The Mind of the Maker
30 July 2020 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeRereading Dorothy L. Sayers' "The Mind of the Maker" -- I can feel my brain-cells straining. (And since she states that it is written from the point of view of a working novelist about Christian doctrine without in any way making a statement about the author's own belief in that doctrine, I am reading it in the same light.)
Idea, Energy, Power: I think the rather incomprehensible trinity she is trying to describe here goes as follows (in my own definitions).
Idea, as she says, is what the writer means "when he says 'I have an idea for a book'". It's the plot or the story; the unwritten concept, which exists even if (as in the case of "Raoul and the Soubrette", of which I was thinking again this afternoon, probably prompted by lassitude and the feverish heat) the story is never actually formulated on paper, the right words are never found, etc. And yet one can still say 'this is a story about...'. That is the concept she defines as the Creative Idea.
And yet it cannot be said to exist before or in isolation from the Creative Energy, or writing process, which is the second element of her trinity. "Everything that is conscious, everything that has to do with form and time, and everything that has to do with process, belongs to the working of the Energy or Activity" -- even if the Idea is never written down, the very process of developing it is something that occupies a definite period of elapsed time. It doesn't just emerge as a mature abstraction. Even a prompt as vague as 'what if Raoul didn't recognise Christine when he met her again?' has a distinct moment of birth, and a fully-fledged story idea is the result of changes and developments that emerge during the act of following it. The Energy feeds back into the Idea which creates it.
"How can we know that the Idea itself has any real existence apart from the Energy?", in that case -- surely the writing process is this supposed Idea, and the story is the end result and not the beginning of the process? "Quite simply, every choice of an episode, or a phrase, or a word is made to conform to a pattern of the entire book, which is revealed by that choice as already existing." Otherwise, when trying to choose between different phrasings, what criteria would we use to decide what is or is not the 'right' one? It's the one that creates the right effect to evoke that part of the Idea; the desired effect of the scene, even if an unanticipated one.
"The book --that is, the activity of writing the book-- is a process in space and time", but the idea of it "is with [the writer] always, while writing it and after it is finished, just as it was in the beginning"... One has an idea. One sets out to write it down, but the essence of the story is not in itself "the toils and troubles of composition"; those are the difficulties of writing it down, but the process is not the thing.
"The Idea of the book is a thing-in-itself quite apart from... its manifestation in Energy, although it remains true that it cannot be known as a thing-in-itself except as the Energy reveals it.... it is never seen, either by writer or reader, except in terms of time, parts and passion".
The Energy itself, as she says, is a much easier concept to grasp, because that is the tangible element of writing -- "the sum and process of all the activity which brings the book into temporal and spatial existence". The worrying over plot-holes. The ink being laid down on the paper. The editing, the word-choices, the decisions on chapter boundaries, the proof-reading, the rewriting of entire scenes, the ongoing evolutions of the plot, the emergence of completely new characters. That is the process by which the Idea is communicated, even if only as plot summary; it is the process of the formulation itself of the Idea over time.
And yet I think we would all agree that the Idea itself, when complete, exists as a thing separate from the process of its creation. You may not be able to write it down well enough to succeed in communicating it to anyone else. You may be a novice writer who sends characters on wild adventures in your imagination, only for your stories to come out as a mind-numbing recital of 'And then... and then... and then'. But the adventures still exist in their full glory, despite your own inability to find words to conjure them onto the page.
The Creative Power "is the thing which flows back to the writer from his own activity" -- it is the experience of reading the book. "In fact, from the readers' point of view, it is the book." It's the thing you get when you put the Energy into finding the right words to express the Idea; the emotional/intellectual feedback. It is the act of perceiving the Idea, but it is not itself the Idea; it is your response to it. In one sense, a book is the act of reading it. In another sense, and simultaneously (because as you write it, you judge how well it is working by the reading of what you are writing), it is the act of writing it; a book is composed of the choices you have put into it. It's not a mystic gift that emerges into your hand out of nowhere -- it's your own ink, sweat and tears. And in another sense it is the imagined concept of the book, however imperfectly that has ultimately been conveyed and however far the readers' experience may be from what you intended; the Idea is still out there, and you might at some point do a total rewrite and try to express it better.
So the Idea is the story. The Energy is the writing of the story. And the Power is the reading of what was written, which is, and is not, the Idea.
The writer "cannot know the Idea, except by the Power interpreting his own Activity to him" -- even if he is getting his kicks out of simply formulating the idea in his head, the conscious act of thought involves creative work. He cannot perceive it without in the process acting as its intermediary.
He "knows the Activity only as it reveals the Idea in Power" -- the creative work cannot take place without having an underlying concept of what to write, and receiving the simultaneous feedback which acts as a gauge of its success. If your words conjure no response when you read them back, then how do you achieve any useful progress on the story?
And "he knows the Power only as the revelation of the Idea in the Activity" -- the reaction is to perceiving the concept that you were trying to express by your writing. If the concept had not existed, the response could not exist. If the work needed for the conscious formulation of the concept had not been carried out, there would be nothing in existence to respond to.
(I think this definition of the Creative Power, or response to a story, as being an equally unassailable part of the whole is questionable, because she states that it is the same thing as other people's response to a story -- and they don't experience the first two strands in 'the mind of the maker'. On the other hand, one can argue that the reaction of others would still not exist if the writer had not both experienced the idea and written it down.)
"These three are equally and eternally present in his own act of creation, and at every moment of it, whether or not the act ever becomes manifest in the form of a written and printed book." They are the creative mind; the concept, the formulation, the response. The idea that develops according to the writer's response to his own formulation of it. The response that directs the experiments in form which attempt to communicate the idea. The word-painting (or thought-painting, or brainstorming) that is driven by the concept and would not exist without it, yet concerns itself solely with the aim of inducing response.
So a story like "Raoul and the Soubrette", even if not written down in so much as a plot summary, still exists as a concept, as a conscious imagining of the concept, and as an experiencing of that imagining -- and all three were involved at every stage in its development. "The creative act... does not depend for its fulfilment upon its manifestation in a material creation..... To write the poem... is an act of love towards the poet's own imaginative act and towards his fellow-beings. It is a social act; but the poet is, first and foremost, his own society, and would be none the less a poet if the means of material expression were refused".
I think that is what Sayers was trying to express in her discussion of Idea, Energy and Power. I have to say it still leaves me totally in the dark so far as the concept of the Christian Trinity is concerned!
Idea, Energy, Power: I think the rather incomprehensible trinity she is trying to describe here goes as follows (in my own definitions).
Idea, as she says, is what the writer means "when he says 'I have an idea for a book'". It's the plot or the story; the unwritten concept, which exists even if (as in the case of "Raoul and the Soubrette", of which I was thinking again this afternoon, probably prompted by lassitude and the feverish heat) the story is never actually formulated on paper, the right words are never found, etc. And yet one can still say 'this is a story about...'. That is the concept she defines as the Creative Idea.
And yet it cannot be said to exist before or in isolation from the Creative Energy, or writing process, which is the second element of her trinity. "Everything that is conscious, everything that has to do with form and time, and everything that has to do with process, belongs to the working of the Energy or Activity" -- even if the Idea is never written down, the very process of developing it is something that occupies a definite period of elapsed time. It doesn't just emerge as a mature abstraction. Even a prompt as vague as 'what if Raoul didn't recognise Christine when he met her again?' has a distinct moment of birth, and a fully-fledged story idea is the result of changes and developments that emerge during the act of following it. The Energy feeds back into the Idea which creates it.
"How can we know that the Idea itself has any real existence apart from the Energy?", in that case -- surely the writing process is this supposed Idea, and the story is the end result and not the beginning of the process? "Quite simply, every choice of an episode, or a phrase, or a word is made to conform to a pattern of the entire book, which is revealed by that choice as already existing." Otherwise, when trying to choose between different phrasings, what criteria would we use to decide what is or is not the 'right' one? It's the one that creates the right effect to evoke that part of the Idea; the desired effect of the scene, even if an unanticipated one.
"The book --that is, the activity of writing the book-- is a process in space and time", but the idea of it "is with [the writer] always, while writing it and after it is finished, just as it was in the beginning"... One has an idea. One sets out to write it down, but the essence of the story is not in itself "the toils and troubles of composition"; those are the difficulties of writing it down, but the process is not the thing.
"The Idea of the book is a thing-in-itself quite apart from... its manifestation in Energy, although it remains true that it cannot be known as a thing-in-itself except as the Energy reveals it.... it is never seen, either by writer or reader, except in terms of time, parts and passion".
The Energy itself, as she says, is a much easier concept to grasp, because that is the tangible element of writing -- "the sum and process of all the activity which brings the book into temporal and spatial existence". The worrying over plot-holes. The ink being laid down on the paper. The editing, the word-choices, the decisions on chapter boundaries, the proof-reading, the rewriting of entire scenes, the ongoing evolutions of the plot, the emergence of completely new characters. That is the process by which the Idea is communicated, even if only as plot summary; it is the process of the formulation itself of the Idea over time.
And yet I think we would all agree that the Idea itself, when complete, exists as a thing separate from the process of its creation. You may not be able to write it down well enough to succeed in communicating it to anyone else. You may be a novice writer who sends characters on wild adventures in your imagination, only for your stories to come out as a mind-numbing recital of 'And then... and then... and then'. But the adventures still exist in their full glory, despite your own inability to find words to conjure them onto the page.
The Creative Power "is the thing which flows back to the writer from his own activity" -- it is the experience of reading the book. "In fact, from the readers' point of view, it is the book." It's the thing you get when you put the Energy into finding the right words to express the Idea; the emotional/intellectual feedback. It is the act of perceiving the Idea, but it is not itself the Idea; it is your response to it. In one sense, a book is the act of reading it. In another sense, and simultaneously (because as you write it, you judge how well it is working by the reading of what you are writing), it is the act of writing it; a book is composed of the choices you have put into it. It's not a mystic gift that emerges into your hand out of nowhere -- it's your own ink, sweat and tears. And in another sense it is the imagined concept of the book, however imperfectly that has ultimately been conveyed and however far the readers' experience may be from what you intended; the Idea is still out there, and you might at some point do a total rewrite and try to express it better.
So the Idea is the story. The Energy is the writing of the story. And the Power is the reading of what was written, which is, and is not, the Idea.
The writer "cannot know the Idea, except by the Power interpreting his own Activity to him" -- even if he is getting his kicks out of simply formulating the idea in his head, the conscious act of thought involves creative work. He cannot perceive it without in the process acting as its intermediary.
He "knows the Activity only as it reveals the Idea in Power" -- the creative work cannot take place without having an underlying concept of what to write, and receiving the simultaneous feedback which acts as a gauge of its success. If your words conjure no response when you read them back, then how do you achieve any useful progress on the story?
And "he knows the Power only as the revelation of the Idea in the Activity" -- the reaction is to perceiving the concept that you were trying to express by your writing. If the concept had not existed, the response could not exist. If the work needed for the conscious formulation of the concept had not been carried out, there would be nothing in existence to respond to.
(I think this definition of the Creative Power, or response to a story, as being an equally unassailable part of the whole is questionable, because she states that it is the same thing as other people's response to a story -- and they don't experience the first two strands in 'the mind of the maker'. On the other hand, one can argue that the reaction of others would still not exist if the writer had not both experienced the idea and written it down.)
"These three are equally and eternally present in his own act of creation, and at every moment of it, whether or not the act ever becomes manifest in the form of a written and printed book." They are the creative mind; the concept, the formulation, the response. The idea that develops according to the writer's response to his own formulation of it. The response that directs the experiments in form which attempt to communicate the idea. The word-painting (or thought-painting, or brainstorming) that is driven by the concept and would not exist without it, yet concerns itself solely with the aim of inducing response.
So a story like "Raoul and the Soubrette", even if not written down in so much as a plot summary, still exists as a concept, as a conscious imagining of the concept, and as an experiencing of that imagining -- and all three were involved at every stage in its development. "The creative act... does not depend for its fulfilment upon its manifestation in a material creation..... To write the poem... is an act of love towards the poet's own imaginative act and towards his fellow-beings. It is a social act; but the poet is, first and foremost, his own society, and would be none the less a poet if the means of material expression were refused".
I think that is what Sayers was trying to express in her discussion of Idea, Energy and Power. I have to say it still leaves me totally in the dark so far as the concept of the Christian Trinity is concerned!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-01 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-01 04:53 pm (UTC)I was trying to get my head round Sayers' arguments by rephrasing them 'in my own words' -- it's been a long time since I have found myself consciously struggling to understand something.
Not since reading Andrew Hodges (excellent) Turing biography, I think, which is an example of writing about Alan Turing's work by an actual mathematician, who is capable of understanding what his subject was doing and -- just about -- of communicating it to those of us of equal intelligence who need it explained from first principles. But the experience is rather like undergoing a one-week university crash course.