On superiority regarding art

I have met some people, who look down on others who are unable to appreciate a certain work of art. They call them philistines and barbarians, like Cacofonix calls the Gauls.

When this is said jokingly, and lightheartedly, then it’s just a joke, but when it’s meant seriously, it’s mean, and foolishly snobbish.

Let’s take Milton’s Paradise Lost. There are a few passages in it, that really appeal to me. The parts where Adam and Eve, after sex, feel horrible. The parts where Satan rises out of Hell. The part where Satan both envies, and feels sorry for man because of what’s going to happen to him. The fight between Michael and Lucifer etc. Now, if they do not appeal to someone else, should I feel superior to them? Should I say to them “You cannot appreciate good poetry?” Or worse “You are incapable of feeling lofty feelings?”.

I think there are two aspects to poetry. The emotional, and the technical. I am quite willing to concede, that technical genius by any poet can perhaps only be recognized by a trained figure, who has the tools to break up, and analyse a poem. It’s like a professor of physics arguing, that no one who does not possess a grounding in advanced mathematics, can understand the niceties of the General Theory of Relativity. Fair enough. It is quite possible, that a formal education has a claim on intellectual understanding, since an education is meant to train the mind.

However, I cannot believe, that there are any emotions, which a poem can unlock, that are inaccessible to anyone, who takes the trouble to read and understand carefully. Emotion is not the prerogative of a select few. And while it is possible, that only certain people with a certain frame of mind, can feel for poetry, I am not convinced that the diffrentiating factor is education, as long as emotion for a poem is concerned.

I do not have the technical skill to break down a work by Voltaire, or Dickens, or Hemingway, and analyse the individual components, for that is not how I have been taught to look at a work. I admit that freely. However, I am in no wise willing to accept the other statement, that because I cannot do the above things, I cannot enjoy, be moved, and learn from those works. The emotional, and technical details are seperate. Even though in some measure perhaps, the technical details may be responsible for the emotional experience, the latter can be recognized without the former. In fact, theat is probably the mark of a great poet.

The emotional part of the brain is older than the intellectual part. I don’t believe that there is any realm of emotion, that is inaccessable, but through the intellect. This is saying that even the most uneducated and simplistic man, is capable of feeling every one of the emotions of Benjamin Franklin, Milton, Omar Khayaam, Caesar. Perhaps those emotions can be unlocked by experience, their own thought, or some other means. But the capacity is there. No one is a philistine, if being a philistine, means being incapable of noble emotions.

People are always trying their best in any given situation to cope with life in whatever best way they can. To claim a superiority over a choice of path, is both mean, and reveals a need to assert his/her own self worth in the claimant.