by JL Wall

Over at the Spengler blog, David Layman writes (emphasis original):

The moral corruption of the Olympian pantheon is the moral corruption of art. (Don’t forget: “Western” art at least, has only two sources, the Bible and myths, mostly Greco-Roman.) According to Hesiod, out of Chaos came Gaia, Tartaros, and Eros-”who/Makes their [the gods'] bodies (and men’s bodies) go limp, / Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.” Gaia gave birth to Ouranos (“heaven”), and then mated with him to bring forth the Cyclopes, who had “hearts of stone,” and 3 monsters, Cortos, Briareos, and Gyges, “Strong, hulking creatures that beggar description.” From the beginning Ouranos hated all of them, and stuffed them back into the earth. These are the brute, stupid, amoral forces of nature, the powers that make us and consume us with equal disregard. (Much in this tale is parallel to Norse legend, especially the role of the giants. In Wagner’s version, they are powerful, darkly desirous, but dumb beings who initiate the chain of events that will lead to the fall of the gods, law, and life.)

Another son, Cronos, “hated his lecherous father.” He and his mother, Gaia, hatched a scheme: a Ouranos came down on her to mate, he cut off Ouranos’ genitalia and hurled them in the ocean. The foam in the water produced Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual passion, while the blood created the Furies, “chthonic deities of vengeance,…of the anger of the dead (Wikipedia).”

This is the beginning. Look long and hard; think carefully before you choose to praise it. Art comes from the ground, the dark soil of human passion, greed, and rage, the incestuous intertwinings of lust and loathing.

Fear all art.

This is all by means of pointing out to cultural conservatives precisely what it is that they’re arguing should be preserved in the arts — that moral corruption in art is nothing new. It goes back to the roots of Western culture. (That’s my take on what he’s saying, at least.)

But at the moment of flourishing of Greek (well, Athenian) culture, the artists in question were at least as troubled by this general darkness as is Layman. Before it was a novel’s title, “Gods behaving badly” was short-hand for the plays of Euripides. The “pious” Sophokles lets them stand deafeningly silent. Aeschylus’ divinities are arbitrary and vengeful, and even though Athena establishes the first human court of law, it’s hard not to feel that mankind is well put being rid of her and in its own hands.

The gods, in myth, are so flawed, so often despicable, so frequently violating the taboos of Greek society (compare incest among the gods to incest among Greeks – remember how it turned out for that Oedipus fellow?) — so human -- because it enabled that society to talk about themselves, their own flaws and failures.

(A note: the myth and the religion need to be separated here. Myth was alive, constantly transforming, and this was not sacrilegious. This was its purpose. Religion was ritual, cult, custom. Tied up in, it of course, were those same divine figures, but there were no “canonical” myths; nothing at all akin to the idea of holy book now almost automatically associated with religion.)

These failures and flaws and perversions are explored not to be exalted or left without judgment. The Pentheus of Euripides’ Bakkhai is a fool, yes, but you’d still rather have him on your doorstep than Bakkhus, no matter how many orgies the latter brings.

Layman is correct in one thing, at least: “Art comes from the ground, the dark soil of human passion, greed, and rage, the incestuous intertwinings of lust and loathing.” That is, art is human; perhaps better phrased, the art that does not exalt to the sacred reminds us of that “dark soil” of our own humanity. But by reminding us of it, art ensures that we remain aware of it, and only aware of it can we overcome it.

Art — even from its origins in the often-disturbing realm of Greek myth — serves to remind us of our own humanity. When self-expression is raised above all else, this is lost; the self itself is too exalted; and there artist and audience begin to run the risk of (self) idolatry Layman raised earlier. This, however, was not the purpose of those earliest bloomings of Western art and culture.

Should art be feared? Provided we’re talking about art, and not the cults of artist or self or “kitsch”, the answer is no. Even if all that art does, rather than exalt to the sacred, is remind us of our own humanity.

Filed under: media/culture