{Truth in Art}[9th August 1981]

[Redbook2:193-194][19810809:0020]{Truth in Art}[9^th August 1981]

19810809.0020

While reading on King's [College, Cambridge] and Edith Sitwell in the T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] of last week, it occurs to me that talk of 'truth' in art may refer to the part of the mind from or through which the art's expression springs. For example, one may distinguish a political verse and a personal poem: the former may be as technically excellent as the latter, and to its author as true; nevertheless it is largely the product of that rationalisation which structures political thinking (even if it need not inspire it), and therefore the verse as poetry does not “ring true”: it lacks integrity, because the author has not fully integrated himself in its production. The personal poem may be naïve or even, in its implications, extreme; its author may not, on reflection, even agree with it, although his disagreement is unlikely to be violent: if it were, he would probably have lacked the dispassionate ability to write it. But as a work of art (rather than craft) it speaks from a part of his mind which is not structured, and is apolitical (I am too tired and during this last sentence have lost the thread).

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