I've been reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, and so much of it is resonating with me that I thought I would write a blog series on the book as I'm reading. (The first book I did a blog series on was The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After. Here is the link to Part 4; Parts 1-3 are linked at the end of the post.) I love blogging about great non-fiction for several reasons. It helps me to really think through what I'm reading and gives me a chance to record some of my responses along the way. And it's a wonderful way to share ideas about great books and to (hopefully!) inspire you to read along too.
Just about every sentence of this book so far is worth underlining and mulling over, but I want to focus today on something L'Engle writes at the end of the first chapter. Here, she says that great artists are not masters of their work, but rather, that they are in service to their art.
When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew; Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend...When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.
This aligns perfectly with my ideas about great art, though I've never thought of it this way before. Truly masterful music is transcendent; a certain poem or short story can make you feel closer to God than you might feel even in church. Great art is like that; it is "better" than the artist, it is divine.
L'Engle goes on to write that only hard work and commitment to one's art can lead to the point where the work "takes over." And then she makes a beautiful comparison to how this whole process is just like prayer. She writes that as Christians, we must pray daily to God, and whether we feel like it or not we must talk to Him and "fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands." This part is the hard work, but our reward for this hard work is that when God has something to say, we will be able to listen. She writes it this way:
Unless I ask God for something, I do not know whether or not it is something for which I ought to ask, and I cannot add, "But if this is not your will for me, then your will is what I want, not mine."
So often when we pray for something and put the desires of our hearts into words, we will see that our prayers are answered, though not always in the specific way we want them to be. If we had never prayed to begin with, it would be much harder to see those answers as true answers from God. It would be so easy to miss them and to be left longing for the solution we had in mind, to be left feeling unsettled and unsatisfied.
When it comes to my work as a pianist, I can never experience the divine and the majesty in a piece I'm playing until I've spent hundreds of hours on fingering and notes and pedaling and memory and passage work. When I, as the artist, have put in this time and energy, only then can the music really speak.
What are your thoughts on this? I would love to know.
sounds like a great subject...something that I would really be interested in.
ReplyDeleteI think that talking to God, putting in that hard work of fumbling through the words, is basically the same thing as what you're doing when you write these blog posts about nonfiction: "It helps me to really think through what I'm reading and gives me a chance to record some of my responses along the way."
ReplyDeleteWhen we put our prayers into actual words instead of just wishes, we examine things differently. It makes us think through what we're feeling and why, and it helps us identify the answer that often is inside us anyway even though we never knew it. Just like you say: "So often when we pray for something and put the desires of our hearts into words, we will see that our prayers are answered, though not always in the specific way we want them to be."
it really brings it all full circle!
This was an encouragement to read. I put a hold on the book at the library and hope to be reading it soon. It's an interesting thought, about the artist being a servant to the art and letting it shine on it's own. It takes a lot of diligence and discretion to know how to "get out of the way" and let art speak for itself. I wonder if this is what separates the professional artist from the amateur?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, for Christmas I got, "Jane Austen's Guide to Happily Ever After". Thanks to your writing about it. :) I've enjoyed reading it.
That's fantastic Sarah, all around! Love that you got the Jane Austen Guide for Christmas--you'll have to let me know your thoughts.
DeleteAnd yes I agree that it takes so much diligence and discretion, as you say, to know how to "get out of the way" when it comes to creating....it might have to do with professional vs. amateur, but I think Madeleine L'Engle would say that it comes down to Grace and God-given gifts.