“It is the type of knowledge characteristic of the good man in his judgments of moral questions, of the mystic with regard to divine things, of the artist with respect to his work.”
Local Hero
How do we know what we know? The 1983 film “Local Hero” takes place largely in a small quirky fishing village on the north coast of Scotland. At one point the Aurora Borealis lights up the night sky, prompting two different but related conversations.
The first conversation takes place between a young business intern named Danny, and the young scientist, Marina that he is infatuated with (who may or may not be a mermaid.)
Danny looks up, “Holy mackerel, what’s happened?”
“That’s just the Northern Lights,” replies Marina. “Aurora Borealis, high energy protons spilling over into our atmosphere. They get through the magnetic shield where it’s weak, at the poles.”
“Ah it’s still beautiful, I don’t care what you call it,” says Danny. “How often does this happen?”
“Och, any old time. Although it’s best when the sun is active, that gets the solar wind up and that’s where the protons come from.”
“You say the darnedest things, Marina.”
The other conversation takes place a short distance away between Mac, a Houston businessman, there to close a real estate deal, and Gordon, the local tavern owner/barkeeper/chef/public accountant.
Mac is also looking up at the sky. “What’s happening up there?”
“That’s the Northern Lights, Mac,” responds Gordon.
“What the heck is that?”
“It’s pretty technical, nice though isn’t it?” Nice is word we use to cover all sorts of things, including, as Danny points out, beauty.
Taken together these two conversations tells us a great deal about the natural phenomena of the Northern Lights. We learn about protons, magnetic fields, and solar winds. This is what the ancients referred to as Speculative Knowledge. It is knowledge that comes to us through the scientific method. It is a knowledge based on data and facts. It is analytical knowledge.
This is very important and useful knowledge but it is incomplete. It does not tell us what it is like to experience the Aurora Borealis. For that we rely on a different type of knowledge that the ancients referred to as Affective Knowledge, also known as Connatural or Poetic Knowledge. It is knowledge that comes to us from emotions. It is this affective or poetic knowledge that tells us the experience is beautiful. We know this because we are intuitively making a comparison with other experiences that we feel to be beautiful. It is analogical knowledge.
Flesh and Spirit
Men and women are composite beings. We are creatures composed of body and soul, intellect and emotion. Connatural knowledge is the knowledge that comes from our intuitive side rather than our logical side. It is real knowledge that is instrumental in our development of virtue, It allows us to grasp the mysterious, those things that cannot be explained by speculative knowledge. Poet and author, Aimé Césaire wrote, “Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.” “Poetry and Knowledge,” 1990.
As creatures of both flesh and spirit we need to rely on both types of knowledge to make sense of the world. Sadly, since the Renaissance and the so-called Age of Enlightenment, poetic knowledge has taken a back seat and our schools are almost entirely dominated by speculative knowledge.
But there is much in the world that we know to be real but cannot be measured, analyzed or explained rationally, things that cause our hearts to burn within us though we cannot say why. We know that love, for example, is a real thing, but rational language fails us when we try to explain it. That job is best left to poets who explain love by comparing it to something else, hence poetic knowledge, the knowledge we arrive at through analogy.
“It is the type of knowledge characteristic of the good man in his judgments of moral questions, of the mystic with regard to divine things, of the artist with respect to his work.” John of St. Thomas, (Curs. theol. In 1am2ae, 70.18.4.11).
Poetic Knowledge and the arts
An interesting aspect of our human nature is that it tends to take deep analytical concepts and reduce them to short pithy quotes that get directly to the heart of the matter. These quotes are then often mis-attributed to an individual and the quotes then take on a life of their own. In Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” Machiavelli never says “the ends justify the means.” But the sentiment is certainly present in the work. In fact you could argue that it is the theme of the entire book.
There is popular quote attributed to Michelangelo, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” There is no primary source that supports the idea that the great Renaissance sculptor ever said this. However the quote does convey much of Michelangelo’s thoughts about the art-form.
In the closing years of the 16th century a debate arose among artists as to which was the highest form of art, painting, sculpture, or architecture, and to a degree poetry and musical composition. Michelangelo was of the opinion, not surprisingly, that sculpting was a higher discipline than painting and that painting reached its highest form when the build up of paint reached the level of relief carving. A poet named Benedetto Varchi wrote a treatise in which he argued that those things that have the same end are one and the same thing, at least philosophically. This viewpoint actually changed Michelangelo’s mind concerning painting and he wrote a letter to Messer Varchi.
In the letter he agreed with the assessment that from a philosophical, or we might even say a theological, point of view those things which have the same end are one and the same thing. He went on to observe that the difference between painting and sculpture is that sculpture removes, and painting adds.
The painter begins with a blank canvas and adds material to achieve his vision. The sculptor begins with a block of stone and removes material to achieve his. Both disciplines achieve the same end.
To put it another way, according to an old story:
“How do you carve a horse?” the bystander asked the sculptor. “Well,” explained the artisan, “I begin with a block of marble, and chip away anything that does not look like a horse.”
It is connatural knowledge that allows the sculptor to see a horse or an angel in a block of stone. It is poetic knowledge that allows the painter to see in the blank canvas a landscape illuminated with divine light. It is affective knowledge that informs the artist’s sensibility and lets them know when a line is wrong, or a brushstroke is misplaced, or the little bit of marble should be chipped away.
All artists have experienced a moment when the smallest adjustment to a work changes the work entirely. As they near completion of a painting, a sculpture, a poem, or a design, they may sense that something is wrong or out of place. They may stare at the work for days turning it over in their mind trying to determine what that something is. They may even put the work aside for a few days. When they come back to it with fresh eyes, they see immediately what needs to be done, to complete the work and make it whole. It is this poetic knowledge that allows the artist to do this.
As human beings we are always seeking to return to God. We grasp after Beauty because we grasp for Him who is Beauty. Poetic Knowledge is instrumental in our human striving for Beauty. This intuitive grasping, when it is balanced with the logical part of our intellect, informs the creative intuition of the artist. This allows the artist to create works of Beauty that appeal to a viewer’s own intuitive knowledge and permits them to grasp or understand a mystery as it is conveyed through a work of art.
When asked how an artist arrived at the idea for a particular work of art, they will often shrug and simply say they were inspired, sometimes inspired by a specific encounter or circumstance. But the creative inspiration of the artist is a little more complex. It is a process in which knowledge from the emotions and knowledge from the intellect come together and express themselves in the work of the artist.
At Baptism, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and brings us sanctifying grace. For the artist that is open to the working of the Holy Spirt, their work is elevated and transformed by that sanctifying grace.
The artist creates Beauty for the non-artist to experience. Both artist and non-artist are drawn to Beauty from different approaches but it is this intuitive power of the intellect that drives both to pursue the Beautiful.
Pax vobiscum