Dr Zhivago's Art Takes Us to His Russia

"Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it."
                                                                                                                                 -- Flannery O'Connor

What is an artist? What is art? How are they different from a reporter or from journalism which relays facts, circumstances and events attached to a framework that makes sense of them for the viewer, reader or listener?

Art is everything that is left out of these reports. It is what the reporter, if he is an honest and professional one, refuses to insert, as he knows it to come solely from himself. Art does not communicate the sort of journalistic impressions that are universal. It is not a sensory moment that would affect everyone the same way such as an explosion that knocks everyone flat. Art is almost perversely personal and unique, and that is precisely why it can be unsettling for both the one experiencing it and for those to whom the art is communicated. 

Art and love for art is found in the shape and feel of each fragment of shrapnel from the explosion. A prescribed or specified form of each fragment is unnecessary. They are simply but forcefully thrown into a new space in the world as they are, without justification. These varied experiences hold no inherent meaning that can be easily acted upon. There are no formulas in art of "I saw this, which surely means this, so we should therefore do that." 

What is required of the artist, or the lover of art, is only the desire to examine and value the many forms shattered and created from the explosion. A big bang leads to forms that are able to encounter other forms and then re-form the encounter through loving detail.

Art is not something a crowd would rally around upon seeing it. While a crowd can indeed gather around it physically, the art of the piece is something that invites not a group as a whole, but rather invites each individual in the crowd. The invitation is to approach it and shed preconceptions of self, the other, and the universe, as we might inexplicably shed clothing onto the floor as we approach a closet door. The space created by the art is not one that allows us to fill it and make order of our own clothing, our own dressing, and shut the door. Instead, its contents spill onto us and we are newly clothed. A news report-- however dressed up in metaphor or cleverness-- is shrugged off by the end of the week. The event may be remembered indefinitely, but the words of the report soon yellow and fade.

Many avoid art because of this staying power. Although the reality of a matter may find a place that has been resting inside us, waiting for its inevitability, there isn't always a place inside us for the art of a matter to rest. Without our willing participation, art will bounce off but then come back again and can feel annoying or even threatening, like a besotted bird that is determined to enter a closed window and may even break its own neck in the attempt. 

Artists are often depicted as being this crazy. Who in their right mind would throw themselves at the world, in spite of being so often rebuffed? The artist does because he is compelled from within, from without, from all sides until not to do so becomes the insanity. And yet, the artist that has found his own unique person reflected back to him in the world, in nature, in someone else; finds a liberation from this insanity in the expression of it, and is more sane and more preserved from irrationality than at any other time. Actions and activities that do not spring from joy, from love, from desire, from grief, from self-forgetfulness, become vividly insane and contagious with their monotony and despair, and are reported to us from all parts of the world around the clock.

The need to share another artist's expression with others can also be an exaltation of the trapped and lonely state of body or mind that is waiting for a promised train late in arriving. This need is a labor of love in search of a beloved. The gift is given with no thought of reciprocation or even full comprehension. What is offered is a shared glimpse of the art that enters into each person, in mutual adoration, in spite of its aspects that might be peculiar, puzzling, or even repulsive. The sublime moment is poured out and offers a profound, even drunken satiety that defies reason or temperance. We are flooded with the artist's experience, and an attitude of moderation on our part appears as a depravity of mean smallness. Yet, over time, the foolishness of the lover and his art is held up with dignity, illuminated and celebrated.

Here is Yuri, the lover-artist, on one of the many trains he takes throughout his life. This time he is alone, after being released from his first army duty, and is trying to go home. There are hundreds of people camping and living on the platforms, waiting for trains that never come. Yet, Yuri has been assured of a place on a train that will appear without announcement. Art that we are seeking often appears without announcement as well. We can't know ahead of time what will lift us. Yuri is successful in boarding the "secret train", in spite of the masses who are roused to rush at it. No matter how many others are surrounding us or competing with us for a physical place in the world, art assures us that our spirit always has one.

Illustration by GW Peters, 1903

In this scene of tumult and horror, a hypothetical reporter would be restricted to a description of what happens to the mass. He cannot add in what stays with us: Yuri's suitcase, the shadows, or the fragrance of the linden trees. As a strict report, everything that happens in the scene pushes us away from it, because it did not happen to us. There is a dividing line, or a closed door on the experience, alienating those on each side. It is as if we are one of the gypsies that did not make it onto the train. But if Yuri were to call out to us on the platform about what is happening in his heart, then he has created a space out of nothingness or too-muchness where we can join him, and ride with him. We still stand on the platform with our bundles strapped to us, clinging onto our children's hands, but part of us has been released and is traveling at top speed onward. The fact of the departing train has left us rooted to the spot; the art of the liberating train transports us anywhere. Our burdens remain just as heavy and needful, but they are no longer defining our place in the world.

Exceptional Excerpts: Dr Zhivago

Dr Zhivago is a book that discusses art-- what it is and what it isn't-- within the context of a world changing its historical trajectory. I found many passages within to exemplify how the story of Yuri Andreievich Zhivago is art, rather than history or journalism. Before discussing this idea further, it seems best to introduce the lyrical passage first, so that it can be enjoyed apart from discussion and stand on its own as a gift, in the spirit of "Exceptional Excerpts".

Boris Pasternak, author

Part 2, Chapter 5, Section 13

When the "secret" train backed into the station from behind the railway sheds, the whole crowd poured onto the tracks. People rolled down the hills like marbles, scrambled onto the embankment, and pushing each other, jumped onto the steps and buffers or climbed in through windows and onto the roofs. The train filled in an instant, while it was still moving, and by the time it stood by the platform, not only was it crammed but passengers hung all over it, from top to bottom. By a miracle, the doctor managed to get into a platform and from there, still more unaccountably, into the corridor.

There he stayed, sitting on his luggage, all the way to Sukhinichi.

The stormy sky had cleared. In the hot, sunny fields, crickets chirped loudly, muffling the clatter of the train.

Those passengers who stood by the windows shaded the rest from the light. Their double and triple shadows streaked across the floor and benches. Indeed, these shadows went beyond the cars. They were crowded out through the opposite windows, and accompanied the moving shadow of the train itself.

All around, people were shouting, bawling songs, quarreling, and playing cards. Whenever the train stopped, the noise of the besieging crowds outside added to this turmoil. The roar of the voices was deafening, like a storm at sea, and, as at sea, there would be a sudden lull. In the inexplicable stillness, you could hear footsteps hurrying down the platform, the bustle and arguments outside the freight car, isolated words from people, farewells spoken in the distance, and the quiet clucking of hens and rustling of trees in the station garden.

Then, like a telegram, delivered on the train, or like greetings from Meliuzeievo addressed to Yurii Andreievich, there drifted in through the windows a familiar fragrance. It came from somewhere and to one side and higher than the level of either garden or wildflowers, and it quietly exerted its excellence over everything else.

Kept from the windows by the crowd, the doctor could not see the trees; but he imagined them growing somewhere very near, calmly stretching out their heavy branches to the carriage roofs, and their foliage, covered with dust from the passing trains and thick as night, was sprinkled with constellations of small, glittering waxen flowers.

This happened time and again throughout the trip. There were roaring crowds at every station. And everywhere the linden trees were in blossom.

This ubiquitous fragrance seemed to be preceding the train on its journey north as if it were some sort of rumor that had reached even the smallest, local stations, and which the passengers always found waiting for them on arrival, heard and confirmed by everyone.

Click on part 2 for discussion

Unconditional Passion Part 2

"There is no prize 'out there'. The only prize is this one (points to heart) and what you feel and what you want to accomplish." -- Kevin Spacey

Fifty ways to build your love

A widely beloved fictional story of another innocent man who is incarcerated, but for a long time is The Shawshank Redemption. Andy's passion for freedom, and the love he devotes to it, is expressed only in a few pocketfuls of rubble chiseled from the wall of his cell each day and emptied into the prison yard. He doesn't create an explosion or a riot. But he does do this little bit, as often as he can, for as long as it takes to free himself.

As you read, listen to "Rock Hammer" from the Shawshank Remdemption soundtrack. This music evokes how passion requires us to be watchful, protective, resolute, plodding, furtive, precise, persistent and brave. Waiting for the right moment to reveal our work requires the loving patience of Job.

Both men-- the forcibly committed sculptor and this character Andy-- know themselves, and this strengthens their conviction that they don't belong in their prisons indefinitely. When we have only a fragmented view of who we are, our identity blurs, and it is easy to lose conviction, and to lose heart, and to lose our lifeline of passion. In Andy's case, knowing his passion keeps him focused, in spite of the horrors and monotony of prison, and prevents him from flailing or harming his chances for escape.

Enjoying the role we play in our lives is a great feeling, and can bring lasting rewards. But a role is not the same as an identity. We can bravely sacrifice and suffer for what we do, but if we don't really want to do it, then we won't be able to restore ourselves if our rewards are taken from us and we are stripped of our role. If our identity is rooted in success, then inevitable failures and disappointment will define us instead. 

Our passion, like our love, tells us the most about who we are. Like the man in the psychiatric ward, fearfully pressing together his crude materials, or like Andy chiseling away at his stone wall-- both activities appearing to be hobbies or hopeless obsessions on the surface-- we all need this self-knowledge to salvage the time we spend restricted, confined, deprived or under duress.

Victorian Prison, Portland circa 1860

Sometimes we are granted an opportunity to express love in a public way with celebration, and there feels like an abundance of passion to go around and carry everyone into a blissful state. Watching others in this state, we might wonder how we can "have what they're having" and imitate their style. But most often, we are stuck with ourselves, and the minutes drip by, no matter how full our schedule. When communicating, tapping on a computer in isolation can feel like tapping morse code on a water pipe to fellow prisoners. Painting might feel like one mere drop in an ocean of more talented artists. Our emotional state is not always going to reflect the energy of passion that is available to us.

At other times, we might feel full of this energy, but don't yet know what it is, how to channel it, and time is running out. Or you may feel that time is all you've got. Either way, let time be on your side. None of us know how much we have to spend, anyway. Passion isn't really about living the life you dream of, like a picture in your head that you color in until it is "finished'. Passion lives through you, and takes a form that you might only realize in loving hindsight.

Unconditional Passion

Impulses, wants, desires, loves, passions. These words are often used interchangeably and have been described, defined and acted out from the first stories ever told. We want to understand how they motivate people. Actors are often told to ask themselves-- What does my character want?-- to give their acting a focus and a framework from which they make decisions about how to move, how to articulate, how to express. Asking the question-- What do I want?--  is the same as asking, What do I desire? 

But desire is only the first ingredient when it comes to discovering creative and spiritual passion.

Hear the fine actor, Kevin Spacey, speak to this:

"To want, and to be ambitious, and to want to be successful is not enough. That's just desire. To know what you want, to understand why you're doing it. To dedicate every breath in your body, to achieve... if you feel you have something to give, if you feel that your particular talent is worth developing, is worth caring for, then there's nothing you can't achieve."

                        -- Inside the Actor's Studio

Desire is stronger than an impulse, or a short-lived sensation. Emotions last a little longer and are changeable. Love displays a willingness to suffer and the courage to do it; love provides evidence and the reasons for it can be seen. 

But then there is the more problematic and confusing vein that is Passion. Meaning "suffering" in Latin, Passion shows up not just willing to suffer, but already suffering. It causes pain when held in, and causes pain when released. It is a powerful energy in search of a love that will hold it, shape it, chisel it, fashion it, and create a form for it.

 Walter Crane The Blue Lantern early 1900s

Passion is the bogeyman in our lives. It reminds us of its existence when we hear others talk about our same passion, or their devotion to theirs. Passion haunts us. It makes us feel alive when it is present, and hollowed out when it has left. When we feel the sting of it, we might turn to substances or exercise, meditation or writing, in hopes that we can numb it, move faster than it, refocus our attention as insistently as it comes up, or minimize it with jargon and analysis. There is a world of expression for passion, and an equally balancing world of suppression. Peace and repose are available and healthy, but passion isn't questing for peace, it is sharply seeking a harmonious existence with love.

Love helps to heal the wounds created by passion's leading. Love makes sense of pain, and cares tenderly. Passion isn't as interested in tender care and healing when it comes to our energies. Yet paradoxically, we can be passionate about providing love, care and tenderness. Passion and love don't outrank each other. They are kissing cousins that breathe into us as inspiration as we receive them, and breathe out of us as we give. When they are together, something new transpires. We find its highest expression when we come to love our passion, and our spirit enters a conspiracy that recognizes this harmony as divine.

One of the biggest reasons that we give up on our passion is that we put conditions on it, as we do love, based on how it appears to us. We have firm ideas about what they should look like, and what form they should come to us in. We might think that if love isn't expressed a certain way, then it wasn't true. If passion isn't fulfilled in a certain way, then it must not have been real. We are suspicious of passion and are counseled against it. We may judge it as a kind of madness, and decide to be done with all of that nonsense. 

Passion feels dangerous, and it can be, if not respected as a powerful force that requires consideration of its expression. No doubt, it can be perverted into something avaricious and harmful, or squandered into mindlessness and repetition. This is where it gets thorny and addictions hover. It can be quite confusing for all involved. What is "divine madness" and what is just plain crazy?

Quite a while ago, I heard a story about a man who had a passion for making small realistic sculptures of animals out of clay or wood. His mental capacity for understanding the world around him was limited, but something inside of him found joy in turning out one creature after another. Of course, this just looks like "crazy". His devotion to his craft may be judged excessive and in need of balance. But if ever I saw a portrait of passion, it was this simple man who smiled while he worked, pleased in the doing. He loved his passion.

However, his simplicity and devotion to his passion did not protect him from life's difficulties. For reasons I can't recall, he was forced into a locked room in a psychiatric ward for a short while. He took his passion with him though, and eventually found a way to express it. Because he was afraid, he hid under his bed. While there, he collected adhesive and grime that had accumulated along the baseboard of the room, and with this crude material he continued to shape minuscule animals.

Again, that just looks crazy, but that is how he spent his time, even while confined. He put no conditions on his passion. He didn't demand a certain setting, clean materials, or encouragement from others. When the mistake was corrected and he was released back to his family, he hadn't lost time, but had remained true to his passion, and true to himself-- a self that is hardly considered to be a valid self by the charts and numbers and functional scores society requires.

Nevertheless, he passed the test of what the great Picasso could only believe to be true about himself:

"If they take away my paints, I'd use pastels. If they take away my pastels, I'd use crayons. If they took away my crayons, I'd use pencils. If they stripped me naked and threw me in prison, I'd spit on my finger and paint on the wall."

Go to Part 2 for another example of an imprisoned man preserving his passion.

Exceptional Excerpts: Isak Dinesen

Sharing excerpts is a way to honor another artist and their muse, like leaving an offering at an altar. This is my little altar in the blogosphere, and today's excerpt is from Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa. English was not her first language, nor was it for the people writing to her. What she treasured in the letters was not their eloquence, nor even the happenings themselves, but the trouble that was taken to set them to paper, and the essence of personality that was imparted as a gift.

"The letters from my old servants in Africa would come in, unpredictably making their appearance in my Danish existence, strange, moving documents, although not much to look at. I wondered what would have made my correspondents feel just at that moment the necessity of walking fifteen or twenty miles to Nairobi in order to send off these messages to me. At times they were dirges or elegies, at other times factual reports or even chroniques scandaleuses.

Two or three such epistles might follow quickly upon one another, then there might be many months in which the old continent was dumb.

But once a year at least I would be certain to get news of all my people.

From the time when I left Africa until the outbreak of the Second World War, every year before Christmas I sent out a small amount of money to my old firm of solicitors, Messrs. W.C. Hunter and Company, of Nairobi. They would always be able to get Farah's address, for he had his home and family in the Somali village of the town, even when he himself was away trading horses from Abyssinia or following some great white hunter on his safaris, and Farah would look up and collect his old staff. Thus in the white-washed Nairobi office my household was gathered together once more, each member of it was handed my Christmas present and was told to deliver in return, for my information, a short report on how he was and on what had happened to him in the course of a year. The bulletin, probably very slowly drawn from him, was put down by the clerk of the office in sober English and was easy to read, but had no voice to it.

But my people, inspired by what to them might seem an actual, renewed meeting with me-- for the African has a capacity for disregarding distances of space and time-- on leaving the solicitor's quarters laid their way round by the post-office, looked up the Indian professional letter-writer in his stall there and had this learned man set down for them a second message to me. In such a way the letter, first translated in the mind of the sender from his native Kikuyu tongue into the lingua franca of Swahili, had later passed through the dark Indian mind of the scribe, before it was finally set down, as I read it, in his unorthodox English. Yet in this shape it bore a truer likeness to its author than the official, conventional note, so that as I contemplated the slanting lines on the thin yellow paper, I for a moment was brought face to face with him."

I Wish I Was a Civil War Buff

So says the character George Costanza from the show Seinfeld, and has ever since been one of my favorite lines. It says so much about our collective and individual existential angst, but put so concisely and delivered so well. Brilliant.

Many of us are in a position that we have some time or money for a hobby, even if only a little. We sometimes long to have a passion for something that will fill up the emptiness, if we have not yet found one. As we go through life, sometimes we might try on the passions of another, but it fails to warm us, let alone ignite us into action. Mostly everything seems like a worthy cause or a good idea, and they appeal to our ideals of time well spent. Some activities will appear to others to be mere hobbies, others will appear to be a noble vocation, and some only appear as jobs and tasks. How they are experienced by us will be highly individual. One man's chess is another man's chore.

As George declares the disengaged condition of himself so poignantly, yet so pathetically, "I wish I was…", I can't help but laugh at his sad-sack, jealous demeanor, and wince at his grotesquerie. I have felt the same way, when I get confused or discouraged, or when my creative juices are at an ebb. I can start to judge how people spend their time, because I'm wishing for outside guidance, rather than asking myself some hard questions.

When the Seinfeld series ends with the four main characters in prison, we get the show "creator's" judgment on them, that we have been watching a group of grotesques, and their lives have really been spent on not much more than getting together to complain, envy, scheme, or mock. They're actually pretty comfortable with that state, and so we won't worry about them too much. It's not a tragedy. But, it's not a state that I want for myself.

Consistently through the history of his character, George has purposeless days and goes around comparing himself to just about anyone, and senses that he somehow missed out on being handed his passion. He seems to reject the notion that realizing a dream is a process of discovery for everyone. Because we must discover it, that's how we recognize that it is ours, and not someone else's. He would rather it would come to him like a prize in a box of crackerjack, or found in a coat pocket like a forgotten twenty dollar bill. Those momentary impulses that create a small stir are limited in their nature. He may have already rejected religion or spirituality, higher education, a career, or volunteerism as lacking the ingredients for the fix he needs, but he might be tempted to solve his selfhood by way of a late-night infomercial and a credit card.

Just like the knight searching for the Grail, we can't follow someone else's search and end up at the same place with the same reward. George might fill up his envious, rumbling spirit temporarily by consumption, or he may feel like hurling himself at someone else's interest, and buy all of its accompanying gear. The stuff becomes his new buddies. He may even lie about his enthusiasm or qualifications to be in a group who share that interest. But at the end of his lunge, he knows he isn't a "buff" of that kind, and bitterly shrinks his capacity for being engaged with life.

We don't have to have one main interest for the span of our lives, and only one shot at enjoying it. Some trails lead to others, and some trails need to be left behind, when they become just a retread. New phases can help us to gain strength that will serve us well in the next phase. Joys can come unexpectedly and unplanned, but knowing their value, we are ready for them. We're not even focused on our own whims. All of that external casting about falls by the wayside.

George is never ready; instead, he is always caught between desperation and panic that an opportunity is passing him by. He mistakes happenstance for opportunity which pulls him in many different directions, leaving him disaffected and numb. In between these fits of desperate jealousy, he soothes himself by consuming, and then summing it all up with self-aware and clever comments on his raging dissatisfactions. He is often saved by his quick intelligence and capacity for insight, which makes him lovable as a character. His curiosity and diligence run out just as quickly, and so all he can share with anyone is his plate of leftovers, making him frustrating as a character.

What George is addicted to, but not passionate about, is feeling like a winner, feeling a bit superior to those around him, and having a secret behind his smug grimacing smile. Like Jerry, we can't wait for him to entertain us with his latest grab at being "buff". It's just going to be another tale of a junkie's ego fix, which is bound to end in humiliation for George, and humor for us, at his expense. George is a fool for his ego, rather than his passion. To get what he wants, he whines, wheedles, and manipulates for flimsy favors, but he receives no real help. His desire is murky, and his methods are suspect.

Re-enacting inner conflict

If he ever asked himself the tough questions, we wouldn't feel as comfortable laughing at his disappointments, but more like rooting for him as a hero.  None of his foibles would trip him up so inevitably, engendering contempt from those imprisoned with him. Instead, his set-backs would inspire amicable friendship. As long as the work gets accomplished, his ego doesn't care that he needed help.

I'm glad that George is just a character to enjoy, and not a real person. I'm glad the show's short prison sentence on the group is just a scenario with a sense of comic justice. But for those of us who are real, I'd rather not see anyone experience unpleasant cosmic justice, when their daily sufferings could be used as fuel for their heartfelt passion.