Issue #21: How to Live an Artistic Life
Rilke on Poetry, Boethius on Music, Sontag on Raising Children and Rude Jokes from c. 79 AD
Welcome back to our dusty little corner of the library. Attentive readers will pick up on a slightly new format this week, the result of my first genuine attempt to keep the size of these things manageable.
This should help with my sanity, but—more to the point—it should facilitate your picking out of the bits you fancy while you scroll across another wall of text.
Less blather, more bite. So, in that spirit, on with the stuff you're really here for…
In the issue:
Rainer Maria Rilke on the Real Meaning of an Artistic Life #literature
Boethius on the Three Types of Music #music #philosophy
Susan Sontag on How to Raise a Child #moral psychology
The Fascinating Origins of Las Lajas Sanctuary in Nariño, Colombia #architecture #mythology
Reading the Walls of Pompeii #history
Rainer Maria Rilke on the Real Meaning of an Artistic Life #literature
Source: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (originally published in 1929). Letter One. Translated by Stephen Mitchell
At a Glance: It's not recognition that gives your work meaning, but the quiet urgency that drove you to make it in the first place.
"No one can advise and help you, no one. There is only one way: Go within."
Some people check the news. Others check the weather. And then there’s people in the so-called creator economy, refreshing our subscriber count like it's a stock ticker during a market crash.
It’s difficult not to get sucked into obsessing over the numbers. The entire social media ecosystem is engineered to deliver that dopamine rush every time a like, comment, or subscriber rolls in.
But the work of resisting those base impulses is work worth doing.
Rainer Maria Rilke knew nothing of follower counts or algorithms, but his advice in the first of his Letters to a Young Poet feels eerily relevant.
Rilke began writing Letters to a Young Poet in 1903 in response to a letter he received from a 19-year-old aspiring poet named Franz Xaver Kappus.
Kappus was a military academy student who was also struggling with whether to pursue a literary career. He had come across Rilke’s poetry and admired his work, so he reached out, hoping for feedback on his own poems and guidance on whether he should continue down the path of a writer.
Instead of offering direct critique, Rilke responded with a series of deeply personal and philosophical letters.
The first piece of advice he offers is to suggest that Kappus is doing the wrong thing entirely by seeking external validation for his work, writing that "there is nothing that manages to influence a work of art less than critical words."
"You ask whether your poems are good. You send them to publishers; you compare them with other poems; you are disturbed when certain publishers reject your attempts. Well now, since you have given me permission to advise you, I suggest that you give all that up. You are looking outward and, above all else, that you must not do now. No one can advise and help you, no one."
The young poet, and every single one of us who've looked anxiously for a like or two at the bottom of a post, is gazing outward when the journey should in fact be in the opposite direction. The path of the artist is solitary, Rilke suggests, lit not by praise, but by your own quiet, inner flame.
"Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, "I must," then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity."
Rilke directs the young poet to look inwards, too, for the subject matter of his creativity, counselling him to aim to express what is inside: the dreams that visit, the memories that linger, the sorrows that take hold, and to describe it all with "fervent, quiet, and humble sincerity."
If you are indeed "poet enough," you will find bountiful wealth to call up without having to look further afield than your everyday life.
And after all that? If what results from this turning inward is poetry, or any other kind of art for that matter, "you will not think to ask someone whether it is good."
How could you? If your art is a true expression of necessity "you will hear in [it] your own voice; you will see in [it] a piece of your life, a natural possession of yours."
Good and bad, praise and criticism lose their power to sway you when your art flows from this deeper place. When you create from that quiet well within, the noise of the world fades.
As Rilke concludes:
"A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. This, its source, is its criterion; there is no other."
Key Takeaways:
Do not look outward for recognition of your artistic work. There is nothing that manages to influence a work of art less than critical words.
Instead, dig deep within yourself to find the answer to the question of whether you "must" create. If the answer is in the affirmative, you will no longer think to ask others if it is good.
A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. That is its only criterion.
Something to think about:
If no one ever saw your work, would you still create it? Why?
Anicius Boethius on The Three Kinds of Music #music #philosophy
Source: The Fundamentals of Music by Anicius Boethius (originally written in the 6th Century and published in 1492). Chapter One. Translated by Calvin Bower
At a Glance: Music isn’t just sound. It’s the secret architecture of the universe.
"when we hear what is properly and harmoniously united in sound in conjunction with that which is harmoniously coupled and joined together within us and are attracted to it, then we recognize that we ourselves are put together in its likeness."
Music isn't just an art form to be admired and enjoyed at a distance. Rather, it's something more like a profound force, something woven into the fabric of our very being and into the cosmos that surrounds us.
Even if we tried to reject or ignore it, its presence in our lives, consciously or unconsciously, remains unavoidable.
This, or something very close to it, is the point made by Boethius, a Roman philosopher and statesman of the early 6th century whose work bridged classical thought and medieval philosophy. In the opening chapter of his Fundamentals of Music, he writes:
"it appears without doubt that music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired."
Given this all-encompassing influence of music on human life, it stands to reason that:
"the intellect ought to be summoned, so that this art, innate through nature, might also be mastered, comprehended through knowledge."
And that, in a nutshell, is what Boethius takes the following 200 pages of his dense and almost entirely theoretical text to explore.
On this quest to understand the nature of music, Boethius turns to Pythagoras as his guiding figure, drawing on the ancient philosopher's belief that music, when you think about it, is really all about numbers.
Here's how I think it works.
When things—say a drumstick, or a string—move or bump into each other, they make sounds. The pitch of these sounds depends on the frequency of vibrations: faster vibrations produce higher pitches, slower vibrations produce lower ones.
The relationships between pitches, in turn, can be expressed using simple numerical ratios, such as 2:1 or 3:2, which correspond to musical intervals like the octave and the fifth.
Music turns out to be all about numbers, then, and it is only through understanding these numbers that, for Boethius, we can come towards an appreciation of the unchanging essence of music.
For a non-mathematician like myself, this mathematical view of music is interesting for one main reason. By understanding music as the science of numerical ratios, an ordered and proportional relationship among parts, Boethius is able to expand the definition of music to encompass something beyond the field of audible sound itself.
This brings him to divide music into three distinct types: musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis.
Musica Instrumentalis is essentially the music we actually hear. It is the sound produced by voices, instruments, and other vibrating bodies. But for Boethius, it is also the least important, as it is simply the outward expression of deeper, more abstract harmonies.
Musica Humana refers to the internal music of the human being. It is the harmony between body and soul, reason and emotion. A well-ordered life or a virtuous soul, in Boethius’s view, reflects a kind of inner musical harmony. As he asks:
"what unites the incorporeal nature of reason with the body if not a certain harmony and, as it were, a careful tuning of low and high pitches?"
Musica Mundana is the broadest definition of music, and it relates to the “music of the spheres” or the cosmic music that governs the movements of celestial bodies. The moon's rotation around Earth, the Earth's rotation around the sun, the combinations of the elements, the diversity of the seasons and the essential harmony of the universe.
Though inaudible to the human ear, this type of music reflects the divine order and balance of the cosmos, which mirrors the same mathematical relationships found in audible music.
For Boethius, then, music is not primarily an art form or performance, but a mathematical and philosophical discipline. He invites us to consider it not as cultural expression but as a reflection of cosmic and human order, a bridge between the mind, the body, and even the universe itself.
Key Takeaways:
Since music is naturally a part of us, we should use our intellect to truly understand and master it through study and reflection.
Musical notes follow simple ratios that show how deeply connected music is to the order of the universe.
As such, music can be divided into three types: the music of instruments, the music of body and soul, and the music of the cosmos.
Something to think about:
Is the human soul something that can be “tuned” like an instrument? If so, how should we go about tuning it?
Extract of the Week: Susan Sontag on How to Raise a Child #moral psychology
Source: Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
Be consistent.
Don't speak about him to others (e.g., tell funny things) in his presence. (Don't make him self-conscious.)
Don't praise him for something I wouldn't always accept as good.
Don't reprimand him harshly for something he's been allowed to do.
Daily routine: eating, homework, bath, teeth, room, story, bed.
Don't allow him to monopolize me when I am with other people.
Always speak well of his pop. (No faces, sighs, impatience, etc.)
Do not discourage childish fantasies.
Make him aware that there is a grown-up world that's none of his business.
Don't assume that what I don't like to do (bath, hairwash) he won't like either.
Something to think about:
What does Sontag miss from her list? Which values or principles deserve greater weight?
Image of the Week: Las Lajas Sanctuary in Nariño, Colombia #architecture #mythology
According to tradition, the story of Las Lajas Sanctuary begins in 1754, when María Mueses de Quiñones, an Indigenous woman, and her deaf-mute daughter Rosa were caught in a storm while travelling through Colombia’s dramatic Guáitara River canyon.
Taking shelter among the sheer stone cliffs known as las lajas, something extraordinary happened: Rosa spoke for the first time, crying out, “The Mestiza is calling me!” (a reference to a vision of the Virgin Mary appearing on the rock face).
Word of the miracle spread, and what was once a moment of refuge became a place of enduring reference.
A Collection: Reading the Walls of Pompeii #history
Preserved by volcanic ash, the graffiti of Pompeii gives us a rare kind of history, not of emperors and rulers but of lovers and drunks.
Reading the walls of the ancient city can bring us closer to the texture of daily life than any history book, and it's a texture that is candid, crude, and—occasionally—hilarious.
Here's a collection of my favourites.
Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here
Chie, I hope your hemorrhoids rub together so much that they hurt worse than when they ever have before!
Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates
Phileros is a eunuch!
If anyone sits here, let him read this first of all: if anyone wants a screw, he should look for Attice; she costs 4 sestertii.
Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.
Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!
O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin
Credit: https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/curiosities/obscene-graffiti-of-ancient-romans/amp/
That's your lot this week. Thanks for being here and for making it this far. As always, I really appreciate the support. Have lovely week!
Ms Sontag might have added: Encourage the kid to ramble or rant from time to time without direction or interruption — while you listen carefully. You will both discover surprising aspects of who this person is — distinguishing what you learn from what you know about sibs, peers, yourself at that age.
A lovely start to the day…and interesting things to ponder on…thank you.