This is the second of a series of three articles. The first is The Point of Art, the second is "The Danger of Art” which will be released on Friday.
In studying this eternal work of art, I would like to remind my readers of a very important part of analyzing art. The fact that analysis is not intended to be, in principle, the only truth that the writer himself intended. What the writer intended in each line of his writing is not completely known, yet by the structure and the underlying relationships of real elements in a great work of art, you can determine that it honors what is true.
St. Augustine tells us, “How can it harm me if I understand a writer's meaning in a different sense from that in which another understands it?” He also tells us that if we believe that the authority wrote the truth, “we [cannot] be so rash as to suppose that he wrote anything false.” Therefore, “provided that each of us tries as best he can to understand'' what the meaning of the writings is, “what harm is there if a reader believes what [God], the light of all truthful minds, shows him to be the true meaning? It may not even be the meaning which the writer had in mind, and yet he too saw in them a true meaning, different though it may be from his” (St. Augustine’s Confessions, 12.18).
For example, in studying Shakespeare, it is not that I believe Shakespeare meant all of the truths I find in the writing to the extent that I discover them, but rather that I believe that Shakespeare meant truth in his writing, and because it is a great work of art, truth can be found at any level of analysis, as long as both the meaning I find and the meaning Shakespeare meant are consistent with truth itself.
Whole and Part
Since we are on the topic of Shakespeare, I will describe what it is like to analyze a play written by him. One of the principal parts of perusing through these lines is gaining a full understanding of the entire play as a whole and each part of the play on its own. In other words, in order to have a deeper understanding of the play as a whole and interpret its truth as one finds fit, one must understand each part. This is true of all material and non-material things alike. For example, in order to make a chair, one must understand all the parts of a chair. If someone makes a chair without first understanding that it must have legs, the structure which supports it, or a spindle, to hold the legs together, or without understanding that it must contain a stile in order that one does not fall through the chair, he will be at loss when his chair is finished because there will be no chair, but only a bunch of parts that could potentially make a chair but have not been put together.
So in order to understand something as a whole, one must understand what supports it. Each part is an entire thing on its own, and it is only by putting all the pieces together that one can make something new. For example, in order to understand the point of Othello, one must understand the point of each scene; and in order to understand each scene, one must understand each line within the scene; and in order to understand each line, one must understand the significance of every single word (and so on).
The misconception about this is that the parts precede the whole; this is not true. The whole requires the parts in order to come together and be whole, but the whole is both the sum and the cause. For though the whole is nothing until the parts come together, the idea or concept of the whole must already be understood before one can begin putting the parts together. One cannot make the chair if he does not know what he wants it to look like. In our case, we have an idea of what the whole is: that it consists of the Truth. In studying these lines, we know that, despite never being able to understand the whole, we know that the whole is true. Therefore, by studying each part, we can put the pieces together to find the truth, to some extent, of the eternal puzzle.
When analyzing works of art (be it writing, painting, a play, etc.), this is what we are seeking to do: to interpret each line as a moving part before interpreting the entire play as a whole. We have an idea of what the whole thing looks like, but we cannot see what it looks like exactly until we have put it together. That is the purpose of analyzing each scene through line-by-line analysis. Again, it is not true that I believe everything that I decipher is accurate; my purpose is to shed light on it and seek truth in each line in order to do what needs to be done with great works of art. As detailed in “The Point of Art,” the purpose of analyzing works of art to this great extent is to understand a new perception of reality that helps us apply these perceptions in our own lives.
Why Great Artists Don’t Explain Themselves
The satisfaction of learning is beyond repair, but if Tolkien had bothered to explain himself, it would not have carried as much weight. One would have glanced over it, knowing it was true, and thought of him the same way we think of most Christian writers and preachers. Often a preacher is correct in what he says, but one already knew what he was saying was correct. This satisfaction comes from looking deeper into the phrase to understand it, which makes us want to look even deeper once we understand it. This means that when one runs into these scenarios, one actually applies them to his life.
Many preachers give us wonderful speeches that we agree with, but the fault with these speeches is that we have trouble committing them to our lives because they tell us truths that we already understand to be true. One can be told to “Honor his father and mother” and hear a wonderful speech about it and agree with it, yet continue to dishonor their father and mother. This satisfaction, which one can experience frequently with an artist such as Beethoven, Van Gogh, or Shakespeare, is felt when one reads a great book, watches a beautiful movie, or sees a wonderful painting. A good, if you can call it that, work of art is entertaining. A great one is worthy of analysis. The book does not need to be analyzed by the reader for the reader to think it is good, but it must be able to be analyzed.
Because when one analyzes them and finds truth in the author's message and finds it to be good, the satisfaction of having found the truth, which was not obvious when first stated in the writing (or other art), allows one to better translate it into his own life. This is why the greatest of artists never explain themselves, it is through analysis that their words (though, as will be detailed in The Danger of Art, not their words but a greater mind working through them) can be found to be true. Hardship is the best way to find satisfaction.