of social and economic relationships has become the master of his environment. So now he lives in the kind of world which he creates for himself, in very large measure. This has enabled him to embark upon a period of creation.

Now fear and death are not incentives to create, but only to preserve, to maintain life. But there are influ­ences in our environment and in ourselves that tend to arouse our creative activities. These influences we call inspira­tional. And the thing to which we attribute the inspirational effect we always call “beautiful.” So I think a modern criterion of art——an art suitable to a more regenerate man than the ancient primitives were——would be that the measure of the greatness of an art is not merely how much it moves human nature, but in what direction, in what manner, human nature is moved——and that the highest art is that which most inspires men, makes them most creative both in the field of art and in all other things in which men have dreams which they desire to fulfill.

/”Then the best art is that which is most oriented towards the future.”/

Yes, and which inspires men to build the future in accordance with their highest dreams.

                   /”So that art serves the future.”/

 It serves the present and projects itself into the future to the glory of man.

This is tentative and not worked out, but it is the only explanation I have for why people are drawn towards pain. A higher conception of art than most people. It does not include tragedy. Tragedy goes to the category of entertainment——re-creation——which function is that of resting, restoring.

/Meaning that Heath’s conception of art as inspirational does not include tragedy, the function of which is restorative rather than inspirational? -Editor/

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