What meaning is there in artistic creation?
According to Carl Jung – Modern Man In Search Of A Soul – “What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak from the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind.”
A twentieth century spiritual writer and monk whose work was censored in his time for outspoken social commentary says this about the art.
In an aesthetic experience, in the creation or the contemplation of a work of art, the psychological conscience is able to attain some of its highest and most perfect fulfillments. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve.
Thomas Merton - No Man Is an Island
The spirit of the ages or “collective unconscious” of the masses according to the psychology of Jung is a powerful force that will find a way to express itself. “A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself…”
Why does the dirge Bye Bye Miss American Pie still mesmerize listeners with its repeating verse of love lost and death? What song have you heard lately that draws you into its rhythm and lyrics so profoundly?
The nineteenth century German poet Ranier Maria Rilke in Letters To A Young Poet wrote-
“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism…Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened.”
Personally I have a love/hate relationship with my editor. More importantly, how do you view the creative process and the final product of art that is produces? What style speaks to you at a high level of vitality? And, are you working on anything?
-Julie Post
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