I grew up with metaphors and allegories. At school, fables were used to teach about values, antagonism, co-existence and survival. The animal characters in fables are easier companions to children then say Tarras Boulba or Churchill.
I recall my secondary school teacher once stating that “an answer is the death of a question” implying that a question should not be addressed with only one answer. More importantly, that we should ask questions without expecting the answer to be the reward. That we need to ask questions because curiosity is a fundamental attribute to cherish.
This line of thinking or teaching does not only come from school teachers but from our own life experiences. And nothing is as endemic to our experiences as is love. I recall one statement that has me wonder over the years. It proposes that “Love is the end of passion, and dependency is the end of love.” With age and my passage through life, I thought that dependency was between people. A state of supportive co-existence with mutual comfort. A natural evolution in relationships and human interactions.
…I was reading poems by W.B Yeats and Seamus Heaney this weekend. There is a line by Yeats that was repeated by Heaney and is one of the most reflected upon poetic moment in modern Irish literature. It reads:
The end of art is peace
I reflected upon that line again, as I have done many times before. The common interpretation is that lack of turmoil, perhaps defined as peace, does not promote the pursuit of creativity. That curiosity, be that artistic or intellectual, needs conflict, struggle and tumult. Indeed, that passion for expression cannot be kept ardent when the mind and soul are at peace.
But this weekend, as Yeats' original line made me put down my book and look at the snowy mountaintop outside my window, I made the connection between dependency and peace. It seemed to me that peace is not solely a state of the soul or mind, but a daily comfort with the predictable. In contrast, passion and love, for a person, an idea or a dream, are the explorations of the unpredictable. That is why the rewards and falls in and from love are exhilarating or devastating. There is no peace during the pursuit of a passion – there is only the high of the pursuit.
So, how did I interpret Yeats' statement?
As an artist, my passionate pursuit is expression. The modes vary, but to exteriorate what is brewing in the entrails of my curiosity is the birthing I push for. There is no peace in the process, although a relief and short respite soon after. Till the next need to express again.
But what happens if the brewing stops? When the well is dry? When I start just repeating myself? Would I have reached that peace, that predictability within which my dependency finds extended respite?
If that is the case, then it is not peace that ends the passion for artistic expression, but perhaps it is the reaching of the predictable expression that reminds us to stop repeating ourselves.
.. In Julius Caesar Shakespeare said:
“Cowards die many times before their deaths. The brave experience death only once.”
Perhaps peace is the death of the brave, not the end of art.
February 20, 2018
©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018
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