You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To a Young Poet

(2) This paper focuses on the writings of two men who embrace the questions which concern the artist, each one describing the lived experience of these questions rather than positing a formal construct of analytical answers. The first of these men is Martin Heidegger, the German thinker living between 1889 and 1976. Much of his writings are driven by the embrace of the most primal question: what is the meaning of Being? His essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art," is the central text discussed here. The second man is Gaston Bachelard who devoted most of his life, between 1884 and 1962, to his philosophical critique of scientific knowledge. However, in doing so, Bachelard discovered the inadequacies of using reason as an instrument to explain the human imagination and the work of art, in this case; poetry. His book The Poetics of Space contains much of the work done along these lines and is the second work discussed in this essay. Each of these men relies upon the method of phenomenology to describe what is given in experience as they contemplate the questions of the artist.

(3) As a result of their common departure, the descriptions of both men closely parallel each other and in certain instances serve to support or even elaborate upon one another. This paper seeks to discuss each writing in relation to the other, but in doing so, to ultimately "live" the questions of the artist. Therefore, it is unlikely that any answers will be given. However, it is entirely possible that one will come closer to the essence of the necessary questions to be lived.

QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE ARTIST

(4) Martin Heidegger, at the onset of his essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art," begins to posit the questions concerning the artist, and in doing so, discovers their circular nature. The question of the origin of the work of art leads directly to the consideration of the activity of the artist, which in turn results in the question: what is the artist? Then, since the artist is known by the work he creates, one returns to the original question. Here each question is embedded in the other. Heidegger observes, "The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist."^Ref.1 Heidegger says further that both the artist and the work of art exist by virtue of that which is known as -- art. The question, what is art, circles again to the work of art and to the artist. The interdependent nature of these questions brings Heidegger to the same conclusion to which Bachelard comes -- that reason and logic cannot get one closer to the understanding of these questions. Comparing works of art in order to arrive at some concept about art is self-defeating since one cannot be sure, in principle, that that which one is considering in this comparison is art.

(5) In light of this recognition, both Heidegger and Bachelard begin to discuss the work of art phenomenologically, as something which is given through experience. In this way, Heidegger first observes that, "works are as naturally present as are things."^Ref.2 Poetry seems to be made of words which are contained in books which sit on shelves in grand libraries. Mozart's symphonies can be played in car stereos while fighting rush hour traffic. And people continually make pilgrimages to worship and pray in Chartres Cathedral. This obvious thingly character of the work of art forces Heidegger to question, what is the thing?

(6) Following this line of questioning, Heidegger explores three common ways of defining this thingness of the thing: as the bearer of traits; as the unity of a manifold given by sensations; and as formed matter.^Ref.3 The first of these ways defines the thing as a set of traits which conforms to a given conceptual construct of the mind. The second of these ways attempts to define the thing as a totality of the sensations given to the senses. Finally, the third way becomes integral with utility in that the thing is matter formed for a specific use. Each of these ways of defining the thing is common thought in aesthetics. However none of these kinds of definitions is derived directly from experience and in actuality all fall short of their goal when experience is taken into account. For instance, one does not see merely a concept of an ideal representation of the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus in her arms, but rather one sees say Michelangelo's passionately carved sculpture of the event in particular. Furthermore, one does not simply hear a sound, but one hears the moody, trumpet wail calling out from Miles Davis' horn. Finally, one does not consider the thingness of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater until its utility actually becomes unreliable, as when the roof leaks into the living space. These all too common ways of talking about the thing are encroachments on the thing itself.

(7) This detour that Heidegger takes into defining the thingness of things is useful, however, in that it leads him to contemplate Vincent Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes. Here is where Heidegger finds something at work in the work of art. Initially one recognizes a pair of shoes, although not as a thing-concept relationship, but as this particular pair of shoes, as what they are. The shoes, in essence, are revealed as being. In addition, although one sees the colors and the brush strokes of the painting, one is conscious of the being of that pair of shoes. Finally, although one has no cause or intent to rely upon their usefulness, the shoes themselves, devoid of any background or context, proclaim their use. Heidegger asserts that in the work of art the, "being emerges into the unconcealedness of its Being."^Ref.4 By unconcealedness, Heidegger means truth.

(8) What is it that is being unconcealed in the work? Furthermore, where is this truth originally concealed? In Being and Time Heidegger speaks of Being never as an object, but rather as "being in the world," as a subject among beings within the boundaries of space and the flow of time. "World is the ever-nonobjective to which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death, blessing and curse keep us transported into Being."^Ref.5 If works of art opens up the Being of beings, then they must also set up the world. However, in order to set up the world, the work needs a material, and this material is described by Heidegger to be the earth. Yet Heidegger observes that the work of art does not merely use the earth in that the earth is used up and disappears, but rather that it brings the earth into appearance. According to Heidegger's view:

In fabricating equipment - e.g., an ax-stone is used, and used up. It disappears into usefulness. The material is all the better and more suitable the less it resists perishing in the equipmental being of the equipment. By contrast the temple-work, in setting up the world, does not cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first time and to come into the open region of the work's world. The rock comes to bear and rest and so first becomes a rock; metals come to glitter and shimmer, colors to glow, tones to sing, the word to say. All this comes forth as the work sets itself back into the massiveness and heaviness of stone, into the firmness and pliancy of wood, into the hardness and luster of metal, into the lighting and darkening of color, into the clang of tone, and into the naming power of the word.^Ref.6

(9) That which is at work in the work of art is not merely representation of a being, nor is it representation of this interplay between the sheltered and the unconcealed. Rather it is that which first sets into conflict this "strife," as Heidegger terms it, between the earth and the world. It is in the creation of this strife, between that which is sheltered and that which is the world, that the happening of truth occurs; the lighting. When the architect Louis Kahn makes the statement that "Order is," he is at once showing the concealing nature of the being Order while bringing its essence into light.

(10) This bringing forth can be considered creating, in that the unconcealedness is happening here for the first time, pointing directly toward the activity of the artist. Furthermore, if a work of art is the bringing forth of a particular truth in the way in which it instigates the strife between the world and the earth, then art in general is the 'happening of truth.' Finally, truth is not something which is at hand waiting to be identified by human intellect; rather, it is something created through art.

(11) Here is the point where the views of Heidegger and Bachelard begin to merge, Heidegger observes that "all art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of beings, is as such, in essence, poetry."^Ref.7 Similarly, Bachelard submits that "poetry puts language in a state of emergence, in which life becomes manifest through its vivacity."^Ref.8 For both thinkers, language , but more precisely poetry, is not merely a means of communication. Rather it is that which brings beings into existence for the first time. Both Heidegger and Bachelard resolve to speak of poetry as the most primal form of art, thus enveloping the similar nature of all art.

(12) Bachelard also begins his discussion with the observation that the poetic image has no past, which assumes that it is not a product of causality, and therefore cannot be studied in terms of empirical concepts as in psychology or psychoanalysis. He says,

One must be receptive, receptive to the image at the moment it appears: if there be a philosophy of poetry, it must appear and re-appear through a significant verse, in total adherence to an isolated image: to be exact, in the very ecstasy of the newness of the image.^Ref.9

(13) Bachelard, however, takes a step beyond Heidegger in this area as he observes that there are forces in poems which do not pass through the circuits of knowledge but rather are products of the soul. Although many philosophers stay clear of this word due to its religious connections, Bachelard sees it as indispensable to his description. "The word soul is an immortal word ... for it is a word born of our breath."^Ref.10 The poetic image relies not on the mind nor on the body of man, and therefore a "flicker of the soul" is all that is needed. Bachelard sees this soul as possessing an "inner light," perhaps quite similar in essence to the bringing to light of which Heidegger speaks. Returning to the example of Van Gogh's painting one could say that the peasant shoes appear as mere objects for the mind where concepts dwell, yet come into Being in the soul.

(14) Bachelard also takes a step beyond Heidegger in beginning to speak of the other subject who contemplates the work of art, or in certain cases, the reader. For Heidegger, the work of art makes manifest its createdness; it would follow that the creation does not merely effect the creator, but is there, in the work, for all subjects to apprehend. Bachelard goes further in his description to say that the image takes part in creating our being.

The image offered us by reading a poem now becomes really our own. It takes root in us. It has been given us by another, but we begin to have the impression that we could have created it, that we should have created it. It becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. Here expression creates being.^Ref.11

(16) Finally, Bachelard notes that the poetic image, or the work of art in its success is independent of skill. Although the artist obviously possesses some specific skill, it is the task of this skill to bring the beings into unconcealedness, and is not the being in itself. Skill depends on the past, on history, learning, practice, and time, whereas the image is a product of 'naive consciousness.' In essence, one must not only turn focus away from the skill, but transcend it because, "in poetry, non- knowing is a primal condition."^Ref.12

(17) In the end, asking questions and embracing the questions leads inevitably to more questions: what is truth? what is the soul? and what significance do these beings have on Being? Finally, what is achieved is not answers of fact that can be used as tools (as is the case when the scientist establishes fact). Rather, one discovers first hand that the questions must be lived. In returning to the origin of the questions for oneself, ones gets near enough to their essence in order to discover how far one is from any answers.

Ref.1: Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art," Basic Writings (Harper San Francisco, 1977), p. 149.

Ref.2: Ibid., p. 150.

Ref.3: Ibid., p. 160.

Ref.4: Ibid., p. 164.

Ref.5: Ibid., p. 170.

Ref.6: Ibid., p. 171.

Ref.7: Ibid., p. 184.

Ref.8: Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. xxiii.

Ref.9: Ibid., p. xi.

Ref.10: Ibid., p. xvi.

Ref.11: Ibid., p. xix.

Ref.12: Ibid., p. xxix.

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