Key Principle
Art is not self-expression but participation -- in community, in tradition, in the formal order of Creation. A style that excludes mystery achieves control but forecloses grace. A style vulnerable to mystery -- to "the artistically unaccountable" -- is open to grace and can accommodate the fullness of communal life. Poetry exists within "a complex reminding" to which it relates as both cause and effect. The poet's responsibility is to serve this web of association by amateur (love's) standards, not professional ones.
"The story admits grace because it admits mystery. It admits mystery by admitting the artistically unaccountable." -- Wendell Berry, Essay: Style and Grace
Why This Matters
Berry draws a structural parallel between literary purity and industrial specialization: both minimize to avoid what they cannot control, both are "severely reductive of both humanity and nature." Hemingway's style "deals with what it does not understand by leaving it out" -- producing aesthetic control but dividing "the fisherman from history and bewilderment, the river from its darkness." Maclean's style is "vulnerable to bewilderment, mystery, and tragedy -- and a style, therefore, that is open to grace." This is the strongest link between Berry's aesthetics and his economics: the same logic that makes industrial monoculture efficient makes Hemingway's prose clean, and both achieve their purity by amputating the whole.
The failure mode of professionalism in art mirrors its failure in economics. "Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity.... But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best." The amateur/professional distinction is industrial in origin (less than two hundred years old), arising from "the industrial need to separate love from work." Poetry that serves professional standards narrows its ground of judgment to fashion; poetry that serves amateur standards enlarges its ground to the world.
Good Examples
Used Art vs. Exhibited Art: Hemingway's art is exhibited -- "We are meant always to be conscious of the art, and to be conscious of it as a feat of style." Maclean's art is used -- it "ultimately subjects itself to its subject," functioning "like fishing, to catch what cannot be seen." This separates art-as-performance from art-as-instrument. Exhibited art serves the artist's reputation; used art serves the subject and the community. (Essay: Style and Grace)
Difficult Hope and the Craft of Endurance: Absolute despair is silent. To articulate despair requires choosing words, which requires caring about accuracy, which is already a departure from hopelessness. "The distinguishing characteristic of absolute despair is silence." Enduring protest is "moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." Technical mastery is the mechanism of this preservation: "By its wonderfully sufficient artistry, the poem preserves the poet's wholeness of heart in the face of his despair." (Essay: A Poem of Difficult Hope)
The Complex Reminding: A poem is not self-expression but participation in a web of associations -- technical, literary, communal, spiritual. "Any poem worth the name is the product of a convocation. It exists, literally, by recalling past voices into presence." Originality is not departure from this system but authentic addition: a poem is original "not in somehow escaping its history, but in causing its history to resound and sing around it." This directly parallels Berry's argument against the Territory of escape: the poet who flees tradition commits the same error as the writer who flees community. (Essay: The Responsibility of the Poet)
Counterpoints
Style-as-control has genuine virtues: Berry's critique of Hemingway acknowledges the aesthetic power of exclusion. There is real artistry in what Hemingway achieves, and Berry does not deny it. The point is not that controlled style is bad but that it is incomplete -- and that its incompleteness is the same incompleteness as industrial specialization. A writer might reasonably choose Hemingway's discipline for certain purposes while recognizing what it costs. (Essay: Style and Grace)
The amateur standard risks amateurishness: Berry insists that amateur standards are higher, not lower, than professional ones -- "always straining upward toward the humble and the best." But in practice, the invocation of love over craft can excuse poor work. Berry's answer is that genuine love demands more rigor, not less: "The context of love is the world," and a poem answerable to the world must be more, not less, technically accomplished. (Essay: The Responsibility of the Poet)
Can formal integrity really participate in Creation?: Berry claims that "The form of a good poem is, in a way perhaps not altogether explainable or demonstrable, an analogue of the forms of other things." This is theological aesthetics, and Berry is honest about its limits -- "not altogether explainable." The claim is that poetic form participates in natural order the way good farming does. This is either Berry's deepest insight or his most vulnerable assertion, depending on one's metaphysics. (Essay: The Responsibility of the Poet)
Key Quotes
"The distinguishing characteristic of absolute despair is silence." -- Wendell Berry, Essay: A Poem of Difficult Hope
"Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." -- Wendell Berry, Essay: A Poem of Difficult Hope
"Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity.... But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best." -- Wendell Berry, Essay: The Responsibility of the Poet
"It is a tragic rite because of our inevitable failure to understand each other; and it is a triumphant rite because we can love completely without understanding." -- Wendell Berry, Essay: Style and Grace
Rules of Thumb
- When a style achieves purity by exclusion, ask what has been amputated. Literary minimalism and industrial monoculture share a logic.
- Art that serves the artist's reputation is exhibited; art that serves its subject is used. Prefer the latter.
- The capacity to articulate despair is already a departure from despair. Craft is not ornament but the mechanism by which wholeness is preserved.
- Judge work by amateur (love's) standards, not professional ones. The context of love is the world; the context of professionalism is the market.
- Originality is authentic addition to a tradition, not escape from it.
Related References
- The Power-Knowledge Gap and the Cultural Remedy - Art as feedback loop with place: damaging the subject damages the art
- Knowledge, Affection, and Place - Abbey's humor-outrage balance as used art; Shaw's language as experiential style
- The Territory and the Beloved Community - The Territory of escape in literature parallels the poet who flees tradition