This is a guest post by Sidney Homan, author of Art’s Visionary Moment
I speak here only for myself, not out of modesty or even a fear of generalization, but because I have had increasing doubts about the value of my own scholarship—I stress, again, the “my own.” In point of fact, I envy those colleagues who practice and thereby sustain scholarship in the traditional sense, employing critical theories, making, say, a connection between the age and its literature, advancing the cause of learning—in the best sense of that phrase. However, I am not sure I can any longer do that. Should I have spent more of my time as an actor and director, collaborating in the making of a work rather than as a scholar analyzing the process? I’ve published twenty-two books, eight of them collections of essays by others, but still, was it really worth it, writing about someone else’s creative work?
And then, such doubts were relieved when my friend Dan O’Hara, now Professor Emeritus of Temple University, shared with me T. S. Eliot’s description of the function of great art: “The experience of a poem is the experience both of a moment and of a lifetime. […] There is a first, or an early moment which is unique, […] which can never be forgotten, but […] is never repeated integrally; and yet which would become destitute of significance if it did not survive in a larger whole of experience.” Dan suggested we collaborate on a collection of essays addressing Eliot’s definition, calling the work Art’s Visionary Moment: Personal Encounters with Works That Last a Lifetime.
What would happen, Dan and I speculated, if we asked scholars, writers, and artists to recall a particular work of art that has stayed with them for a lifetime (Eliot’s “larger whole of experience”)? More important, why has it stayed? Or grown in importance? Or changed with them over the years?
Invariably, the key word for our purpose would be “personal encounters,” for the focus is on what happens to the reader or audience member, the collaboration between the text and the person encountering that text. An “impure aesthetics,” if you will. The work—whether novel or poem, film or play, or art in any form—invites us to experience “art’s visionary moment,” and we invariably, inevitably translate that moment to the larger reality of our lives.
To put the focus of this collection bluntly: we asked our contributors to speak about their experience with the work—and why. Rather than give a list of specific questions about or guidelines highlighting the purpose of Art’s Visionary Moment, I worked individually with the writers in defining what they saw as their function, the way they could contribute to the collection.
With two exceptions—and this was because of impossible schedule demands—everyone we asked leaped (I use the word conservatively) at our invitation. Some responses were almost predictable. Others, complete surprises. “Personal,” as signaled in the collection’s sub-title, ranged from the literal or direct to the heart-felt, indeed emotional. The strategy of approaching the requests, the prose style—both were similarly varied. (I should add that Dan asked that he be “kicked upstairs” and serve as consultant; our “baby” had, for better or worse, now become my baby.) Works and authors covered? Just a partial list: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon,” Robinson Crusoe, plastic art, Uncle Vanya, Picasso’s “Three Musicians,” the movie Oliver!, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
I’ve enjoyed the role as editor in other collections, but this time the experience was more intense, more intimate, and there were often long, wonderful conversations by e-mail and Zoom with the contributors.
Reviews of the book were especially gratifying, and reassuring, helping to temper doubts about my own academic work. One pointed out that “criticism sometimes forgets what art does,” and so “fails to care, or care enough. This collection cares,” and as a result, “Literary criticism just got real.” Another observed that “the best criticism derives not from theoretical or ideological systems of thought, but from those deep, indeed transformational, experiences we have when our encounters with art change the way we think or feel.”
And me? I did an actor’s—and a scholar’s—take on the brilliant, amoral monologue that opens Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York.” Maybe I have been a little hard on myself—on my own scholarship.