The Artistic Case for Repression
Flaubert vs. Kerouac on Life and Art
The bohemian artist whose personal life is a mess is a stereotype. So too is the larger-than-life creative type who brims with effusive energy, turning the entire world into a workshop.
But Flaubert, whose 19th century novels once scandalized audiences, offers an opposite approach: greater orderliness in life enables greater artistic inspiration at work. You don’t need to be Madame Bovary to write Madame Bovary. Self-expression has become a soft mandate of our “Think Different” age. But self-censorship has its uses, too, and not just when it is polite or tactful.
If the Bohemian model teaches a whole-hearted surrender to the Dionysian, the Flaubertian one teaches dialectics. To become more mad, be more sane. To become more disciplined, allow more chaos. Although he doesn’t say it, Flaubert may also be suggesting a use for “repression.” Less creative energy channeled into life means more saved for imagination. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, because the opposite view, say, espoused by the likes of Jack Kerouac is that one should make one’s life a work of art first and foremost. What results from wild road trips is the book, “On the Road.” Writing comes after experience. But according to Flaubert’s ascetic method, it is the deprivation of experience that oils the wheels of the imagination. As if too much experience might also obstruct the art.
I thought of Flaubert’s advice when I chanced upon a Sufi text by Farid al-Din Attar called “The Butterfly and the Fire”:
One night, all the butterflies gathered together, despairing over their desire to unite with the candle’s flame. They said, “We must find someone who can describe for us that for which we so yearn.” One of the butterflies flew to a distant mountain where a candle burned, then returned to the others and described the candle to the best of its ability. One wise butterfly, head of the group, said, “We still do not truly know anything about the candle.” A second butterfly flew to the candle and drew close to it, bringing its wing close the flame. However, the heat of the candle scared it, and it recoiled. When it returned to the group and revealed something of the secret of the candle, the wise butterfly said to it, “You have explained no more than your fellow.” A third butterfly arose, drunk with love, and threw itself full-force into the flame. It pounced on the candle, extending its feelers toward the candle. As it entered entirely into the arms of the flame, its limbs ignited like an intense fire. The wise butterfly saw from a distance how the candle became one with the butterfly and gave the butterfly its light. It said, “This butterfly has realized its desire, but it alone comprehends what it grasped; it cannot convey it to others.”
Note that the wise butterfly does not need to pursue the candle, yet partakes in the other butterfly’s journeys as if vicariously. Does the wise butterfly know better than to seek the alternatives of pseudo-knowing (science, logic, propositional truth) and annihilation (anti-social mysticism)? Perhaps he is like Flaubert’s artist who remains ordered yet finds an outlet for experience in art.
There may be no single answer to the question “Do life and art conflict or synergize?” But it’s worth highlighting the underrated model of artistic practice and religious piety not as intoxicating flames that burn our wings, but as moderating solutions to the problem of worldly banality on the one hand and anti-worldly melodrama on the other.