A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

by Joseph Campbell

  My life has been one job, one wife, one image: the Grail. This is known as conservatism. There is a won-derful line in the Portrait, where Stephen’s friend, who’s been hearing all this heretical stuff, asks if he intends to become a Protestant. “I said that I had lost the faith,” Stephen replies, “but not that I had lost my self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?”140

  * * *

  Buddhist art before the first century was mostly narrative: the life of the Buddha and similar discursive art, although the Buddha himself was never depicted. However, with the Mahayana realization that samsara is nirvāṇa and all things are Buddha things, the earliest Buddha images, and other images, began to appear—all presented as revelatory of that realization—and the art object itself became a revelation of Buddha consciousness. It became transparent to the radiance, claritas,. which is what we have been talking about.

  In Christian art, by contrast, I don’t think you have that concept, because in the orthodoxy tangible things are not regarded as being informed by the Christ. It is only in the Thomas Gospel that we read, “Split the stick, there am I. Lift the stone. I am there.” And so, in the Christian tradition, one finds only anecdotal. art. The Crucifixion is an anecdote of Jesus’s suffering on the cross. It’s not a revelation. It doesn’t induce esthetic arrest. It’s didactic. Early Christian art was meant to be didactic, because nobody could read. In the Gothic period, the story of Christ and his apostles and disciples was rendered as when you go to Chartres Cathedral.

  I’ve been there five times. Once I used a guidebook to identify every figure in every window. They are all references to anecdotes of the Christiian tradition, and I could get the whole of the Christian doctrine there. The Rose Window, however, does reveal the radiance. It is magnificent art. Looking at it, one experiences esthetic arest. And the cathedral itself is an art object.

  …within the field of a mythology, the symbolic details reflect, indeed, a local material history and environment, yet they are of an order of the mind, and to be interpreted by the faculty of reason as expressions of a spiritual insight.…The idea of a temple (or European cathedral) is what is here announced, an enclosure wherein every feature is meta-phorical of a connoted metaphysical intuition, set apart for ritual enactments.

  The heart in such an environment is at home, as it were, in its own place: removed from the chaotic spectacle of the world of waking consciousness, at rest and at peace in the recognition of a harmony (which is of one’s own nature) informing the whole terrible scene of lives forever consuming lives. And the function, then, of the ritual is to bring one’s manner of life into accord with this non-judgmental perspective in the way, not of crude ego-maintenance in a world one never made, but of synergetic participation in a phantasmagoric rapture.141

  The town of Chartres lives around that cathedral, just as ancient temple cities used to be centered around the temple, which represented the spiritual information the entire city lived by. We have nothing comparable.

  I had the most marvelous experience at Chartres. I had been there for several days going through all of this, and the concierge came to me and asked if I’d like to help him ring the noontime bell. Well, you bet. So we went up the north fleche to where there is a great big bell. The bell is down below you, and there is a seesaw-like thing above it with a little railing across. He stood on one side, I stood on the other, and we hung onto the bar between us. He gave a push, this thing started to move, and our hair was blowing, and then, underneath us: “Bong! Bong!” We were on that damned thing four or five minutes. It was tremendous. Then he brought me down and showed me where he lived.

  Now, in a cathedral of that kind there is a nave and a crossing. Then there is an apse and a choir screen that runs around it. That choir screen was wide enough for a little room to be in there. He had his bed in that little room in the choir screen and lived there. You could see out between the figures, and right there was the Black Virgin. Oh, I tell you, he had a privileged life in that place. Everything went together: the imagery, the architecture, the rhythm of the day, going up to ring the bells. It was a beautifully coordinated existence.

  In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was a body of stories known as the Miracles of the Virgin that included some wonderful little Romances. One of the cutest—years ago it was turned into a miraculous play in New York—was of a nun who was assigned to scrub the chapel floor just when she had a date with her lover. The imaged Virgin comes down, takes the scrub-brush and pail, and says, “Go on out and have your day.” She did not play by the rules of the Cardinals.

  Art, then, is the Virgin’s medium. Art is the vehicle of the revealing power of māyā, the vehicle by which we go from the earth to the transcendent. One can always see the Goddess in the world of art.

  In the Protestant community, where Mariolatry is abominated, there is no art. Go into any New England chapel and you’ll see that it is very pretty, but hymns are the closest things to art that you’ll find. I was raised a Catholic and married Jean, daughter of a Protestant minister, so the first Protestant service I went to was with her. We were standing there singing hymns, and I said to her, “You Protestants do not have images, but just look at the images in this hymn: God coming to my little room and all that kind of thing.”

  One of the most interesting and amusing services I have experienced was in a beautiful church with marvelous stained-glass windows in Grand Rapids, where I gave a sermon entitled “Trick or Treat,” for Halloween, the Celtic festival of All Souls. In the middle of the service, the doors opened, and in came all the children of the congregation wearing masks. The big ones led the way, followed by smaller and smaller kids, until, finally, in came these tiny little tots with these absurd masks. The masked children represented the spirits about to be born. Then they all lined up near one of the upright pianos and sang, “I’ve been working on my costume, all the live long day.” It was really a spiritual experience: the children, the choir—just members of the congregation—it was simply sublime.

  Then I got up in this pulpit and, my god, I tell you, the pulpit is a weapon. Now there’s art for power: just the placement of that thing—where it is in relation to everybody else. Unless you’ve stood in a pulpit, you don’t realize what you have on your side. When you stand there, nobody can hurt you. You are at the prow of a ship, poised to plow right through that sea of faces down below. I did it twice in two years. The first time, I was a little in awe of the pulpit, but the second time, I really knew how to use it.

  * * *

  An artist, to me, is a person who is a competent practitioner of an art. Somebody who just gets up to splash around is not necessarily an artist. One definition of an artist that I heard someone seriously give is: “anybody who, in the telephone book, calls him or herself an artist.” I do not go along with that. Even in the practical arts, the principle of perfection in work is a basic expectation.

  An artist is someone who is completed an art work, not a person who merely intended to. Whether or not it is saleable either this year or next affects neither its intrinsic value nor its intrinsic definition as an art work. Van Gogh never sold a thing, but a couple of his works can make a museum. He was in great psychological trouble, but that man was an artist.

  The word artist is used in a number of ways, the two principle ones, the two extremes, being: (a) one competent in performance and (b) an artist in the fine arts. You cannot be an artist in the fine arts unless you are competent in performance, but you can be competent in cooking or acrobatics or whatnot. But the experience of esthetic arrest has to do with the fine arts. One doesn’t seek esthetic arrest in looking at a good plumbing job. Its real function would be missed.

  I heard of an amusing experiment when LSD was first around. Four bridge players were given light doses of LSD, with the understanding that they would then play bridge. When the cards had been dealt and picked up, all
they did was look at them. There was no playing of the game. It was esthetic arrest, an example of sacred space. The cards were of no use except for esthetic rapture. The object, formerly in certain relevant situations in the life of secular enjoyment, suddenly becomes a thing-in-itself, a final thing.

  In action, it makes a difference whether all you are trying to do is to act or whether you are trying to act competently. It helps a great deal to know what the hell you’re doing. What are you going to do well? Are you going to be a painter, a Picasso? Is this where your life achievement is? That is a real sacrifice of life.

  Whatever choice you make, there is a period of learning and analyzing, when you are not in action, the body is not in performance. Anyone who has taught somebody a skill has seen this stage, where the student is analyzing and trying to do it, but really not in it. Then, finally, the person is able to give expression to what he or she is intending to express.

  My first and strongest experience of this was once when Jean came to Esalen with me and was going to give classes in dance. She got this bunch of people who were not interested in technique, but wanted to dance. What they called creative work was going out, opening their arms, and breathing at the ocean. It was not worth being with them even to see what was going on.

  There is nothing esthetic about a bunch of ballet people doing their bar exercises. Then they move into dance and are still thinking about the rules, and their work is contrived. But then, finally, the rules melt and natural spontaneity takes over again. There is an old standard saying about the arts: “You need to learn all the rules, and then forget them.” That is to say, let them melt back into pure action.

  When young people who’ve not had the schooling I’ve had decide they’re going in for writing, editing, or something like that, I’ve noticed they don’t really have the full equipment. Working on my books, I’ve hired intelligent young people to help me with the editorial aspects, only to discover they can’t read German, they can’t read French., they don’t know this, they don’t know that. It makes me realize what all those years of schooling gave me. The fantastic amount of work that’s all under the water. One sees only the tip of the iceberg.

  In writing a book, you are moving along on the wave of your inspiration and intuition, and then you come to a difficult passage, an area you have to cover in order to get from here to there, and your momentum stops. That’s when you have to bring in the rules.

  Also, in athletics, after you practice and practice, there is a lot you can then do spontaneously. But at certain points, you have to act according to rules for moving the body that are not yet spontaneous to you. I think of pole vaulting or the high hurdles: the time that has to be spent just on the technical posture. Or playing golf: how are you going to hold that club? There is no spontaneity when you are thinking all these things. When that is all absorbed, then you have a stronger propulsion than you had before you were forced to break it all up.

  I don’t think it is proper at all to take the position that C. P. Snow has: namely, that the science—the knowledge, the mathematical side of life—runs in an opposite direction to the life of spontaneous humanistic action. They supplement each other. In literature, for instance, writing sonnets: it takes a lot of practice to make that kind of structure become something that just pours out, but when it does pour out, it is possible to say things that cannot be said without the sonnet form. Form and expression are very close together.

  If you are going to act on the basis of what you know, you cannot just hold onto your knowledge. You have to translate it into a movement. This is the whole thing in the arts. The student studies, studies, studies—learning the techniques, the rules, what it is he must strive for—and when he gets used to doing all of that, then he can move.

  The creative act is

  not hanging on, but yielding

  to new creative movement.

  Think, for instance, of someone studying the piano. There is nothing worse than having somebody in the neighborhood studying the piano, practicing their exercises. There’s nothing at all beautiful about them. Their function is to give you facility. Then presently there comes a point when you have the facility, it happens automatically, and you do not have to think, “do… re…me…fa….” Although analysis facilitates competent action, your spontaneity of action is inhibited when you are constantly thinking of the rules. This is true for everything. The one who attempts to be an artist and has not learned the craft is never going to be an artist.

  If you find you are trying,

  go back to school.

  You’re not ready yet.

  There is a big difference between art as therapy, where the person is trying to become human, and art as art, where the art carries the person past humanity into new spheres. The difference is that, in therapy, the technique and the art object are of no importance, since all you are trying to do is turn a person who’s off the track into someone who is on the track. The therapeutic operation in the art is to bring the person back to his own self, to turn him into a harmonized human being again. But art comes from harmonized human beings—“Art is a harmony parallel to nature.” And if the person is not parallel to nature yet, then art is just a therapy to bring him or her to that point. Therapeutic art is trying to “catch up,” you might say. It is no art for anybody but the person who’s doing it.

  * * *

  Highly stylized dance, like ballet and Indian dance, is a wonderful example of this thing we are talking about: what has to be learned to manipulate the body, all those exercises, eliminates dance fora while. In Hindu dance, the whole body is taken apart: there are certain things the eyes do, certain things the hands do, and so on. Then it is put back together again, and what you get is a transformation of nature in art. It is nothing to look at until you see a dancer who really can do it, and then, my god, another nature comes in on another plane.

  The dance

  is the highest symbol

  of life itself.

  In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying, dancing into the air. His very gestures are of enchantment.… He feels himself to be a god, going about in ecstasy, exalted, like the gods beheld in his dreams.…He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art. In a paroxysm of intoxication the creative power of all nature has come to light in him as the highest rapture of the one that is All. Nature, with its true voice undissembled cries out to us: “Be as I am! I, the primordial ever-creating mother amidst the ceaseless flux of appearances, ever impelling into existence, eternally finding in these transformations satisfaction.”—Nietzsche142

  Art is the set of wings

  to carry you out of

  your own entanglement.

  Spengler makes an interesting distinction between what he calls “art as ornament” and “art as imitation.” The prime example of art as ornament is architecture, where a structure is timeless once it is achieved: there it sits. The opposite, art as imitation, would be the dance: if you do not see a particular performance, you’ll never see that dance again. It is something of a life moment. It’s an idea that has meant a lot to me in realizing the different problems of various artists. One of the sad things about a dancer’s career is that such great moments are of an essence, and anybody who was not there missed it. For instance, what about Pavlova? If you didn’t see that particular performance, it’s gone.

  I have lived close to the dance world ever since my marriage to Jean. She had the idea of dance being a part of her life, so that when dance in the high style was no longer possible, she was able to handle it: always her life, not her art, was the number one thing. Jean has had an elegant career, and she has had a husband who was willing to see it happen. She was taken into Martha Graham’s group just when we were married, and that was a marvelous group of wonderful dancers: Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Jane Dudley, Jean. Believe me, they were all first-rate dancers.

  The big shift tha
t the dancer has to make in later years is that the dance is no longer to be thought of as something in the way of a performance or an exhibition, but rather, like a bird singing, just for itself, and only to the distance the body feels it would be lovely to go. Out of that will come a life, because you are in the center of action of your psyche’s need and joy, and that will radiate into the rest of what you are doing. The whole world will join the dance.

  All we really want to do is dance.

  Sacred Dance is for the gods, not for an audience. This is one of the things that comes up when you try to put folk dance on the stage. It’s for the joy of the people doing the dance, and it just does not work any other way. The fact that dance was cut out of our religions way back in the late Middle Ages has turned dance into a purely secular thing.

  I’m working on the posthumous papers of a young man who went to India to study dance. He was one of Jean’s students at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and he became so fascinated with Indian dance that he went to India. He was a young Jew, who had been studying to be a rabbi, and his family was in great distress when he went over there, not only to dance, but to study the dance of Śiva, an alien god. Being a religiously oriented person, he was fascinated by the religious implications of the dance: the god is the dancer, and you have to become the god to worship the god, to find that god in yourself. What he recognized was the total difference in implication between dancing for an audience and dancing for the god. When you are alone and in your own place, you are dancing for the god and identifying with it. This whole idea is basic to Tantra: to worship a god, you must become that god. No matter what you call the god or think it is, the god you worship is the one you are capable of becoming.