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O R I O N s ep t emb er | october 201110

Plato declared he would ban po-

ets rom his ideal Republic. Placing

a garland on their heads, he would

send them into exile. Storytellers too with

ew exceptions would be barred rom his

state, and futes would be illegal.

What does it mean to exile the arts?

Plato knew, and so does the current Brit-

ish government, ordering the most savage

cuts to arts unding in more than a genera-

tion. At universities, the arts and humani-

ties will bear the brunt o budget cuts.

Public libraries, a priceless commons o

knowledge and metaphor, are being closed

across the country.

With phlegmatic cynicism, Plato based

his Republicon the premise that an idealstate will seek expansion, encroaching on

neighboring lands and resources, result-

ing in permanent war. His Republic de-

scribes the ideal education or the states

rulers and warriors to help them pursue

these aims. Hierarchical, militaristic, and

consumerist, it is a state ounded on class

divisions, obsessive measurement, andcontrol. (Any likeness to any nation today

is, o course, purely coincidental.)

State unding or the arts is not neces-

sary, claim governments on both sides o

the Atlantic. Why? Because art is superfu-

ous. I couldnt agree more: art is surplus

to base needs and bare necessities, and its

very superfuity is its signicance. The

arts are not necessary: they are absolutely

essential to the human spirit which nds

The exie of The ArTs

Thirsting for metaphor in an age of literalism

transcendence through exceeding limits,

overfowing borders, and ba

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s ep t emb er | october 2011 O R I O N 11

in protest.) A reverse Walt Whitman, he

banned the poet rom imitating smiths, ar-

ticers, oarsmen, or boatswains; nor may

they imitate the neighing o horses, the bel-

lowing o bulls, the murmur o rivers and

roll o the ocean. But the expression o

the natural world the unaded world o

sa=ron and lapis lazuli is one o the su-

preme achievements o humanity. We are

the tongue on the body o the land, says a

Yolngu woman. Humanity, part troubadour

and part nightingale, translates the world

in artistic re-creation,and rom Shakespeare to

the Aboriginal Australian

songlines to the Sami yoik

songs, art evokes nature

and enchants the land.

Van Gogh, the arche-

typal ununded artist,

painted his sunfowers as

i his ngers were touched

with re. Now, his sun-

fowers are turning brown

beore our eyes as the pig-

ment mix reacts to sunlight.

But the ading sunfowers

also bear a metaphoric

reproach against a dingy

age that extinguishes thecolors o art and the vitality

o nature alike, an age that

would blindold a robin

and a painter, and wing-

bind a bird o paradise and

a dancer. I the arts enjoin

us to nature, corporate con-

sumerism exiles us into acold exchequer.

Yet consumerism and

the arts are both answers

to the same yearning. The human spirit

thirsts or the superfuous, or over-

fow and abundance. Literalism wants

that abundance made material, though,

whereas metaphorical abundance resists

any need or literal overconsumption.

Metaphors o extravagant liveliness reduce

a hunger or extravagant liestyles. Stuck

in literal abundance, however, a society

is credulous to the monostory o money.

While metaphor and the arts o=er plural-

ities and di=erent voices, literalism, rom

Plato onward, speaks in a political mono-

tone, the one state ruling, top-down.

Essential to our sel-expression as indi-

viduals and as a species, art suggests some-

thing o the divine: humanitys purpose is

to participate in the world-creators play o

creation, said Indian poet Rabindranath

Tagore. For the Kogi people o Colombia, it

is only through the human heart and imagi-

nation that the Great Mother can be made

maniest. Imagination is connected to the

word magic, and there is mind-magic in

art where artists are messengers rom the

invisible world angels, in other words,

rom the Greek word angellos, meaning

messenger. Palestinian poet Mahmoud

Darwish wrote:

The stars had only one task: they

taught me how to read.

They taught me I had a language in

heaven

and another language on earth.

Art is a messenger carrying to its audience

what Arthur Miller called news o the in-

ner world, and, he con-tinued, i people went too

long without such news,

they would go mad with

the chaos o their lives.

A writer touches the

page to her lips beore she

sends the message on. A

sculptor res the clay with

love and meaning. Using

the sense o sight, a painter

turns an ordinary gaze into

the extraordinary regard o

honoring. Using the sense

o hearing, a musician

turns ordinary listening

into extraordinary acknowl-

edgment. And when some-one says that a work o art

touched him, or that a

book changed her lie, a

subtle transormation o

mind is revealed. For the

greatest artists do not

make their best works o

art in clay or paint orsound or words: they make

them right inside us,

within the heart o the

reader or audience. By art, humanity is

sculpted more tender and more true: we

are altered and touched and made magni-

cent. We are each others works o art.a

Jay Grifths is the author ofWild: An

Elemental Journey.