Lately, I’ve been thinking a whole lot about art: What is art? What is art for? Why do we artists take the time and the effort to create art?
This last question in particular has thus far haunted writers of this decade, evidenced simply by all that has been written here on Substack and elsewhere about the peculiar problems and threats facing the writer today. Existential crises inevitably follow such threats and force the writer to reexamine his motivations and prove to himself once more that he is not wasting his time.
This, it seems, is the consensus: Literary fiction, criticism, and poetry have all lost their once high station of supreme cultural relevance. Readers lack not only attention spans but also points of reference that writers were once able to take for granted. AI, social media algorithms, and other technologies threaten to further this trend via psychological capture. The mainstream publishing industry has become conglomerated and risk-adverse, and the dream of writing a novel and “making it big” with an income sustainable enough to write full time seems totally out of reach. Few people will bother to read a serious work of literature, let alone pay for it.
Yet, writing itself has not gotten any easier. It still takes an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and concentration, all of which are assets constantly being solicited by other things. Writing is still a cause of suffering and frustration for all who dare undertake the task. It still demands mastery, an output of a lifetime of practice.
So why bother? That is the question. Why write if the awards of widespread recognition and prestige and money no longer seem attainable?
I have arrived at an answer, and I don’t intend to elaborate on it much further. Not here. Not now. My answer is this: that art is for art’s sake. I previously struggled with this proposition, but didn’t understand what it meant.1 I do now: Beautiful things are worth creating because they are beautiful.
I, as a writer, of course, cannot be blamed for wanting to share what I’ve written. I should want readers, yes, but perhaps the time has come for the artist to return to humbler ambitions.
In my head, I have an image of the medieval artist. He took care to render everything he created beautiful, purely and simply, be it one pane of stained glass or a towering Gothic cathedral reaching up to heaven. He didn’t even bother to put his name on it. All that mattered to him was that it was radiant, harmonious, and unified.2 The focus was on his art and not on him, the artist.
Yes, this picture leaves out some practical considerations. I’m sure the medieval artist demanded compensation for his work, but it humbles me to think of him in comparison to artists of our postmodern age, including myself (if I dare to), who cannot resist aspiring to the stature of the modern artist who was celebrated not only as an artist but as a hero.
Perhaps the way forward for the artists is perilous. Perhaps the treasure at the end of his journey is not as decorated with so many additional ornaments as it once was. But the essence of that treasure remains the same, that is, the art itself. His task is to create art. What comes of that art is beyond him.
I preface all this to say I am grateful for you, my reader, for taking the time to read what I put so much effort into writing. My goal remains to perfect my craft, and as I come to understand more deeply what that perfection both means and requires of me, I must sometimes adjust accordingly.
There are a number of adjustments, therefore, you will soon see coming.
The foremost of these adjustments is a renewed concentration on the particular crafts I intend to perfect, that is, criticism and fiction.
After considerable thought, I am dropping the Songs of a Sojourn section and restructuring the other two.
Why? Poetry, though I enjoy writing it and plan to continue in my spare time, is more of a hobby than a craft I intend to put in the effort to work toward mastery.
Am I good at it? I don’t know. Perhaps so. Perhaps not. But do I care if I’m good at it? I’ve come to the conclusion that my answer is “no.” At least I do not care about it in the same way I care about my essays and stories.
I’m grateful that there are poets out there who do care to perfect their craft, just as I am grateful for serious painters and sculptors and architects and musicians.
My concentration, a scarce resource as it is, is needed elsewhere.
As for the poems I’ve already published, I’m not sure what will become of them. They will probably be archived, but do not expect any new poems, unless I decide to share something from one of my poet friends.
I am also splitting the Wayworn Wonderings section into two. The two new sections will be A Stranger Speaks and A Journeyman’s Journal.
A Stranger Speaks will include previews of my public essays like the ones I’ve published on Word on Fire and elsewhere, as well as the occasional critical essay or review exclusive to Substack. Expect continuity with my general topics of choice: Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, Dostoyevsky, Catholicism, the South, literature, education, etc., etc.
A Journeyman’s Journal will be different. There, you will find a more diverse array of thoughts on anything from philosophy to bourbon. These will be excerpted from my personal journal, where I square away ideas on a bi-weekly basis. As I begin grad school in the fall, I expect this section to become predominantly what I have time to contribute to.
As for A Stranger’s Stories, I am simply renaming it to A Traveler’s Tales. The premise remains the same: short fiction, often set in the contemporary South, exploring spiritual and existential themes from the nature of original sin to alienation and meaninglessness to redemption. I only hope I can find guidance and continue my effort to improve as I go forward.
There may be some aesthetic changes to the website as well, but I intend to keep these minimal to avoid this becoming a distraction.
Again, I cannot express enough my gratitude to all of you who support me, whether that be through reading and sharing my posts or contributing financially to my efforts by becoming a paid subscriber.
Your attention is both scarce and valuable. And as so may other things vie for it, you have chosen to focus some of it on my work.
I hope you continue to find it worth your time.
Yours truly,
L.W. Blakely
L.W. Blakely is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of The Wayfarer, a newsletter where he publishes literary fiction, criticism, and musings. Learn more about L.W. and The Wayfarer on the About page, or (if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read) consider subscribing and sharing his work.
For this, I must thank Jacques Maritain for his book Art and Scholasticism. Maritain squared away my initial Christian skepticism of such a claim that anything is good for its own sake aside from the Creator Himself. To say art is good for art’s sake is not to separate it from the teleological order of which God is the ultimate good. Rather, it is to distinguish between two different kinds of virtue: moral and artistic. The purpose of moral virtue is the perfection of the human being who possesses it, i.e., his conformity to God’s will for him. The purpose of artistic virtue is not the perfection of the artist but the art itself, the thing created. Its perfection, of course, is inseparable from beauty, which comes from God. The good artist sets out to make good art, good art purely. He does not, if he is a pure artist, let another motive, be it profit, activism, desire for recognition, etc., interfere with the task at hand. That is what is meant by art for art’s sake. At least it is what I mean, not to hold art up as a golden calf, but to keep it pure from interference from exterior motivations as much as humanly possible.
Radiance, harmony, and unity are the three qualities of beauty St. Thomas Aquinas identified in his Summa Theologica (see Part I, Question 39, Article 8). Sometimes, the terms are translated from the original Latin differently: radiance as clarity, harmony as proportion or symmetry, and unity as wholeness or integrity.