XX
A stray Dalmatian trotting behind the bronze horseman hears something strange, sounding somewhat familiar but muffled by rain. He accelerates slightly and, having overtaken the statue, lifts up his muzzle, hoping to grasp what's coming out of the horseman's mouth. In theory it should be easy for him, since his Dalmatia was the birthplace of so many Caesars. He recognizes the language but fails to make out the accent:
Take heed not to be transformed into Caesar, not to be dipped in purple dye; for it does happen. Keep yourself therefore simple, go pure, grave, unaffected, the friend of justice, religious, kind, affectionate, strong for your proper work. Wrestle to continue to be the man that Philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, save men . . .
Let not the future trouble you, for you will come to it, if come you must, bearing with you the same reason which you are using now to meet the present.
All things are the same: familiar in experience, transient in time, sordid in their material; all now such as in the days of those whom we have buried.
To leave the company of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist; for they would not involve you in ill ...
To turn against anything that comes to pass is a separation from nature.
Men have come into the world for the sake of one another. Either instruct them, then, or bear with them.
The universe is change, life is opinion.
Run always the short road, and nature's road is short.
As are your repeated imaginations, so will your mind be, for the soul is dyed by its imaginations.
Love that to which you go back, and don't return toPhilosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as a man to the sponge and slave, as another to a poultice, another to fomentation . . .
The mind of the Whole is social.
The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
What doesn't benefit the hive is no benefit to the bee.
On Pain: what we cannot bear removes us from life; what lasts can be borne. The understanding, too, preserves its own tranquillity by abstraction, and the governing self does not grow worse;
but it is for the parts which are injured by pain, if they can, to declare it.
There are three relations. One is to what surrounds you. One to the divine cause from which all things come to pass for all. One to those who live at the same time with you.
Accept without pride, relinquish without struggle.
And then there was nothing else, save the sound of rain crashing on Michelangelo's flagstones. The Dalmatian darted across the square like a piece of unearthed marble. He was heading no doubt for antiquity, and carried in his ears his master's—the statue's—voice:
To acquaint yourself with these things for a hundred years, or for three, is the same.
1994
A Cat's Meow
I
I dearly wish I could begin this monologue from afar, or at least preface it with a bunch of disclaimers. However, this dog's ability to learn new tricks is inferior to its tendency to forget old ones. So let me try to cut straight to the bone.
Many things have changed on this dog's watch; but I believe that a study ofphenomena is still valid and ofinterest only as long as it is being conducted from without. The view from within is inevitably distorted and of parochial consequence, its claims to documentary status notwithstanding. A good example is madness: the view of the physician is of greater import than that of his patient.
Theoretically, the same should apply to "creativity"; except that the nature of this phenomenon rules out the possibility of a vantage point for studying it. Here, the very process ofobservation renders the observer, to put it mildly, inferior to the phenomenon he observes, whether he is positioned without or within the phenomenon. In a manner of
Delivered at a symposium organized by the Foundation for Creativity and Leadership and held in Zenoott, Switzerland, in January 1995.
speaking, the report of the physician here is as invalid as the patient's own ravings.
The lesser commenting upon the greater has, of course, a certain humbling appeal, and at our end of the galaxy we are quite accustomed to this sort ofprocedure. I hope, therefore, that my reluctance to objectify creativity bespeaks not a lack of humility on my part but precisely the absence of a vantage point enabling me to pronounce anything of value on the subject.
I don't qualify as a physician; as a patient I am too much of a basket case to be taken seriously. Besides, I detest the very term "creativity," and some of this detestation rubs off on the phenomenon this term appears to denote. Even if I were able to shut down the voice of my senses revolting against it, my utterance on the subject would amount at best to a cat's attempt to catch its own tail. An absorbing endeavor, to be sure; but then perhaps I should be meowing.
Given the solipsistic nature of any human inquiry, that would be as honest a response to the notion of creativity as you can get. Seen from the outside, creativity is the object of fascination or envy; seen from within, it is an unending exercise in uncertainty and a tremendous school for insecurity. In either case, a meow or some other incoherent sound is the most adequate response whenever the notion of creativity is invoked.
Let me, therefore, get rid ofthe panting or bated breath that accompanies this term, which is to say, let me get rid of the term altogether. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines creativity as the ability to create, so let me stick to this definition. This way, perhaps, at least one of us will know what he is talking about, although not entirely.
The trouble begins with "create," which is, I believe, an exalted version of the verb "to make," and the same good old Webster's offers us "to bring into existence." The exaltation here has to do presumably with our ability to distinguish between familiar and unprecedented results of one's making. The familiar, thus, is made; the unfamiliar, or unprecedented, is created.
Now, no honest craftsman or maker knows in the process of working whether he is making or creating. He may be overtaken with this or that incoherent emotion at a certain stage of the process, he may even have an inkling that he is manufacturing something qualitatively new or unique, but the first, the second, and the last reality for him is the work itself, the very process of working. The process takes precedence over its result, if only because the latter is impossible without the former.