“A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.”
Carl Jung stated in his 1957 book Reflections on Life and Death that “the only goal of a human being is to spark a light in the darkness of mere being.” The famous novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and cultural critic James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) argued for this existential kindling of light as the only goal of the artist’s existence five years later in one of his least well-known but most beautiful works.
Baldwin lays out a sort of manifesto for the difficult but essential responsibility that artists—”a breed of men and women historically despised while living and acclaimed when safely dead”—have to their society in an essay from 1962 titled “The Creative Process,” which can be found in the altogether fantastic anthology The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction.
Baldwin, who was only 38 years old at the time, wrote: “The fact that the artist must intentionally cultivate the state of being alone, which most men are forced to avoid, may be his most distinguishing characteristic. That all men are, when it counts, alone, is a banality—a banality because it is constantly asserted yet, based on the evidence, very infrequently believed. The majority of us are not obliged to dwell on the realization that we are alone since doing so has the potential to halt all progress on this planet. Swamps need to be dried up, towns need to be built, mines need to be exploited, and kids need to be fed. These tasks cannot be completed by one person. Man’s responsibility is not limited to conquering the physical world, though. Additionally, he is exhorted to cross his inner desert. Therefore, the specific function of the artist is to shed light on this gloom and carve paths through this immense forest so that we do not lose sight of the goal of our work, which is ultimately to make the world a more hospitable place to live.”
I’m going to die and die alone, and the rest of the world is going to go on happily without me, unlike David Foster Wallace’s devastating and fairly matter-of-fact statement. — In contrast to adopting a societal identity like a traditional costume, Baldwin is cautious to emphasize that this ideal aloneness is a precondition for understanding and experiencing one’s genuine identity: “It is not intended for the idea of being alone to conjure up only a rural thought process besides a silver lake. The solitude I refer to is much more akin to the solitude of birth or death. It’s similar to the brave independence one observes in the eyes of someone in pain who is beyond our ability to assist. The energy and mystery of love, which many have praised and decried but no one has ever truly comprehended or been able to control, is another example. I present the situation in this way not to arouse sympathy for the artist — God forbid! — but rather to highlight how similar his situation is to that of everyone else and to bring his work to life. Birth, pain, love, and death are all intense states that are unavoidable, all-encompassing, and extreme. Although we are all aware of this, we would like not to. To prevent us from being aware of this information, the artist is there to dispel the illusions we fall victim to.”
Because of this, every society has struggled with the intransigent peace disturbance known as the artist. I don’t think future societies will be any more accepting of him. To make life comfortable and ensure the survival of the human species, society’s sole goal is to build a wall against inner and outward turmoil. And it is inescapable that once a tradition has developed, regardless of what kind it is, the general populace will believe it to have existed from the beginning of time and be extremely averse to, if not incapable of, imagining any alterations to it. They are unsure of how they will survive without the customs that have shaped who they are. When it is stated that they can or must, their response is panic. The only chance we have to lessen the harm done to people today and in the future is for there to be a better degree of consciousness among the populace.
“Art… says, don’t accept things on their face value; you don’t have to agree with all of this; you may think for yourself,” Jeanette Winterson would later repeat — In challenging the protected illusions of society, artists have a special position, according to Baldwin:
“The fact that the artist is his test tube, his laboratory, working under very strict rules, however, unstated these may be, and cannot allow any consideration to supersede his responsibility to reveal all that he can learn about the mystery of the human being, distinguishes him from all other responsible actors in society, including the politicians, legislators, educators, and scientists. While society must acknowledge that some things are true, it is important to remember that all of our actions and accomplishments depend on invisible factors. A civilization must presume itself to be stable, but the artist must be aware of this and must inform us that nothing is stable on earth. It is impossible to construct a school, educate a student, or operate a vehicle without taking some things for granted. The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must probe every response to reveal the unasked question that it covers up.”
However, the artist’s responsibility to themselves comes before the artist’s responsibility to society. Baldwin explores the elusive skill of knowing oneself, which we frequently avoid by attempting to know others instead, in light of the enormous difficulty of self-awareness and the idea that “we rarely know our depths”
“The one face that one can never see is one’s face, as anyone who has ever been forced to consider it—for instance, anyone who has ever been in love—knows. One’s face, which can provoke the most amazing responses, is what one’s lover, brother, or opponent sees. We act as we do and feel as we feel primarily out of necessity; although we are accountable for our choices, we rarely comprehend them. I think we would cause less harm to ourselves if we had a greater understanding of ourselves. However, there is a very high barrier between oneself and one’s awareness of oneself. One would want to remain in the dark on so many things! We develop into social beings because we are unable to survive in isolation. But there are many other things that we must avoid to become social, and we are all terrified of these forces within us that constantly threaten our shaky stability. We cannot, however, will the forces away because they exist. Our only option is to learn to coexist with them. And we can’t learn this unless we’re prepared to be honest with ourselves about who we are, which is never what we want to be. The goal of human endeavor is to establish a relationship between these two realities that resembles reconciliation.”
Baldwin, a queer Black man, was of age decades before the marriage equality movement and wrote this essay one year before the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. As a result, his words ring with double poignancy. Baldwin’s plea for acceptance of everyone who seems to be at odds with societal norms and for offering equal dignity to the human experience in all of its manifestations resounds throughout his manifesto for artists: “The people who are most fully engaged in this delicate and difficult task are ultimately the ones we respect and, at times, dread the most because they possess the unflappable authority that can only come from having witnessed, suffered, and survived the worst. The healthiest nation is one in which it is least necessary to distrust or shuns these individuals, whom we revere when they are gone because, as I said, we know, deep down, that we cannot survive without them.”
Baldwin ends by discussing this connection between the country and the artist, particularly in light of American history. He appeals to the artist’s most important and difficult duty to culture in a way that recalls Susan Sontag’s thoughts on bravery and resistance:
“In the same way that one modifies and suppresses their inner, uncharted chaos to become a social human being, and ultimately, without much courage, lies to themselves about it, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.”
Societies are unaware of the fact that an artist’s conflict with society is a lover’s conflict. He does, at his best, what lovers do by revealing the beloved to themselves and thereby making freedom a reality.
