The Most Human Art Scott Russell Sanders

The Most Human Art Ten reasons why we'll always need a good story We have been tellin" rel="nofollow">ing stories to one another for a long time, perhaps for as long as we have been usin" rel="nofollow">ing language, and we have been usin" rel="nofollow">ing language, I suspect, for as long as we have been human. In all its guises, from words spoken and written to pictures and musical notes and mathematical symbols, language is our distin" rel="nofollow">inguishin" rel="nofollow">ing gift, our hallmark as a species. We delight in" rel="nofollow">in stories, first of all, because they are a playground for language, an arena for exercisin" rel="nofollow">ing this extraordin" rel="nofollow">inary power. The spells and enchantments that figure in" rel="nofollow">in so many tales remin" rel="nofollow">ind us of the ambiguous potency in" rel="nofollow">in words, for creatin" rel="nofollow">ing or destroyin" rel="nofollow">ing, for bin" rel="nofollow">indin" rel="nofollow">ing or settin" rel="nofollow">ing free. Italo Calvin" rel="nofollow">ino, a wizard of storytellin" rel="nofollow">ing, described literature as “a struggle to escape from the confin" rel="nofollow">ines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in" rel="nofollow">in the dictionary.” Calvin" rel="nofollow">ino's remark holds true, I believe, not just for the highfalutin" rel="nofollow">in modes we label as literature, but for every effort to make sense of our lives through narrative. Second, stories create community. They lin" rel="nofollow">ink teller to listeners, and listeners to one another. This is obviously so when speaker and audience share the same space, as humans have done for all but the last few centuries of our million-year history; but it is equally if less obviously so in" rel="nofollow">in our literate age, when we encounter more of our stories in" rel="nofollow">in solitude, on page or screen. When two people discover they have both read Don Quixote, they immediately share a piece of history and become thereby less strange to one another. The strongest bonds are formed by sacred stories, which unite entire peoples. Thus Jews rehearse the events of Passover; Christians tell of a miraculous birth and death and resurrection; Buddhists tell of Gautama meditatin" rel="nofollow">ing beneath a tree. As we know only too well, sacred stories may also divide the world between those who are in" rel="nofollow">inside the circle and those who are outside, a division that has in" rel="nofollow">inspired pogroms and in" rel="nofollow">inquisitions and wars. There is danger in" rel="nofollow">in story, as in" rel="nofollow">in any great force. If the tales that captivate us are silly or deceitful, like most of those offered by television and advertisin" rel="nofollow">ing, they waste our time and warp our desires. If they are cruel, they make us callous. If they are false and bullyin" rel="nofollow">ing, in" rel="nofollow">instead of drawin" rel="nofollow">ing us in" rel="nofollow">into a thoughtful community they may lure us in" rel="nofollow">into an unthin" rel="nofollow">inkin" rel="nofollow">ing herd or, worst of all, in" rel="nofollow">into a crowd screamin" rel="nofollow">ing for blood—in" rel="nofollow">in which case we need other, truer stories to renew our vision. So The Diary of Anne Frank is an antidote to Mein" rel="nofollow">in Kampf. So Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an antidote to the paranoid yarns of the Ku Klux Klan. Just as stories may rescue us from lonelin" rel="nofollow">iness, so, by speakin" rel="nofollow">ing to us in" rel="nofollow">in private, they may rescue us from mobs. This brin" rel="nofollow">ings me to the third item on my list: Stories help us to see through the eyes of other people. Here my list overlaps with one compiled by Carol Bly, who argues in" rel="nofollow">in “Six Uses of Story” that the foremost gift from stories is “experience of other.” For the duration of a story, children may sense how it is to be old, and the elderly may recall how it is to be young; men may The Most Human Art Scott Russell Sanders, Georgia Review UTNE Reader September – October 97 2 of 4 try on the experiences of women, and women those of men. Through stories, we reach across the rifts not only of gender and age, but also of race and creed, geography and class, even the rifts between species or between enemies. Folktales and fables and myths often show humans talkin" rel="nofollow">ing and workin" rel="nofollow">ing with other animals, with trees, with rivers and stones, as if recallin" rel="nofollow">ing or envisionin" rel="nofollow">ing a time of easy commerce among all bein" rel="nofollow">ings. Helpful ducks and cats and frogs, wise dragons, stolid oaks, all have lessons for us in" rel="nofollow">in these old tales. Of course no storyteller can literally become hawk or pin" rel="nofollow">ine, any more than a man can become a woman; we cross those boundaries only imperfectly, through leaps of imagin" rel="nofollow">ination. “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an in" rel="nofollow">instant?” Thoreau asks. We come nearer to achievin" rel="nofollow">ing that miracle in" rel="nofollow">in stories than anywhere else. A fourth power of stories is to show us the consequences of our actions. To act responsibly, we must be able to foresee where our actions might lead; and stories train" rel="nofollow">in our sight. They reveal the patterns of human conduct, from motive through action to result. Whether or not a story has a moral purpose, therefore, it cannot help but have a moral effect, for better or worse. An Apache elder, quoted by the anthropologist Keith Basso, puts the case directly: “Stories go to work on you like arrows. Stories make you live right. Stories make you replace yourself.” Stories do work on us, on our min" rel="nofollow">inds and hearts, showin" rel="nofollow">ing us how we might act, who we might become, and why. So we arrive at a fifth power of stories, which is to educate our desires. Instead of playin" rel="nofollow">ing on our selfishness and fear, stories can give us images for what is truly worth seekin" rel="nofollow">ing, worth havin" rel="nofollow">ing, worth doin" rel="nofollow">ing. I mean here somethin" rel="nofollow">ing more than the way fairy tales repeat our familiar longin" rel="nofollow">ings, I mean the way Huckleberry Fin" rel="nofollow">inn makes us want to be faithful, the way Walden makes us yearn to confront the essential facts of life. What stories at their best can do is lead our desires in" rel="nofollow">in new directions—away from greed, toward generosity; away from suspicion, toward sympathy; away from an obsession with material goods, toward a concern for spiritual goods. One of the spiritual goods I cherish is the peace of bein" rel="nofollow">ing at home, in" rel="nofollow">in family and neighborhood and community and landscape. Much of what I know about becomin" rel="nofollow">ing in" rel="nofollow">intimate with one's home ground I have learned from readin" rel="nofollow">ing the testaments of in" rel="nofollow">individuals who have decided to stay put. The short list of my teachers would in" rel="nofollow">include Lao-tzu and Thoreau and Faulkner, Thomas Merton, Black Elk, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Gary Snyder, and Wendell Berry. Their work exemplifies the sixth power of stories, which is to help us dwell in" rel="nofollow">in place. Accordin" rel="nofollow">ing to Eudora Welty, herself a deeply rooted storyteller, “the art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly, and passionately from its place of origin" rel="nofollow">in will remain" rel="nofollow">in the longest understood.” So we return to the epic of Gilgamesh, with its broodin" rel="nofollow">ing on the forests and rivers of Babylonia; we return to the ancient Hebrew accounts of a land flowin" rel="nofollow">ing with milk and honey; we follow the Aborigin" rel="nofollow">inal songs of journeys over the contin" rel="nofollow">inent of Australia—because they all convey a passionate knowledge of place. Native American tribes ground their stories in" rel="nofollow">in nearby fields and rivers and mountain" rel="nofollow">ins, and thus carry their places in" rel="nofollow">in min" rel="nofollow">ind. As the Pueblo travel in" rel="nofollow">in their homeland, accordin" rel="nofollow">ing to Leslie Marmon The Most Human Art Scott Russell Sanders, Georgia Review UTNE Reader September – October 97 3 of 4 Silko, they recall the stories that belong to each mesa and arroyo, and “thus the contin" rel="nofollow">inuity and accuracy of the oral narratives are rein" rel="nofollow">inforced by the landscape and the Pueblo in" rel="nofollow">interpretation of that landscape is main" rel="nofollow">intain" rel="nofollow">ined.” Stories of place help us recognize that we belong to the earth, blood and brain" rel="nofollow">in and bone, and that we are kin" rel="nofollow">in to other creatures. Life has never been easy, yet in" rel="nofollow">in every contin" rel="nofollow">inent we fin" rel="nofollow">ind tales of a primordial garden, an era of harmony and bounty. In A God Within" rel="nofollow">in, Rene Dubos suggests that these old tales might be recollections “of a very distant past when certain" rel="nofollow">in groups of people had achieved biological fitness to their environment.” Whether or not our ancestors ever lived in" rel="nofollow">in ecological balance, if we aspire to do so in" rel="nofollow">in the future, we must nourish the affectionate, imagin" rel="nofollow">inative bond between person and place. Mention of past and future brin" rel="nofollow">ings us to the seventh power of stories, which is to help us dwell in" rel="nofollow">in time. I am thin" rel="nofollow">inkin" rel="nofollow">ing here not so much of the mechanical time parceled out by clocks as of historical and psychological time. History is public, a tale of in" rel="nofollow">influences and events that have shaped the present; the min" rel="nofollow">ind's time is private, a flow of memory and anticipation that contin" rel="nofollow">inues, in" rel="nofollow">in eddies and rapids, for as long as we are conscious. Narrative orients us in" rel="nofollow">in both kin" rel="nofollow">inds of time, private and public, by lin" rel="nofollow">inkin" rel="nofollow">ing before and after within" rel="nofollow">in the lives of characters and communities, by showin" rel="nofollow">ing action leadin" rel="nofollow">ing on to action, moment to moment, begin" rel="nofollow">innin" rel="nofollow">ing to middle to end. Once again" rel="nofollow">in we come upon the tacit morality of stories, for moral judgment relies, as narrative does, on a belief in" rel="nofollow">in cause and effect. Stories teach us that every gesture, every act, every choice we make sends ripples of in" rel="nofollow">influence in" rel="nofollow">into the future. Thus we hear that the caribou will only keep givin" rel="nofollow">ing themselves to the hunter if the hunter kills them humbly and respectfully. We hear that all our deeds are recorded in" rel="nofollow">in some heavenly book, in" rel="nofollow">in the grain" rel="nofollow">in of the universe, in" rel="nofollow">in the min" rel="nofollow">ind of God, and that everythin" rel="nofollow">ing we sow we shall reap. Stories gather experience in" rel="nofollow">into shapes we can hold and pass on through time, much the way DNA molecules in" rel="nofollow">in our cells record genetic discoveries and pass them on. Until the in" rel="nofollow">invention of writin" rel="nofollow">ing, the discoveries of the tribe were preserved and transmitted by storytellers, above all by elders. “Under hunter-gatherer conditions,” Jared Diamond observes, “the knowledge possessed by even one person over the age of 70 could spell the difference between survival and starvation for a whole clan.” Aware of time passin" rel="nofollow">ing, however, we mourn thin" rel="nofollow">ings passin" rel="nofollow">ing away, and we often fear the shape of thin" rel="nofollow">ings to come. Hence our need for the eighth power of stories, which is to help us deal with sufferin" rel="nofollow">ing, loss, and death. From the Psalms to the Sunday comics, many tales comfort the fearful and the grievin" rel="nofollow">ing; they show the weak triumphin" rel="nofollow">ing over the strong, love win" rel="nofollow">innin" rel="nofollow">ing out over hatred, laughter defyin" rel="nofollow">ing misery. It is easy to dismiss this hopefulness as escapism, but as Italo Calvin" rel="nofollow">ino remin" rel="nofollow">inds us, “For a prisoner, to escape has always been a good thin" rel="nofollow">ing, and an in" rel="nofollow">individual escape can be a first necessary step toward a collective escape.” Those who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death tell stories as a way of fendin" rel="nofollow">ing off despair. Thus Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells of survivin" rel="nofollow">ing the Soviet gulag; Toni Morrison recounts the anguish of plantation life; Black Elk tells about the slaughter of the buffalo, the loss of his Lakota homeland. Those of us who have not lived through horrors must The Most Human Art Scott Russell Sanders, Georgia Review UTNE Reader September – October 97 4 of 4 still face losin" rel="nofollow">ing all that we love, in" rel="nofollow">includin" rel="nofollow">ing our own lives. Stories reek of our obsession with mortality. As the most enchantin" rel="nofollow">ing first lin" rel="nofollow">ine of a tale is “once upon a time,” so the most comfortin" rel="nofollow">ing last lin" rel="nofollow">ine is “and they lived happily ever after.” This fairy-tale formula expresses a deep longin" rel="nofollow">ing not only for happin" rel="nofollow">iness, but also for ever-afterness, for an assurance that life as well as happin" rel="nofollow">iness will endure, that it will survive all challenges, perhaps even the grave. We feel the force of that longin" rel="nofollow">ing, whether or not we believe that it can ever be fulfilled. The nin" rel="nofollow">inth item on my list is really a summation of all that I have said thus far: Stories teach us how to be human. We are creatures of in" rel="nofollow">instin" rel="nofollow">inct, but not solely of in" rel="nofollow">instin" rel="nofollow">inct. More than any other animal, we must learn how to behave. In this perennial effort, as Ursula Le Guin" rel="nofollow">in says, “story is our nearest and dearest way of understandin" rel="nofollow">ing our lives and fin" rel="nofollow">indin" rel="nofollow">ing our way onward.” Skill is knowin" rel="nofollow">ing how to do somethin" rel="nofollow">ing; wisdom is knowin" rel="nofollow">ing when and why to do it, or to refrain" rel="nofollow">in from doin" rel="nofollow">ing it. While stories may display skill aplenty, in" rel="nofollow">in technique or character or plot, what the best of them offer is wisdom. They hold a livin" rel="nofollow">ing reservoir of human possibilities, tellin" rel="nofollow">ing us what has worked before, what has failed, where meanin" rel="nofollow">ing and purpose and joy might be found. At the heart of many tales is a test, a riddle, a problem to solve; and that, surely, is the condition of our lives, both in" rel="nofollow">in detail—as we decide how to act in" rel="nofollow">in the present moment—and in" rel="nofollow">in general, as we seek to understand what it all means. Like so many characters, we are lost in" rel="nofollow">in a dark wood, a labyrin" rel="nofollow">inth, a swamp, and we need a trail of stories to show us the way back to our true home. Our ultimate home is the Creation, and anyone who pretends to comprehend this vast and in" rel="nofollow">intricate abode is either a lunatic or a liar. In spite of all that we have learned through millennia of in" rel="nofollow">inquiry, we still dwell in" rel="nofollow">in mystery. Why there is a universe, why we are here, why there is life or consciousness at all, where if anywhere the whole show is headed—these are questions for which we have no fin" rel="nofollow">inal answers. Not even the wisest of tales can tell us. The wisest, in" rel="nofollow">in fact, acknowledge the wonder and mystery of Creation—and that is the tenth power of stories. In the begin" rel="nofollow">innin" rel="nofollow">ing, we say, at the end of time, we say, but we are only guessin" rel="nofollow">ing. “I thin" rel="nofollow">ink one should work in" rel="nofollow">into a story the idea of not bein" rel="nofollow">ing sure of all thin" rel="nofollow">ings,” Borges advised, “because that's the way reality is.” The magic and romance, the devils and divin" rel="nofollow">inities we imagin" rel="nofollow">ine, are pale tokens of the forces at play around us. The elegant, in" rel="nofollow">infin" rel="nofollow">inite details of the world's unfoldin" rel="nofollow">ing, the sheer existence of hand or tree or star, are more marvelous than anythin" rel="nofollow">ing we can say about them. A number of modern physicists have suggested that the more we learn about the universe, the more it seems like an immense, sustain" rel="nofollow">ined, in" rel="nofollow">infin" rel="nofollow">initely subtle flow of consciousness—the more it seems, in" rel="nofollow">in fact, like a grand story, lavishly imagin" rel="nofollow">ined and set movin" rel="nofollow">ing. In scriptures we speak of God's thoughts as if we could read them; but we read only by the dim light of a tricky brain" rel="nofollow">in on a young planet near a middlin" rel="nofollow">ing star. Nonetheless, we need these cosmic narratives, however imperfect they may be, however filled with guesswork. So long as they remain" rel="nofollow">in open to new vision, so long as they are filled with awe, they give us hope of fin" rel="nofollow">indin" rel="nofollow">ing meanin" rel="nofollow">ing within" rel="nofollow">in the great mystery. Scott Russell Sanders is the author of, most recently, Writin" rel="nofollow">ing From the Center (Indiana University Press, 1995). Reprin" rel="nofollow">inted with permission from The Georgia Review (Sprin" rel="nofollow">ing 1997). Subscriptions: $181yr. (4 issues) from the University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Pick a character (Loan from the Unwanted) that you feel strongly about. 2. Read the article “The Most Human Art” with your character in" rel="nofollow">in min" rel="nofollow">ind. You may wish to prin" rel="nofollow">int a copy to annotate as you read or save the pdf to an annotatable app like Notability or similar. 3. Pick two or three reasons for story presented in" rel="nofollow">in the article that your character embodies. (Story through perspective + stories relatin" rel="nofollow">ing to consequences.) Explain" rel="nofollow">in, in" rel="nofollow">in several well-written paragraphs, the specifics of how the character and his/her story relate to these reasons.