Finding Peace in Art
When you endure something such as mental illness, grief, trauma, abuse, or, God help, a slimy mingling of the four, coping is an Ouroboros, a snake eating itself to regrow, or a phoenix, a messy, black cycle of death-rebirth. Or maybe this “that person died” thing is a way to excuse my high school years. There’s certainly no denying that the ashes remain ever-present.
Endure. It's a theatrical word, isn't it? Indeed, issues like depression, anxiety, or psychosis are either sensationalized or lose their meaning. Yet, at the same time, when someone struggles with anything from an anxiety disorder to the death of a cherished loved one, someone who's still an aching piece of you, they become proficient in another language that becomes strange and terrifying to those who want to help, yet lack understand and experience in this type of thinking.
The coffee maker drips even when it's off and unplugged, and every twinge of existential dread is of catastrophic importance. For others, the line between “fine” and “crisis mode” is stark, and when one crosses the line to the latter, they ask, “But you were fine a few days ago. Why can't you just go back to what you were doing then?”
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney said in the “Harvest Bow,” “The end of art is peace.” (This was borrowed from W.B. Yeats, another accomplished Irish poet.) He was speaking of his relationship with his father and how they're both artists: his father creates a harvest bow, a token of affection for his son, and Heaney creates poetry. Essentially, these acts accomplish the same thing: they immortalize the subject and artist, even if the art grows brittle over time.
Heaney also explained that no matter “how turbulent, apocalyptic, vehement or destructive” the subject of art is, the action of writing achieves an equilibrium. The issue is no longer a shameful, lurking beast echoing your own self-criticism and guilt back to you. You become part of a forum far larger than yourself.
I'm a huge advocate for using reflexive writing to explore trauma and grief. My work since October 2015, Dove Keeper, largely explores grief and the romanticization of it, something Heaney himself chastised himself for in poems like “Punishment.” Exploring trauma and the sort of psychological staining of blood from never-closing wounds is important for both the self and others because if art, such as Vincent Van Gogh’s work, thick with impasto, or Francisco de Goya’s Black Paintings, can stir up the feeling of a connection, of being empathized with, then it is all worth it--that terrible loneliness that is both horrifying and has a strange allure to it, especially in moments of righteous indignation and affirmation.
John Keats, who experienced a hefty amount of heartbreak, grief, and depression, had an intriguing view of beauty, as seen in his idea. He spoke of negative capability, or the “Vale of Soul-Making.” The core of this is that for one to have a sublime experience, or to find beauty, they must go to dark, uncertain places that may terrify them. This is going through the veil from the safe, comfortable room of inexperience to the unknown.
In “Ode to Melancholy,” he argues against suicide in the first stanza. Then, “when the melancholy fit shall fall,” he advocates for gentleness and empathy, and the act of poetry is a form of reaching out. Rather than holding in his sadness for the sake of conformity, Keats’s poetry reaches through the centuries and can become a monument of empathy for those suffering from depression, alcoholism, financial troubles, heartbreak, grief, and terminal illness.
In the same poem, Keats writes of a hypothetical lover:
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
This is a lot to unpack. In the famous line, “She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die,” Keats asserts that one should be kind to loved ones because they, like beauty, will die. However, despite this, the final stanza concludes by saying someone who can recognize beauty and sorrow and loss (tasting “the sadness of her might”) will effectively last forever through art.
With his odes such as this, “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” and Ode to a Nightingale” (the latter written in grief after his younger brother succumbed to tuberculosis, the same disease that claimed their mother and Keats himself), Keats argues for immortality through poetry. It's why we still speak of Shakespeare, or Keats, or Heaney, who have all died in body, but their work keeps them from being forgotten, even if remembrance is so minor as a high school junior lamenting on having to read about a sad alcoholic writing depressing poetry and promptly dying.
I'd argue that, on the same note, peace is the end of art. It is a compulsion to create art, so much so that any thoughts of oblivion are challenged by it. One cannot rest of their own volition until every story has been completed. Storytelling is a necessary fever that compels us to seek validation and, more so, help others as they struggle through the thorny and uncertain veil of life. It is our job as both creators and readers to reach out and listen, and through this, a transformation can happen, and nothing is ever lost through trying to understand another’s struggle, as difficult and trying as this process is.
The nightingale, the subject of Keats’s most well-known poem, is a bird who, in legend, warbles despite a thorn in its heart that causes pain as it weaves its beautiful song. Philomela, a rape victim in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, achieves peace through singing and living forever as the nightingale.
The nightingale, despite its pain, sings and allows its song to forever be a comfort for those in need; though there is blood, there is always purpose, whether it’s to move the heart or to entertain, and if these and more are the purposes of both the artist and the viewer, the listener, the reader, there are worse ways to find solace than metaphorically bleeding.