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Art should represent only the artist. The writer should not
be reflected in any manner in the things he writes. Many great people think
likewise and they are not wrong because everybody has a different opinion
regarding the things there are in the world-some of them more ridiculous than
the other but they are there all the same.
I personally think that one cannot separate the writer from
his writings. It is inevitable that the poet writes more about himself than he
thinks he does. You cannot divide love from hate or hate from love, you cannot
view them as two distinct entities, the very notion of it is hilarious. How can
they be different when they are formed from the same chaos of things?
Similarly, how can a writer call his work his own if they are not borne out of
the same beauty of misery?
It is true that I admire the writings of the people who
think that art should represent only art, I have read very little of them but
whatever I have, I have devoured it like a delicious Sunday meal-Oscar Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian Gray, a couple of poems by T. S. Eliot (which were
prescribed in the course of my studies, out of which I treasure most a
beautiful poem by the name of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) and some
very little prose by P. B. Shelley that anticipates Eliot’s unique theory of
Impersonalisation. These are writers who have proved their mettle in the world
of literature time and again and I am not here to counter but merely to express
what I feel, however naive and an amateur I maybe regarding all aspects of
literature and art, I think as an individual it is not wrong to give words to
your thoughts, however devoid of knowledge they may sound. Freedom of
expression and all that.
To come back to the writer and his work, I realize the
despair and the frustration the creator
feels when his/her creation is directly associated with his being, his thoughts
and his feelings. All of this tends to give a rather personal edge to the work
created, the unnecessary sensationalism which human beings feel the need to
give to everything ever produced in this world. His/her work, which is a result
of honest bleeding (not literal of course but nonetheless true for that),
gleaming beads of sweat, his long line of regrets and blunders, his sins and
his lies, the beauty of his soul and spirit – everything diminished into
nothing but a piece of entertainment to be gawked at with vulgar, mocking eyes
is a shame that people should be condemned for in the strictest possible
manner. But it’s a cruel world we live in where we are judged and criticized endlessly till we die, this is not to say that all
criticism is bad but one should take great care while executing this art for in
it lies the whole world of the artist.
A beautiful American songwriter and singer once said that
one should not criticize what one doesn’t understand (Bob Dylan) and he was not
wrong, not only because it is nearly impossible to be right and wrong in this
world of contradictions but also because he was saying something very close to
the truth. The Writer and his Writings are perhaps two of the greatest lovers
the world came to produce together and in our mad hurry to get things done just
for the sake of doing it, we must take care not trample over them. This is what
I think, the more now I come to think of it, the more I am convinced that I
should not have used the powerful and destructive ‘I’ to write what I felt is mine. I
shall be more cautious the next time. For how is it of any consequence to the
world what a single person thinks? When nothing else seems to matter, how can I?
People can be so self contained and vain sometimes. It is a wonder.
