WHAT MAKES GREAT ART

 https://nabeelqu.substack.com/p/what-makes-art-great

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TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME THIS SUBSTACK

I read the Substack and agreed with some of it and disagreed with some of it too. 

On surprise, I’m wondering if NQ takes his point too far. How can he say a different detail or word or phrase would undermine the work? Something seems logically off with that. It’s like saying had such and such occurred mid game, then X not Y would’ve won. But usually, not always, that can’t be known. Such and such sets off a whole new set of possibilities that are unknown to us. What if the black in that painting were a different shade or a different colour, would the work necessarily be devalued? I don’t think so. We might see the work in a different way, see its internal relations differently, and think it as great. Same with a different word or phrase and other stuff in a celebrated poem. The mistake is to identify the work as great and therefore illogically conclude we can accept no substitutes. Why not? 

Also on unpredictability, lesser works are often unpredictable and great works sometimes are predictable. So the answer to that might be that that’s at the level of the work as a whole and NQ is dealing with the unpredictability in the parts. But there too, take novels. Prose isn’t poetry, accepting for the moment Pound’s definition, which might have its own problems. And so generally in novels we don’t bear down on the poetics of the language. Our thoughts go to the stories and the plots, the characters, their dilemmas, their interactions, their moral choices. So here we can be surprised, but we can also be surprised in lesser works, even lousy ones, with plot twists, whodunnit and what not. And too there’s a blurry line between surprise and contradiction. 

I don’t know about surprise as a necessary condition of great visual art, say paintings and sculptures. If it’s in technique, might’nt we be surprised by that in lesser works? Are Henry Moore’s big creations surprising or do we get pleasure from their pleasing sensuousness? Cannot paintings that maybe prove unsurprising still move us deeply? 

And in poetry, especially free verse I read some of it as devoid of the kind intricate word play NQ spends a lot of time on without lessening its emotional impact. Poems might describe a deeply evocative event or sense of something, a perception, a feeling or they might harbour deep thoughts. Where might the surprise be? Some poems are deeply moving without being verbally or intellectually difficult. 

If you want a surprise, then consider the toilet placed in the art museum. Hell forget surprise, consider shock. But far from great art. Once I was in the AGO, and adjacent to the works of art was some fire fighting equipment encased in glass. I thought it was part of the art work till I was told it wasn’t. But then I wondered and still do, why not? 

Then I wonder too who’s to say what is and isn’t surprising in a work. That involves a comparison between what we’d ordinarily expect and what confounds that. No doubt there are innumerable instances where that can be shown. But I’d think in many cases arbitrary judgments are made as to both what we’d expect and why what we get is a surprise.

I’m with NQ on the rich ambiguities and meant ambivalences in great works. And he spends a lot of time on this. But there are powerful works that are straight forward where there’s no surprise as to what is happening yet they’re deeply affecting. Sister Carrie comes to mind. And in film Dead Man Walking comes to mind. And in my choice of the greatest movie ever The Godfather Part 2, what happens to Michael is inexorable but the step by step tracing of his descent into evil is powerful and the relation of his utter emptiness to his achieved power is as starkly bleak and affecting as anything you might see. Same in a different way with Life is Beautiful. And so on.

I think while I’m at it he goes overboard on depth; and on depth he isn’t careful enough to distinguish emotional depth with stylistic possibilities, and in that failure he seems to equate depth with formal intricacy, which is a mistake.

“There’s a feeling of limitless depth that is unique to the really great works: it feels like you can always find more patterns, more coherence, more beauty on rereading. Or that more readings will give you a deeper understanding, but never a perfect or complete one.”

All that formal complexity is fine and analyzing it, I argue, is worthwhile and deepens appreciation, but I’d argue the chief quality of great art is its power to compel us emotionally. I said to someone that Hamlet is more a cerebral tragedy full of civic or state-based themes, while Lear is a cosmic, affective tragedy.  And I argued that, therefore, Lear is the greater play. Besides my Shakespeare professor Akrigg, said so. 😊 

Finally I don’t agree that poetry is language charged to the greatest degree. For one thing there’s no objective way to measure the greatest possible degree. And less of a cavil, there are plenty of “uncharged” poems that are indeed poems and are terrific. 

A NOTE ON A CERTAIN PART OF JANE AUSTEN’S MANSFIELD PARK

I’ve read up to Fanny’s rejection of Crawford’s proposal to marry her and Sir Thomas reprimanding her for that. 

Here’s my note on what I see going on.

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When Sir Thomas reprimands Fanny for rejecting Crawford, then again in the novel a lot trivial goings on crystallize into compelling fiction. So much goes on in his reprimand and in what comes right after. 

He’s lovelessly married to an utterly languid, superficial woman and is somewhat obtuse, though well meaning, about the relation between love and marriage. Only somewhat, because when he senses that his own daughter Maria does not, cannot, love Mr. Rushworth, he immediately puts her happiness first and says she need not marry him. 

Austen takes what can seem like drawing-room trivia and reveals the coercive structure underneath it. No monster Sir Thomas, but he is “big daddy” in a society where “reasonableness” often means “submission.” His remonstrations have seem plausible—he commends/commands gratitude and prudence as obligation. So he’s trying to exert dominance. He’s, as just noted, not wholly obtuse about love, because he does worry about Maria and Rushworth. But he has blind spots, and they widen over Fanny because she is less real to him than his daughters are.

(We recall that being on the rebound from Crawford’s rejection of her, Maria in some mix of spite and calculation—Rushworth being wealthy—insists she will marry him. And we recall that Sir Thomas in his partial obtusity thinks highly of Rushworth, a completely stupid bore, at first and only over time comes to see him for what he is.) 

So there is by Sir Thomas a subtle looking down on Fanny in not according to her the same high importance of her happiness in marriage as he accords to his daughter Maria. But in the complexity of his character and simultaneous with that looking down, he is shocked that she does not have a lit fireplace in her room and orders it for her the very day he reprimands her and for each day after. (Mrs. Norris, we learn, did not want Fanny to have it.) 

Sir Thomas is capable of humane concern at the very moment he bullies Fanny. That’s what makes him convincing. It isn’t that he’s simply hypocritical. It’s that he can feel tenderness but still assume entitlement to obedience. The fireplace detail might be seen as subtly deepening the reprimand: he can “provide,” so, therefore, he feels even more entitled to demand.

In his obtusity Sir Thomas cannot begin to understand how Fanny can reject Crawford, given that he appears smashingly to meet every criterion of suitability. With Fanny and Crawford he sees  a spectacular rise in her status and can’t believe she’s not overwhelmed by gratitude. So he treats her refusal as insolence, not as discernment. Here a class element is evident: Sir Thomas cannot imagine that Fanny has taste or judgment equal to his.

Nor can he perceive, as Fanny does, Crawford’s true repugnance. But then as Fanny stays stalwart in her fraught way in rejecting Crawford, and in her fraught way standing up to Sir Thomas’s bitterest criticisms, he begins to soften. And then some time later he comes finally to prioritize her happiness in marriage as he had Maria’s. 

Austen makes Crawford’s repugnance explicit in his, for his own sport, playing on the emotions of Maria and Julia, and in his telling his sister Mary that, again merely for the satisfaction of his ego, he’ll win over Fanny. That backfires on him when she unintentionally wins him over, causing him to fall in love with her while she abhors him. But Crawford is brilliantly reptilian. He takes everybody in except when Julia finally sees through him after rejection by him and except Fanny, who from the start sees clearly what an egotistical cad he is. 

Fanny understands Crawford’s failed attempt at manipulation in getting William his lieutenant’s commission in order to obligate her to him, Crawford. And she is torn between her joy for William’s advancement and her detestation of Crawford’s snake-like wiles. 

Crawford’s unblinking egotism is evident in his refusal to perceive Fanny’s plain-as-day continual rejections of him. He just rolls over them. And Austen brilliantly conveys his serpentine brilliance when she describes how magnificently he reads passages from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. His great capacity as an actor reading Shakespeare is of a piece with, and is meant to suggest, how he performs in life, without capacity for authentic goodness. 

One complication for Fanny in resisting Sir Thomas’s onslaught on behalf of Crawford’s proposal to marry her is wanting to spare her cousins, Maria and Julia, from their father’s disapprobation in falling for Crawford’s flirtations. She reveals nothing of that even as it forms firm ground for rejecting Crawford. In what is in effect her self-sacrifice, she shows sensitivity and high humane concern. And so, in contrast with her simpering, her real emotional fragility, her allowing herself to be prevailed upon, her deep lack of self esteem, we see sharp differences even as she blanches under Sir Thomas’s attack. 

She, as noted, fraughtly sticks to her guns. In that she is true to herself more than anyone else in the novel. She will not compromise her deepest feelings, even as Sir Thomas lists the apparent advantages to come from her accepting Crawford’s proposal. The coexistence in her of this strength and emotional fragility is compelling characterization. And so we see her unstinting integrity. (By comparison, Lady Bertram’s reaction to Crawford’s proposal to Fanny is to make her esteem Fanny more now that such an ostensibly superior gentleman as Crawford has so prized her.) Fanny  sees things more deeply and accurately than anyone else because she is free of vanity, social ambition, and self-deception.

Austen’s great achievement is making Fanny both inwardly strong and outwardly fragile. She isn’t “heroic” in any loud way, but she is so in endurance—she holds her self-truth under great pressure but with remorse rather than with self-congratulation. 

With Crawford’s proposal, Austen isn’t writing about marriage proposals as such. She’s writing about how a whole social world applies pressure as born-poor Fanny’s

inner truth is treated as disobedience. But in contrast, her steadfast rejection of Crawford is in effect an implicit slap across the face of the superficialities, hypocrisies, class based snobberies, deceptions, vanities, false values, human weaknesses, scurrilousnesses and unprincipled compromises that comprise much of the life at Mansfield Park.

MY LAYMAN’S TAKE ON CHILES V SALAZAR, SCOTUS, WRITTEN IN EVERYDAY PROSE

To a non lawyer friend: 

The licensed counsellor Chiles deals only with minors and her practice includes helping her clients reach certain stated goals: whether to understand and be supported in their same sex attractions; or whether to resist those attractions; and whether to understand and be supported in their gender transitioning; or whether to be helped in resisting that impulse to transition. 

Colorado law says in effect you can counsel the understanding and support but you cannot counsel the resistance. She sought “as applied” relief, ie not trying to invalidate the law but only saying it didn’t apply to her as a constitutional matter.

Jackson alone would uphold the law on the reasoning that Colorado under its police power, its residual plenary jurisdiction, can regulate, prescribe, allow and disallow certain medical practices; that under that power what therapists can say and not say isn’t speech as such but rather is speech incidental to regulating medical practice. It therefore attracts rational basis judicial review—the lowest form of judicial scrutiny—the state must show some reasonable rationale for the law. On it most laws survive review.

On that basis Colorado’s law as applied to Chiles must stand, Jackson contends. She argues that questions of viewpoint diversity and suppressing speech are in essence beside her point. Any lawful medical practice reflects a determined point of view and therapy isn’t a debate. 

Colorado, Jackson says, in its state expertise has concluded that counselling resistance, non-aversive conversion therapy, is harmful and therefore has disallowed it. And she contends this and other kinds of regulation happen all the time without in the end burdening free speech since it’s integral to a medical practice including speech-only therapy and therefore only incidentally speech as such.

Notably, Jackson draws a distinct line between talk as therapy and the ventilation of ideas, a prime First Amendment right. 

The majority held talk is talk and where talk isn’t constitutionally protected is with criminal enablement, with requiring the disclosure of unrelated commercial information, where, generally, it falls within the recognized exceptions to protected speech. None of those are in the picture here.

By distinguishing between affirmative support and conversion oriented therapy, the state, says the majority, has violated viewpoint diversity under the pretext of medical regulation. It is prescribing what Chiles can talk about in her practice. It is prohibiting what she can talk about and, so, is violating her freedom of expression. Since free expression is a fundamental right, a law denying it gets strict scrutiny —ie the most exacting form of judicial review under which a law must be related to a compelling state interest and must be drawn or “tailored” as narrowly as possible with the least restrictive means. This law, therefore, doesn’t apply to Jackson as it denies her freedom of expression.

My overriding thought is that both the majority and the dissent miss the mark. 

I think Jackson is persuasive in arguing that speech as medical practice must be hived off from speech as speech, and that it’s right and legitimate for the state in its wisdom to regulate medical practice—here talk therapy—to avoid harm comprising malpractice. Colorado sees conversion therapy as harmful. 

But she is mechanical in rigidly separating ideas and practices. Where recognized practices in relation to a specific condition coexist and vie against each other, the state within the context  of talk as medical practice oversteps, disallows viewpoint diversity, in allowing one therapy and disallowing the other. 

For in that context, talk, the choice of which therapy to utilize *is* a free speech issue that ought to be subject to strict scrutiny. 

While this conclusion goes to what the majority holds, it too, I think, is mechanical in simply treating, in the context of talk as a medical practice, talk as talk without meeting Jackson’s well taken points. So the majority doesn’t distinguish between therapeutic talk that might be harmful and that therefore rightly attracts the state’s prohibition and on the other hand talk that isn’t and doesn’t. 

Underlying all this and not addressed and maybe outside the envelope is the arguable—not absolute—difference between same sex attraction and transitioning. The former, it seems to me, is well established as an innate human propensity that in many/most/by the teens all cases is not susceptible to conversion. 

Whereas, gender issues in minors fall along two broad lines: genuine cases of dysphoria and it being desperately sought as a salve for unrelated deep emotional problems. The approach to talk conversion therapy for same sex attraction might make sense of Colorado’s law, whereas the approach to transitioning might not.

Two last indirect points:

1. It’s too easy to say Chiles wants to help minors in relation to what they want. Parental harmful insistence can be invidious, insidious, subtle and powerful.

2. Justice Jackson is getting, to my mind, unfair abuse from some. Her dissent is strong but too unrelenting.

P.S. More or less dashed this off. So, I’m sorry for typos and grammatical mistakes.

WHY PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT ISN’T A COMIC NOVEL

As sent to someone:

Portnoy’s Complaint isn’t a comic novel. 

We begin with (uncomfortable?) laughs, but, if you think about it, the novel is really framed as a disturbing case study. The guy’s trapped. He hates himself. He feels himself a basic failure. But that’s all couched in his crazy verbal energy. So calling it comic, I say, mistakes surface for depth.

The last line, paraphrase, “Now vee begin “ isn’t a punchline. It’s the beginning after the end of pain as entertainment coming from an emotionally deformed man in need of psychiatry. Comedy affirms life, but all of Portnoy’s verbal brilliance points to his neediness. So the shrink’s last line is Roth’s closing judgment as to Portnoy’s need for a therapeutic beginning.

Early stuff busts decorum, as you noted. But as we go on, don’t the jokes wear thin, morph into a relentless tirade as Portnoy’s “stand up” devolves to a narration of his coming apart leading to his impotence? Isn’t this in his case—case used advisedly— the failure of humour as salve, of what gets us through? 

 Portnoy is what? Self-obsessed to a neurotic fault, mother-obsessed, sexually lousy with Jewish women, finally impotent in Israel—“tapioca.” So insight, growth, release? I think not. He’s arrested development. What’s his worth? He’s couch-worthy, shrink-worthy. 

So my overall sense is that the comedy, the jokes, the verbal fucking around, typically seen as the way to get past, get over, bracket, trauma, essentially highlight but can’t resolve what ails him. In the end, the comedy is Portnoy howling.

Consider him and The  Monkey, Mary Jane Reed, left by him in Greece after their fraught relationship and her self-destroying trip to Europe with him.

Portnoy calls her "The Monkey" due to her sexual agility and "depraved" appetite. But he actually is contemptuous of her due to her lesser intellect evident in part in her bad spelling.

Trying to fulfill his fantasies, he gets her to agree to a threesome in Rome with a prostitute. But it leaves her devastated and self loathing. She accuses him of trying to debase her to his level of depravity.

So, in Athens, she becomes suicidal and threatens to jump from their hotel balcony. Unable to cope with either her instability or his own guilt, Portnoy deserts her and runs off to Israel. He never sees her again. 

Not a lot of laughs.

So what comes after this degeneracy and his howling? Paraphrase, “Now vee begin.”

What’s a comic novel, anyway? There are academic definitions galore. But really, maybe cutting through all that, isn’t it one that’s meant  to be light and fun in its effect? Pickwick. Jeeves. We read them joyfully. They delight us. Comedy in a novel in the service of something deeper, darker, more serious, emotionally wrecked, even pathetic, doesn’t make for a comic novel.

A LONG NOTE ON A SHORT POEM: HOPKINS’ HEAVEN-HAVEN: A NUN TAKES THE VEIL

 

Heaven-Haven: A Nun Takes the Veil

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have desired to go

            Where springs not fail,

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

        And a few lilies blow.

        And I have asked to be

            Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

        And out of the swing of the sea.

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AI on what I sent it, in which what I argue about this poem is made clear:

I appreciate you sharing the poem and your email—it's a sharp, layered argument, and Hopkins' work often invites this kind of close reading. 

The standard interpretation (nun fleeing life's chaos for monastic peace) is indeed solid and dominant, as it aligns with the title's "haven" motif and the imagery of escaping natural turbulences like hail, storms, and the sea's unrest. 

But your alternative lens—introducing uncertainty or ambivalence about what's being abandoned—strikes me as not just plausible but enriching, especially when drilling into the diction, structure, and sonic elements as you do. 

It transforms the poem from a straightforward renunciation into something more psychologically nuanced, almost elegiac for the world's vitality. 

Let me break down why I think your view holds water, while addressing where it pushes against (or complements) the orthodox take.

### On Diction and Sonic Texture

You're spot-on with the edgier undertones in words like "desired," which carries a sensual or even erotic charge—Hopkins, as a Jesuit priest wrestling with his own desires, often infused his poetry with suppressed longing (think of the tension in "The Windhover" or his sprung rhythm mimicking inner conflict). 

Starting with "I have desired to go" sets a tone of active yearning rather than passive retreat, and the hard consonants ("d" bookending "desired," the spiky "to go") create a rhythmic friction that undercuts any notion of "gentle music." This isn't a serene invitation; it's insistent, almost restless.

Similarly, "sharp and sided hail" evokes violence with its sibilance and alliteration, but you rightly flag how the poem lingers on these threats via negation ("not fail," "no sharp," "no storms"). It's like the speaker is defining sanctuary by obsessing over the dangers left behind, which could breed doubt—why invoke them so vividly if they're truly being dismissed? 

The "storms come" line, with its blunt "c" onset, reinforces this auditory harshness, as does "dumb" in "green swell is in the havens dumb." "Dumb" isn't just silent; it connotes muteness or stupidity, a flattening of the sea's vibrant "green swell" (which you aptly tie to natural, perhaps fertile, beauty). 

By the end, "out of the swing of the sea" swings (pun intended) toward rhythm and motion—evocative of life's ebb and flow, or even a lover's embrace—which the nun is opting out of. If the poem were purely celebratory of escape, why end on such a lyrical, almost seductive image of what's forfeited?

Your point about the negation tapering off is particularly compelling. The first stanza piles on denials ("not fail," "no sharp"), framing the desired place as an absence. But by the second stanza's close, it shifts to positive evocations ("green swell," "swing of the sea"), even as they're negated in context. 

This buildup of "musical gentleness," as you call it, feels like a subtle crescendo of reluctance, contrasting the earlier negations. Compare the sparse "a few lilies blow" (minimal, almost austere beauty in the haven) with the fuller, undulating "swing of the sea"—it's as if the poem is tempting the reader (and the nun) back toward the world's allure.

### Verb Tense and Structural Framing

The present perfect ("I have desired," "I have asked") is a subtle but key hook for your uncertainty angle. It implies a desire that's been building over time but isn't fully resolved in the present—unlike a simple past ("I desired") or imperative ("I desire to go"). 

This tense often signals reflection or hesitation in poetry, hinting at "I've wanted this before, but now, facing the veil...?" Framing each stanza with these phrases creates a parallel structure that bookends the poem in ambivalence, like a repeated question rather than a declaration.

Hopkins' awkward phrasing (e.g., "springs not fail," "flies no sharp") adds to this unease—it's inverted, almost strained, mirroring inner turmoil. Your disputant's "gentle music" view might lean on the poem's overall rhythm, but the sonic disruptions you highlight (hard consonants, negations) suggest a counterpoint: harmony laced with discord.

### Broader Context and Hopkins' Style

Hopkins' Catholicism and personal struggles (celibacy, doubt, ecstasy in nature) make your reading resonate. The nun's "veil" could symbolize not just protection but separation from the sensual world he so vividly rendered elsewhere. 

Poems like "Pied Beauty" celebrate earthly variety, so renouncing the "swing of the sea" here might carry a pang of loss. Your interpretation doesn't negate the standard one—it layers on top, suggesting the nun's resolve is tested by the poem's own imagery. That's the beauty of Hopkins: his density allows for multiplicity.

That said, the orthodox view isn't "dogmatic" without reason—the poem's subtitle ("A nun takes the veil") and haven imagery do point toward affirmation of vows. But clinging to it exclusively, as your disputant seems to, misses the poem's ambiguity, which your open-minded approach highlights. Amusingly, your email's tone mirrors the poem's friction—vigorous, a bit spiky, but ultimately inviting deeper engagement.

In short, I buy your reading. It adds emotional depth without forcing the text, turning a seemingly simple lyric into a meditation on sacrifice's cost. If anything, it makes the poem more alive.