Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/743256
21 To go to art in the expectation of confirmation; to hope to find in a story, an image or a sound, a reflection of ourselves; to complain that art is off-putting, difficult, depressing or offensive; to hope for emotional endorsement from artists and corroboration of our world view in their work; to turn away from art because it seems not to recognise or take account of us, because it propounds a philosophy we do not find congenial, or because it propounds no philosophy at all; to wish to be swept up in currents of feelings recognizable to us as ours, and to long for characters with whom we can 'identify', as though the measure of all excellence is to be found only in ourselves - this is to sin against art. And any sin against art – if we accept that art is a liberation from the petulance and tyranny of the self, a dazzling inkling of who else we could have been and a promissory note of who we could be still – is a sin against life. Intimacy in art can be a consolation - a sort of sick-note - but consolation, even in tragic times, is a false friend. When, in Jane Austen's Persuasion, the indomitably intelligent Anne Elliot attempts to talk a sentimentalist out of his love of poetry, it is because she feels it is doing him no good to go on reading morbid reflections of his own melancholy. There is other literature that would make a better job of rousing his heart and fortifying his mind. Whoever goes to the great tragedies of Aeschylus or Sophocles or Shakespeare in the expectation of finding intimate consolation is on a wild goose chase. We should be on our guard with Rembrandt too. Those self-portraits of the aging artist appear to meet our eyes in an expectation of pity, but Rembrandt is no sentimentalist. His gaze is fixed on the future and the past. Life is too serious to be sharing it, promiscuously, with whoever happens to be passing. Nor does King Lear look at us through the storm as an old man desirous of our recognition. In truth he doesn't look at us all. It isn't for our behoof he rages against the storm. He isn't us in however many years from now, or us today if we happen to be his age. The tumult of his rage would not shake our souls if we knew already how he felt. Similarly, we haven't been through what Macbeth experiences. 'I too know remorse,' is not a response to Macbeth's A G A I N S T I N T I M A C Y I N A R T