Passion and Devotion

 I have found a very interesting person, with this week's quotation: Paula Modersohn-Becker. She was a late 19th / early 20th century German Expressionist artist, who died at the tragically young age of 31, days after giving birth to her first child. She wrote, "You simply have to devote your whole self to the one, original" (or perhaps, most important) "matter. This is the way something can and will become" (or perhaps, come into being).

She was a devoted artist, and has left copious letters and journals which share her passion for her art. In one extract from her journal, she wrote, presciently, "I know that I shall not live very long. But I wonder, is that sad? Is a celebration more beautiful because it lasts longer? And my life is a celebration, a short, intense celebration. My powers of perception are becoming finer... with almost every breeze I take, I get a new sense and understanding of the linden tree, of ripened wheat, of hay... I suck everything up into me. And if only now love would blossom for me, before I depart; and if I can paint three good pictures, then I shall go gladly, with flowers in my hair."

This passion, this devotion, really spoke to me, as a fellow creative (although nothing I ever produce may live up to her art). It is easy to dabble with art, writing etc and never get anywhere. It takes intense devotion to produce something worthwhile. And time and patience and dedication. I have been writing my current book for three years now and do not grudge a minute of the time I have spent on it.

But I sometimes wonder whether being passionate about what we are creating can make us a little self-centred. Because if it is a ruling passion, we will prioritise it highly. Which may have consequences for the people we share our lives with.

In her marvellous novel, Gaudy Night, detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers shares a conversation between Harriet Vane, one of the two protagonists, and Miss de Vine, a history tutor at Shrewsbury College:

"I quite agree with you," said Miss de Vine, "about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests...."

"But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," Harriet said... "one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"

"You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do.... You expend the trouble and you don't make any mistake - and then, you experience the ecstasy. But if there is any subject in which you're content with the second-rate, then it isn't really your subject."

"You're dead right," said Harriet after a pause. "If one's genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass... If you truly want a thing, you don't snatch; if you snatch, you don't really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it's a proof of its importance to you?"

"I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors... A fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring... If you are once sure of what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller - all other interests, your own and other people's."

Which is quite a terrifying thought, in a way...