One of my favorite quotes concerning the Theory of Art, which addresses both the artist’s role in society and the psychological attributes which govern their sensibilities, comes from the reliably causticHL Mencken:
“It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist. The special quality which makes an artist of him might almost be defined, indeed, as an extraordinary capacity for irritation, a pathological sensitiveness to environmental pricks and stings. He differs from the rest of us mainly because he reacts sharply and in an uncommon manner to phenomena which leave the rest of us unmoved, or, at most, merely annoy us vaguely. He is, in brief, a more delicate fellow than we are, and hence less fitted to prosper and enjoy himself under the conditions of life which he and we must face alike. Therefore, he takes to artistic endeavor, which is at once a criticism of life and an attempt to escape from life.
So much for the theory of it. The more the facts are studied, the more they bear it out. In those fields of art, at all events, which concern themselves with ideas as well as with sensations it is almost impossible to find any trace of an artist who was not actively hostile to his environment, and thus an indifferent patriot.”
Indeed. Artist-as-anti-nationalist-agitator archetypes aside, if we focus on the salient characteristic of a “pathological sensitiveness” we come to a very compelling theory concerning the creative process, a theory that takes on a more elaborated form when we read it in tandem with the American philosopher CS Peirce’s conceptions of signs and aesthetics (or ‘esthetics,’ as he would have preferred). To understand this framework, one first needs to have a basic grasp of scientific inquiry as Peirce had it. The business begins with a shock: an unusual phenomenon is observed which throws a state of belief (in the complacent sense) into disarray. The inquiring mind then proceeds on its mission, and the first form its course takes is abductive; that is, the line of intuition advances by way of a guess in large part influenced by “experiential context.” What emerges is hypothesis. Peirce attempted to characterize this mental voyage in logical terms that would make abduction a natural third companion to the familiar duo of deduction and induction, both of which follow abduction in Peirce’s theory of the process of inquiry. To use Peirce’s words: “The surprising fact, C, is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.” If we take that “matter of course” line to mean “giving a satisfactory explanation of that fact,” then we have a reasonably stable foundation for considering Peircean abduction as a means of hypothesis-generation. If we are to contrast it with deduction and induction, then we would have the following trio of reasoning models:
I will admit, one aspect of abduction that has sometimes left me confused is the relationship between the rule/first principle and the case/hypothesis. As near as I can tell, both are equally uncertain in light of the observed “startling fact,” in Peirce’s account, and taken together are something like two halves of the hypothesis that is suspected “may be true.” Understanding the rule/first principle as the “experiential context” clears things up a little, I think, as it provides the necessary material that can react with the new observed phenomena (“startling fact”) to generate the hypothesis, but it nonetheless seems to have equal conditional status with the “fully formed” hypothesis. The following visual aid might be a little more comprehensible (if you are anything like me). The solid line boxes hold the premises that are presupposed to be true; the dashed boxes contain the premises that are inferred.
It is also worth mentioning that with abduction, the apparent path of mental activity is non-linear, or if taken in syllogistic form, proceeds from conclusion (result/observation) to major premise (rule/law/first principle) to minor premise (case). In Peirce’s theory of inquiry, both the conditional major and minor premises need to be taken together and subject to testing. In contrast, deduction proceeds in a more linear fashion from major (rule/law/first principle) to minor (case) premise and on to conclusion (result/observation), whereas induction proceeds from a “conclusion” (really, a possibly-generalizable observation that can be figured as an antecedent) to a minor (case) premise and then a major (rule/law/first principle amenable to falsification, or a consequent). It seems to me that the conclusion/observation phase of induction is somewhat interchangeable with the case phase, as induction ultimately proceeds by a kind of pattern recognition that simply generalizes from multiple considered cases.
In any case, I don’t wish to be sidetracked here. The relevant matter is that, within the confines of Peirce’s understanding of inquiry, the process of abduction generates a hypothesis. It then comes timeto test it: “…[H]e applies the hypothesis through deduction, and infers the necessary consequences, which will be tested… Lastly, by using a kind of induction – that is, a generalization based on a certain number of positive test results – he concludes that the results verify the hypothesis until he finds conflicting evidence.”
The deductive segment of inquiry entails pondering what would logically- syllogistically- follow if the hypothesis were true. This provides the means by which we can then test the hypothesis, and after a certain number of confirmatory test results attained through experimentation, we can apply our inductive pattern-recognition skills to reach a provisional conclusion which can be taken to be true until another “startling fact” troubles the complacency of our beliefs. But pray tell, how might this be applied to artistic or creative endeavors? Over on the previously-quoted Signo-Semio blog,we get a description of Peircean esthetic inquiry that reads almost like a more technical-theoretical version of the Mencken witticism I quoted at the outset of this writing:
“The process used in scientific inquiry can be adapted to the creation of a work of art.
1. At the outset, the artist is in an unsettled state, not due to a surprising fact, but to an unsettling feeling. He is plunged into firstness, into a chaos of “qualities of feelings” (Peirce, 1931-1935, 1.43): a feeling arises that seems appropriate, but there is no object to which it is appropriate. This is like the feeling of “déjà vu”, Peirce explains. It is like having the impression, upon meeting someone, that we have already met him, but we do not know when or where we would have met him nor who he is. The sense of recognition that arises seems appropriate, without having any object to which it is appropriate.
2. The artist begins creating the work of art by using abduction. But while scientific abduction consists in hypothesizing a solution to a conceptual problem, artistic abduction or hypothesis consists in trying to express the problem, in letting qualities of feelings arise, in trying to capture them, in “thinking” them, and considering them as appropriate.
3. Next, employing a kind of deduction, the artist projects his hypothesis into his work; that is, he is going to present the qualities of feeling by giving them form, by embodying them in an object to which they could be appropriate. In taking form as this object, the work of art creates its own referent – it is self-representing. The hypothesis, which is initially vague, becomes focused, or made more precise, through projection into a form, and can then be “tested” by induction.
4. The last stage is induction, which is the artist’s judgment of his work. How can the artist test the value of his creation? Not at all in reference to any external reality, since a work of art is self-representing, but in reference to itself. A work of art is self-adequate when it presents itself as a reasonable feeling, when it is the intelligible expression of a synthesized quality of feeling (Peirce, 1931-1935, and 5.132).
Works of art are not necessarily “beautiful” in the customary sense. In order to define the esthetic ideal, Peirce replaces the notion of “beauty” by the Greek term “kalos” – what is admirable in itself – which for Peirce is the presentation of a reasonable feeling (1931-1932, 1.615).
The function of a work of art is to make qualities of feeling intelligible. Intelligible expression necessarily implies thirdness, or the use of signs, but since qualities of feeling are found at the level of firstness, they can only be expressed through iconic signs (signs that refer to their object at the level of firstness: see the chapter on Peirce’s semiotics). A work of art is thus an iconic sign, which Peirce also calls a hypoicon (1931-1935, 2.276).”
As I’ve already dawdled a little too much hashing out the different modes of logical reasoning, to the best of my very modest ability, I won’t allow myself to get distracted with too much by the way of introductory material on Peirce’s categories and related semiotic system. I highly recommend any interested readers who are unfamiliar with them readSigno-Semio’s account.
One may detect in the Peircean process of artistic creation an echo of the “intentionality” commonly associated with phenomenology, particularly in the shift from the domain of Firstness suggested by the “qualities of feeling” to possibly appropriate “objects” which may embody them. Consciousness needs to be directed towards an object to attain legibility as typically-experienced “awareness.” The structure of that awareness can be understood in semiotic terms, and has a specific character when directed towards creative ends. The qualities of feelings seek their objects to make themselves known in the work of art, or in more precise words, and again to lean on Signo-Semio, “[t]he purpose of a work of art is to capture firstness by making it intelligible. The only way to achieve this is by means of iconic signs. However, a pure icon remains unrepresentable; it cannot be materialized. It can only be thought, or rather, “seen in thought”, felt in thought, iconically thought. The work of art is a construction made of iconic signs and leads the receiver to the iconic thought.” And so, the work of art can be considered a particular type of sign: the hypoicon. The hypoicon is distinguishable from the pure icon because it is an external object, belonging to Thirdness, whereas the pure icon only exists mentally, or in Firstness. I would argue that “work of art” in this context seems more specifically to refer to traditional visual arts along with, perhaps, music. Regarding literature, with its obvious dependence on the conventionality of language, things would seem to proceed more symbolically, though if one considers the immediacy of the subjective literary experience as a coherent whole, we end up with something more like a hypoicon. It must be made clear, however, that to regard the mental experience of reading a text as a concrete “hypoicon” requires some critical separation from the immediacy of the experience, since a hypoicon cannot be merely mental. In typical fashion, Peirce identified three types of hypoicon, and the third type, metaphor, is clearly the most germane. To quote the critic Joao Queiroz: “The metaphor is an icon of analogical relations between interpretative effects, or the interpretants. The metaphor represents the interpretative effect of a sign by creating an analogical parallelism with another interpretant.”
I will return to the iconic qualities of literary experience shortly. First, it may be helpful to define the literary text as a sign more definitively. In accordance with Peirce’s ten categories of sign functioning, it would be a complex form of rhematic symbolic legisign, or a “Class-8” sign. It is important to understand that Peirce’s ten classes of sign are not static labels for this or that perceptual phenomenon; they indicate something more like a hierarchy of interpretive processes that a single phenomenon can be subject to, and when we characterize the work of art as a “Class-8” sign we are simply saying that it typically prompts that level of semiotic process. We read the novel, so understood as a legisign because it is conventional, or in line with cultural habits and definitions that dictate its legibility as a concept. Comprehending the words, we find the sign’s relationship with the object is symbolic; the conventional sign (legisign) comes to its object by means of the established rules of language, conjuring the material of the interpretant, which is rhematic because of the immediacy of the experience imparted by the images, events, linguistic rhythms, and sensory inputs the reader experiences through the text. We have a form of Thirdness leading us to Firstness. The literary theorist John K. Sheriff may be useful here: “Peirce does not write extensively about art as sign, but he makes clear in various writings that art always partakes of the mode of being of Firstness as well as Secondness or Thirdness. Literary art, being inseparable from language, of course partakes of Thirdness (is a Symbol), but it creates an interpretant that has the mode of being of Firstness (is a Rheme)” (76).
The voyage that a reader undergoes from the point of symbolic Thirdness to experiential Firstness itself involves “iconization.” This was memorably described by the criticChristina Ljungberg:
“Cognitive activities such as reading involve orienting ourselves in the fictional world of literature in which meaning is constructed by the reader who interprets the verbal signs. In this sense, iconicity is generated by the readers as they decipher the signs, in their activity of making meaning – much like a detective trying to solve a murder case which, even though clues are indexical signs, involves evoking possible scenarios by calling up images, structuring these by putting them in context, and then picturing potential motifs and lines of development by comparing these to similar cases (cf. Ljungberg 1999: 13-14). Reading experientially is thus the performance of actively taking part in the dialogue with the text, the performative generation of a fictional world, a mental space in which we are able to move (cf. Gass 1985: 227; Colapietro 2010: 40). Similarity plays a fundamental role for such cognitive activities. As Dines Johansen argues, literature “mimes and stages, as it were, desires and passions, that is, it invites not only intellectual understanding but empathy” (Johansen 2002: 326). To “iconize” a literary text, he suggests, means to evoke images connected to memories and fantasies that are drive cathected. Johansen discerns three ways of iconizing texts, namely imaginative iconization or “imaginization”, calling forth mental images generated by different modes of perception and conceived by what is represented; “diagrammatization” or structuring the network or diagram of what is represented in the text, ‘reading for the plot’; or “allegorization”, relating relationships of the text world to other conceptual structures (ibid., 2002: 327). Reading literature thus means “working with two sets of references, one referring to the universe of the text, the other one to the lifeworld and the memories of the reader. The constant intertwining of these two sets of references ends in identification”; it also explains why an exciting text causes real sensory-motor activity (ibid., 2002: 329). The phenomenon of similarity is crucial here. Even if the images evoked by readers from a similar culture will never be identical since we all contribute with our private experiences to the “iconizing” of the text, they will be similar. Subjectivizing it does not mean making it personal and unique but includes “objective” properties and mind sets as well as the cultural imaginary and our species-specific make-up (cf. Johansen 2002; Ljungberg 2009).”
This process of iconization, while most relevant to the task of literary interpretation and criticism, holds a compelling resemblance to the early phase of the artist’s path to creation: the startling, complacency-shaking qualities of feeling occasion an artist to seek out the objects that may match them for the creation of his artwork. I am, for the purposes of this inquiry, most interested in that unsettling, disruptive quality of Firstness the artist initially experiences that prompts his creative actions. The unsettling quality has led to a cultural mythology around the concept of the Tortured Genius, or the creative who derives inspiration from his or her mental illness and emotional instability. Mencken was satirical about this concept: “He [the artist] is… a more delicate fellow than we are.” My impression from the sources on Peirce that I’ve encountered so far (I may yet encounter others) was that he was more logical, and associated the artist’s disturbance with the creative energies and observational prowess of the inductive sciences. The emotional-psychological state of the artist he considered less important than the formal structure of his creative journey, or how it proceeded semiotically in the mode of creative inquiry.
All of this leads me to a consideration of a fascinating article with the title “Moods and the Muse” that recently came into my purview. It was written by Bruce Bower and published in the June 17, 1995 issue of the periodical Science News. Leading, appropriately, with an account of the notoriously tempestuous Romantic poet Lord Byron, the article endeavors to present some myth-busting research concerning the alleged tie between mental instability and creative acumen. The opening paragraph says of Byron, “His volatile temperament frequently set off sparks of poetic imagination… Byron expresses a widespread intuition that creativity and genius feed off mental turmoil.” More ancient cultures (the Greeks, etc.) associated some of the more colorful and expressive modes of madness with divine inspiration, and believed they could influence sublime creative endeavors and spirited performances. In our modern age, the spiritual has been supplanted by the medical. As Bower says, “Modern scientists have conducted more than a dozen studies documenting a higher rate of mental disorders, particularly of mood such as depression and manic depression, in painters, poets, musicians, and novelists.” Of course, there are plenty of mentally ill individuals who never attain creative greatness, just as there are many people who attain creative greatness who are fairly mentally stable, even-tempered, and emotionally content. Regardless, it would seem that mental illness and artistic endeavor go hand-in-hand often enough to lend some credence to the cultural myth of the Tortured Genius, and it provides a hint as to the common character of the “unsettling feeling” which prompts the Peircean abduction that shapes the artistic hypothesis in pursuit of an imaginative form. Like any prominent myths, however, it cries out for, if not a debunking, then certainly some attenuation or nuance. The psychiatrist Arnold M. Ludwig, employed at the University of Kentucky Medical Center at the time of the publication of Bower’s article, was more than up to this task. He insisted that the connection between mood conditions and novel patterns of thought has been somewhat overstated and predicated on an overly narrow view of “creativity.” There may be something to the popular notion of the Tempestuous Romantic Poet à la Byron, but the creativity of the research scientist or the architect would seem to emerge from a more mellow disposition. There is a point of commonality with the Tempestuous Poet, though, and it immediately summons the specter of Peirce: “’Mental illness is not the price people pay for their creative gifts,’ [Ludwig said] ‘While mental disturbances may provide individuals with an underlying sense of unease that seems necessary for sustained creative activity, these disturbances are not the only source for inner tension.’” The ‘underlying sense of unease’ is what ‘seems to be necessary for sustained creative activity.’ While the word ‘seems’ is doing some necessary hedging work here to keep the conversation appropriately scientific, it is nonetheless tempting to think that Ludwig is (unknowingly?) appealing to the ‘startling fact’ or ‘unsettled feeling’ earlier invoked by Peirce that elicits the abductive journey towards hypothesis, and whatever creative and scientific inquiry may follow. Creative minds would seem to be exceptionally prone to this unsettlement, and it is that, and not mental illness per se, that makes artists (or scientists, or philosophers, or many others besides) of them. To put it slightly differently, one could suggest that mental disturbance more generally instead of mental illness in the diagnosable sense is truly the key to sustained creativity through frequent unsettlement of belief. Just the same, different varieties of mental illness seem to carry very specific modes of disturbance, and these modes have implications for the specific path taken by the individual artist in their endeavor. The psychiatrist Kay R. Jamison, who has also studied the association between mental illness and creativity, is discussed in the Bower article alongside Ludwig, and Bower paraphrases her insights on the matter as follows: “Mild episodes of mania boost the fluency and frequency of thoughts… For instance, mildly manic patients spontaneously use unusual words and creative sound associations, such as rhymes and alliteration, more often than emotionally healthy controls… Mania produces other effects conducive to creative accomplishment… such as the ability to work long hours without sleep, to focus on ideas intensely, to maintain bold and restless attitudes, and to experience deeply a variety of emotions.” From a Peircean perspective, the phrase “frequency of thoughts” is suggestive. It seems indicative of constant bouts of startling disturbances, or recurrent plunges into Firstness that compel the hypothesizing of theoretical resolutions. No doubt many of the inward disturbances can foment semiotic processes that need no external realization, but I would imagine many of the most intense ones do.
And on that note, I wish to conclude this admittedly rambling speculative piece (which turned out to be more quote and summary coupled with vague associative implications than novel intervention; such is the habit of the distracted mind) with a somewhat narcissistic sketch. Some months ago, I wrote a poem that I genuinely liked. It was just four short verses, all written in iambic tetrameter (I think, I tried), and I thought it turned out quite good. That is, when I went back to re-read it, I found that all three brands of iconization that were mentioned in that Ljungberg piece I quoted earlier played out in my head, and that is not something I could say about most of the material I have written recently or ever. My desire to understand how I might recapture the creative process which birthed it prompted me to revisit Peirce’s thoughts on inquiry and esthetics. If I were to characterize my memory of writing this poem in a manner which dovetailed with the Peircean program, I would start by recalling that the troubling feeling that prompted it was anger. The inchoate quality of anger experienced as Firstness forced a sense of urgency to my hypothesizing of an appropriate artistic problem to accommodate the feeling. I came to the following proposal: anger prompts a contradictory impulse, or a desire to ‘push back,’ usually against the object that is perceived as provoking the anger, though I assume most who may read this are familiar enough with the concept of transference to appreciate that that may not always be the case. The contradictory impulse, so forged in rage, requires an immense and urgent theme to confer that sense of aesthetic effectiveness. The search for the theme uncovers a kinship between feelings; anger is delivered by fear. Not arbitrarily, death emerges as my chosen theme; it is suitably immense, adequately related to my unsettlement of feeling, and is attractive as an artistic subject when handled in counterintuitive, novel, or contradictory ways. And so, my artistic hypothesis pertained to a contrarian stance on the significance of death. I then proceeded in search of my objects, or the images, motifs, metaphors, and rhythms that could be gathered to give my hypothesis form. And yes, I would call this entire voyage therapeutic. As for the matters leading unto induction… follow the bouncing ball.
High Pressure Days 