WHAT KIND OF WRITER (?)

It has been said, and in connection with no less a writer than Hermann Hesse, that the worse the man the better the artist, with an implication that the more morally degenerate one is ... the better are one's chances of succeeding as a modern artist. Yet this idea, understandable as it may be for a certain type of mediocre artist, is totally false where any great artist is concerned. For the genuine artist is not a scoundrel or criminal, but a kind of spiritual antenna of the race, a discoverer of higher truths, and thus someone in the vanguard of man's spiritual evolution. To imagine the contrary is simply to settle for less than the genuine artist. It is, in fact, to identify artistic merit with the average sensationalist writer, whose speciality is not to illuminate the world with higher spiritual insights (which, naturally enough, such a writer wouldn't in any case possess) but, rather, to drag the reader through all kinds and degrees of filth only too common to the world, in the hope, no doubt, of disgusting or frightening or titillating him in the process! Such a philistine writer may well be a bad, morally irresponsible, unenlightened, degenerate type of man, but he won't thereby be a great artist. Simply another commercially viable shit-monger!

No, although Hermann Hesse was doubtfully the greatest of artists, he wasn't as bad a man as some people, more usually of a critically negative turn-of-mind, may like to imagine. If he distinguished himself above the majority of his contemporaries, it wasn't because he was a particularly evil man but ... simply more intelligent and gifted than them, and therefore an exceptional man. Now such a man may well be assisted in his chosen career by dint of the fact that his personal circumstances were worse, either consistently or over intermittent periods of time, than a majority of his contemporaries; for, as already noted, it's only at the expense of the individual that the artist thrives. This is clearly so, to a significant extent, in Hesse's case, and of course it also applies to me, since I could not have attained to certain spiritual insights had my personal circumstances been any better. Thus the worse, within certain acceptable limits, the man's personal circumstances, the higher the chances of his becoming a great artist, because one cannot have the best of both worlds, but must necessarily make sacrifices on behalf of the artist if one wishes to distinguish oneself in that respect.

However, if one's personal circumstances are too bad, then there can be little prospect of a great artist emerging. One must at least be able to continue writing on a regular basis and in relative comfort, with a roof over one's head and some food on one's plate every day. A tortured being isn't likely to produce great art but, at best, a pathetic wail!

To return, then, to my autobiographical sketch. I am clearly the kind of writer whose achievements are due, in some measure, to personal hardship, since without these personal deprivations, which include depression and solitude in an alien environment, I would never have continued writing - at least not in the same vein as before. I don't say that I would have 'sold out'; but I might well have been tempted to make more of the literary, illusory side of my work at the expense of its philosophical content, bowing to phenomenal objectivity with something approaching the selfless philistinism of your average novelist. But now I am, par excellence, a philosophical writer, whose duty is to expand the domain of truth to the extent that he can, whether or not other people approve of it. This writer does not sensationalize or aim for a popular market, like the sham writer, but is dedicated to the furtherance of literary progress in a world largely indifferent to higher things. He knows that the artist's success in this matter is inextricably bound-up with the individual's asceticism, and that unless the private person leads a saint-like existence ... there is no possibility whatsoever of the artist's achieving anything demonstrably significant. Depression, poverty, solitude, celibacy, isolation ... all these and more contribute to the artist's growth, no matter how abhorrent they may seem to the private person. Van Gogh and Nietzsche became great for similar reasons, and it's almost inconceivable that anyone should become so on any other terms. The smug bourgeois writer has his limitations as an artist, brought about, in large measure, by personal affluence. And this is true not only of the more obvious examples, like Evelyn Waugh and Thomas Mann, but also to a lesser extent of writers like Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who, although distinguished, could have become still more so, in certain respects, had their personal circumstances been any worse!

I do not, however, say that I would wish to continue exactly as before, a victim of poverty, depression, solitude, etc. For if things go on as they have been doing much longer, I may not be able to write at all! No, I'm fully aware that artistic progress in me was achieved at my personal expense, largely against my natural wishes. Having completed a substantial body of work in this way, I am now all in favour of giving the personal self a better deal ... should circumstances subsequently permit.