W. Somerset Maugham: On Being an Artist
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
—W. Somerset Maugham
You can find the following passage in W. Somerset Maugham’s brilliant Autobiographical and confessional work— The Summing Up.
The writer can only be fertile if he renews himself and he can only renew himself if his soul is constantly enriched by fresh experience.
There is no more fruitful source of this than the enchanting exploration of the great literatures of the past. For the production of a work of art is not the result of a miracle. It requires preparation.
The soil, be it ever so rich, must be fed.
By taking thought, by deliberate effort, the artist must enlarge, deepen and diversify his personality. Then the soil must lie fallow.
Like the bride of Christ, the artist waits for the illumination that shall bring forth a new spiritual life. He goes about his ordinary avocations with patience; the subconscious does its mysterious business; and then, suddenly springing, you might think from nowhere, the idea is produced.
But like the corn that was sown on stony ground it may easily wither away; it must be tended with anxious care.
All the power of the artist's mind must be set to work on it, all his technical skill, all his experience, and whatever he has in him of character and individuality, so that with infinite pains he may present it with the completeness that is fitting to it.
The final passage is found in — W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook
The Work of Art
When I watch the audience at a concert or the crowd in the picture gallery I ask myself sometimes what exactly is their reaction towards the work of art. It is plain that often they feel deeply, but I do not see that their feeling has any effect, and if it has no effect its value is slender.
Art to them is only a recreation or a refuge.
It rests them from the work which they consider the justification of their existence or consoles them in their disappointment with reality. It is the glass of beer which the labourer drinks when he pauses in his toil or the peg of gin which the harlot takes to snatch a moment’s oblivion from the pain of life. Art for art’s sake means no more than gin for gin’s sake.
The dilettante who cherishes the sterile emotions which he receives from the contemplation of works of art has little reason to rate himself higher than the toper.
His is the attitude of the pessimist. Life is a struggle or a weariness and in art he seeks repose or forgetfulness.
The pessimist refuses reality, but the artist accepts it.
The emotion caused by a work of art has value only if it has an effect on character and so results in action. Whoever is so affected is himself an artist. The artist’s response to the work of art is direct and reasonable, for in him the emotion is translated into ideas which are pertinent to his own purposes, and to him ideas are but another form of action.
But I do not mean that it is only painters, poets and musicians who can respond profitably to the work of art; the value of art would be much diminished; among artists I include the practitioners of the most subtle, the most neglected and the most significant of all the arts, the art of life.
I read Maugham's short stories in college in an intoxicating year filled with James, Wharton, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. He was marvelous and evocative. I've read two bios, one by Ted Morgan and another by Robert Calder. Maugham is in my pantheon (along with more contemporary writers like DeLillo). And all of those writers helped me launch--and sustain--my very long career as an author.
Such important guidelines for living the life of a creative being.