The First Man Was an Artist by Barnett Newman Lyrics
A scientist has just caught the tail of another metaphor. Out of the Chinese dragon's teeth, piled high in harvest on the shelves of Shanghai's drugstores, and deep in the Java mud, a half million years old, he has constructed Meganthropus paleojavanicus, 'man the great,' the giant, who, the paleontologists now tell us, was our human ancestor. And for many, he has become more real than Cyclops, than the Giant of the Beanstalk. Those unconvinced by the poetic dream, who reject the child's fable, are now sure of a truth found today 500,000 years old. Shall we artists quarrel with those who need to wait for the weights of scientific proof to believe in poetry? Or shall we let them enjoy their high adventure laid out in mud and in drugstore teeth? For truth is for them at last the Truth.
Quarrel we must, for there is the implication in this paleontological find of another attempt to claim possession of the poetic gesture; that the scientist rather than the artist discovered the Giant. It is not enough for the artist to announce with arrogance his invincible position: that the job of the artist is not to discover truth, but to fashion it, that the artist's work was done long ago. This position, superior as it may be, separates the artist from everyone else, declares his role against that of all. The quarrel here must include a critique of paleontology, an examination of the new sciences.
In the last sixty years, we have seen mushroom a vast cloud of 'science' in the fields of culture, history, philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, aesthetics, in an ambitious attempt to claim the non-material world. Why the invasion? Is it out of fear that its materialistic interpretation of physical phenomena, its narrow realm of physics and chemistry, may give science a minor historical position if, in the larger attempt to resolve the metaphysical mysteries, the physical world may take only a small place? Has since, in its attempt to dominate all realms of thought, been driven willy nilly to act politically so that, by denying any place to the metaphysical world, it could give its own base of operations a sense of security? Like any state or church, science found the drive to conquer necessary to protect the security of its own state of physics. To accomplish this expansion, the scientist abandoned the revolutionary scientific act for the theological way of life.
The domination of science over the mind of modern man has been accomplished by the simple tactic of ignoring the prime scientific quest; the concern with its original question--what? When it was found that the use of this question to explore all knowledge was Utopian, the scientist switched from an insistence on it to a roving position of using any question. It was easy for him to do so because he could thrive on the grip of mathematical discipline had, as a romantic symbol of purity and perfection, on the mind of man. So intense in its reverence for this symbol, scientific method, so brilliant is the rhythm of its logic-rite, its identification of truth with proof, that it has overwhelmed the original ecstasy of scientific quest, scientific theory.
For there lies a difference between method and inquiry. Scientific inquiry, from its beginnings, has perpetually askd a single and specific question, what? What is the rainbow, what is an atom, what a star? In the pursuit of this question, the physical sciences have built a realm of through that has validity because the question is basic for the attainment of descriptive knowledge and permits a proper integration between its question, the question what constantly maintained and its proper tool, mathematics or logic, for the discovery of its answer. Scientific method, however, is free of the question. It can function on any question, or, as in mathematics, without a question. But the choice of quest, the kind of question, is the basis of the scientific act. That is why it is so pathetic to watch the scientist, so proud of his critical acumen, delude himself by the splendor of the ritual of method which, concerned only with its own relentless ceremonial dance, casts its spell not only over the lay observer, but also over the participating scientist, with its incessant drumbeat of proof.
Original man, what does it matter who he was, giant or pygmy? What was he? That is the question for a science of paleontology, that would have meaning for us today. For if we knew what original man was, we could declare what today's man is not. Paleontology, by building a sentimental science around the question who (who was your great-grandfather), cannot be excused for substituting this question for the real one, because, according to the articles of faith that make up scientific method, there is not, nor can there ever be, sufficient proof for positive answer. After all, paleontology, like the other non-material sciences, has entered a realm where the only question worth discussing are the questions that cannot be proved. We cannot excuse the abdication of its primal scientific responsibility because paleontology substituted the sentimental question who for the scientific what. Who cares ho he was? What was the first man, was he a hunter, a toolmaker, a farmer, a worker, a priest, or a politician? Undoubtedly, the first man was an artist.
A science of paleontology that sets forth its proposition can be written if it builds on the postulate that the aesthetic act always precedes the social one. The totemic act of wonder in front of the tiger-ancestor came before the act of murder. It is important to keep in mind that the necessity for dream is stronger than any utilitarian need. In the language of science, the necessity for understanding the unknowable come s before any desire to discover the unknown.
Man's first expression, like his first dream,w as an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry, rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness, and at his own helplessness before the void. Philologists and semioticians are beginning to accept the concept that, if language is to be defined as the ability to communicate by means of signs, be they sounds or gestures, then language is an animal power. Anyone who has watched the common pigeon circle his female knows that she knows what he wants.
The human in language is literature, not communication. Man's first cry was a song. Man's first address to a neighbor was a cry of power and solemn weakness, not a request for a drink of water. Even the animal makes a futile attempt at poetry. Ornithologists explain the cocks crow as an ecstatic outburst of his power. The loon gliding lonesome over the lake, with whom is he communicating? The dog, alone, howls at the moon. Are we to say that the first man called the sun and the stars God as an act of communication and only after he had finished his day's labor? The myth came before the hunt. The purpose of man's first speech was an address to the unknowable. His behavior has its origin in his artistic nature.
Just as man's first speech was poetic before it became utilitarian, so man first built an idol of mud before he fashioned an axe. Man's hand traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin. Archaeologists tell us that the ax-head suggested the ax-head idol. Both are found in the same strata so they must have been contemporaneous. True, perhaps, that the ax-head idol of stone could not have been carved without axe instruments, but this is a division in metier, not in time, since the mud figure anticipated both the stone figure and the axe. (A figure can be made out of mud but an axe cannot.) The God image, not pottery, was the first manual act. It is the materialistic corruption of present-day anthropology that has tried to make men believe that original man fashioned pottery before he made sculpture.Pottery is the produce of civilization. The artistic act is man's personal birthright.
The earliest written history of human desires proves that he meaning of the world cannot be found in the social act. An examination of the first chapter of Genesis offers a better key to the human dream. It was inconceivable to the archaic writer that original man, that Adam,w as put on earth to be a toiler, to be a social animal. The writer's creative impulses told him that man's origina was that of an artist and he set him up in the Garden of Eden close to the Tree of Knowledge, of right and wrong, in the highest sense of divine revelation. The fall of man was understood by the writer and his audience not as a fall from Utopia to struggle, as a sociologicians would have it, nor, as in the religionists would have us believe, as a fall from Grace to Sin, but rather than Adam, by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, sought the creative life to be, like God, a 'creator of worlds,' to use Rashi's phrase, and was reduced to the life of toil only as a result of jealous punishment.
In our inability to live the life of our creator can be found the meaning of the fall of man. It was a fall from the good, rather than the abundant, life. And it is precisely here that the artist today is striving for a closer approach to the truth concerning original man than can be claimed by the paleontologist, for it is the poet and the artist who are concerned with the function of original man and who are trying to arrive at his creative state. What is the raison d'etre, what is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man's fall and an assertion that he return to the Adam of the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.
Quarrel we must, for there is the implication in this paleontological find of another attempt to claim possession of the poetic gesture; that the scientist rather than the artist discovered the Giant. It is not enough for the artist to announce with arrogance his invincible position: that the job of the artist is not to discover truth, but to fashion it, that the artist's work was done long ago. This position, superior as it may be, separates the artist from everyone else, declares his role against that of all. The quarrel here must include a critique of paleontology, an examination of the new sciences.
In the last sixty years, we have seen mushroom a vast cloud of 'science' in the fields of culture, history, philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, aesthetics, in an ambitious attempt to claim the non-material world. Why the invasion? Is it out of fear that its materialistic interpretation of physical phenomena, its narrow realm of physics and chemistry, may give science a minor historical position if, in the larger attempt to resolve the metaphysical mysteries, the physical world may take only a small place? Has since, in its attempt to dominate all realms of thought, been driven willy nilly to act politically so that, by denying any place to the metaphysical world, it could give its own base of operations a sense of security? Like any state or church, science found the drive to conquer necessary to protect the security of its own state of physics. To accomplish this expansion, the scientist abandoned the revolutionary scientific act for the theological way of life.
The domination of science over the mind of modern man has been accomplished by the simple tactic of ignoring the prime scientific quest; the concern with its original question--what? When it was found that the use of this question to explore all knowledge was Utopian, the scientist switched from an insistence on it to a roving position of using any question. It was easy for him to do so because he could thrive on the grip of mathematical discipline had, as a romantic symbol of purity and perfection, on the mind of man. So intense in its reverence for this symbol, scientific method, so brilliant is the rhythm of its logic-rite, its identification of truth with proof, that it has overwhelmed the original ecstasy of scientific quest, scientific theory.
For there lies a difference between method and inquiry. Scientific inquiry, from its beginnings, has perpetually askd a single and specific question, what? What is the rainbow, what is an atom, what a star? In the pursuit of this question, the physical sciences have built a realm of through that has validity because the question is basic for the attainment of descriptive knowledge and permits a proper integration between its question, the question what constantly maintained and its proper tool, mathematics or logic, for the discovery of its answer. Scientific method, however, is free of the question. It can function on any question, or, as in mathematics, without a question. But the choice of quest, the kind of question, is the basis of the scientific act. That is why it is so pathetic to watch the scientist, so proud of his critical acumen, delude himself by the splendor of the ritual of method which, concerned only with its own relentless ceremonial dance, casts its spell not only over the lay observer, but also over the participating scientist, with its incessant drumbeat of proof.
Original man, what does it matter who he was, giant or pygmy? What was he? That is the question for a science of paleontology, that would have meaning for us today. For if we knew what original man was, we could declare what today's man is not. Paleontology, by building a sentimental science around the question who (who was your great-grandfather), cannot be excused for substituting this question for the real one, because, according to the articles of faith that make up scientific method, there is not, nor can there ever be, sufficient proof for positive answer. After all, paleontology, like the other non-material sciences, has entered a realm where the only question worth discussing are the questions that cannot be proved. We cannot excuse the abdication of its primal scientific responsibility because paleontology substituted the sentimental question who for the scientific what. Who cares ho he was? What was the first man, was he a hunter, a toolmaker, a farmer, a worker, a priest, or a politician? Undoubtedly, the first man was an artist.
A science of paleontology that sets forth its proposition can be written if it builds on the postulate that the aesthetic act always precedes the social one. The totemic act of wonder in front of the tiger-ancestor came before the act of murder. It is important to keep in mind that the necessity for dream is stronger than any utilitarian need. In the language of science, the necessity for understanding the unknowable come s before any desire to discover the unknown.
Man's first expression, like his first dream,w as an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry, rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness, and at his own helplessness before the void. Philologists and semioticians are beginning to accept the concept that, if language is to be defined as the ability to communicate by means of signs, be they sounds or gestures, then language is an animal power. Anyone who has watched the common pigeon circle his female knows that she knows what he wants.
The human in language is literature, not communication. Man's first cry was a song. Man's first address to a neighbor was a cry of power and solemn weakness, not a request for a drink of water. Even the animal makes a futile attempt at poetry. Ornithologists explain the cocks crow as an ecstatic outburst of his power. The loon gliding lonesome over the lake, with whom is he communicating? The dog, alone, howls at the moon. Are we to say that the first man called the sun and the stars God as an act of communication and only after he had finished his day's labor? The myth came before the hunt. The purpose of man's first speech was an address to the unknowable. His behavior has its origin in his artistic nature.
Just as man's first speech was poetic before it became utilitarian, so man first built an idol of mud before he fashioned an axe. Man's hand traced the stick through the mud to make a line before he learned to throw the stick as a javelin. Archaeologists tell us that the ax-head suggested the ax-head idol. Both are found in the same strata so they must have been contemporaneous. True, perhaps, that the ax-head idol of stone could not have been carved without axe instruments, but this is a division in metier, not in time, since the mud figure anticipated both the stone figure and the axe. (A figure can be made out of mud but an axe cannot.) The God image, not pottery, was the first manual act. It is the materialistic corruption of present-day anthropology that has tried to make men believe that original man fashioned pottery before he made sculpture.Pottery is the produce of civilization. The artistic act is man's personal birthright.
The earliest written history of human desires proves that he meaning of the world cannot be found in the social act. An examination of the first chapter of Genesis offers a better key to the human dream. It was inconceivable to the archaic writer that original man, that Adam,w as put on earth to be a toiler, to be a social animal. The writer's creative impulses told him that man's origina was that of an artist and he set him up in the Garden of Eden close to the Tree of Knowledge, of right and wrong, in the highest sense of divine revelation. The fall of man was understood by the writer and his audience not as a fall from Utopia to struggle, as a sociologicians would have it, nor, as in the religionists would have us believe, as a fall from Grace to Sin, but rather than Adam, by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, sought the creative life to be, like God, a 'creator of worlds,' to use Rashi's phrase, and was reduced to the life of toil only as a result of jealous punishment.
In our inability to live the life of our creator can be found the meaning of the fall of man. It was a fall from the good, rather than the abundant, life. And it is precisely here that the artist today is striving for a closer approach to the truth concerning original man than can be claimed by the paleontologist, for it is the poet and the artist who are concerned with the function of original man and who are trying to arrive at his creative state. What is the raison d'etre, what is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man's fall and an assertion that he return to the Adam of the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.