Can You Separate an Artist’s Beliefs From Their Art?

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. – Oscar Wilde

We let our eyes linger on a page. We brush across the strokes of a canvas. We stare out at the sea, an empty plain, the way leaves filter sunlight through the trees — our eyes spend a lifetime processing a wealth of information. We struggle to live comfortably in the terrifying mass of ambiguous, stringy matter.; a matter in which we must make meaning or perish, the ever-nihilist. How do we come to grips with, in the words of author Roberto Bolaño, “a senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures?” In our war for the answer, we perspire, sweat, moan, and thrash; culminating in the apotheosis of human expression: art.

My colleague, Brian Joyce, has decided to tackle the question: “Can you separate an artist’s beliefs from their art?” by asking, can the artist themselves separate the creation of their art from their beliefs? What I want to ask is, can the observer remove themself from the artist, so that, in the incidental case the artist’s personal beliefs do not align with their own, they can still objectively enjoy and revel in the presence of their work?

Louis-Ferdinand Céline is an extreme example of this dilemma. Céline, an early 20th- century French novelist, rose to critical acclaim with his debut novel, Voyage au Bout de la Nuit, (Journey to the End of the Night) in 1932. The novel is a cornerstone of existentialist literature, and follows young Ferdinand Bardamu as he travels through Africa, America, and Paris, during World War 1. We see the world through Ferdinand’s eyes, nothing more, nothing less. There are no rose-tinted glasses to save us, no pink hyperbole; Voyage au Bout de la Nuit is like walking forever through a strange city with nothing but wet shoes.

As uncontrollably enraptured as we are in his experience, we feel empathy for the lost Bardamu, a young soldier sardonically involved in the unfathomable horrors of life. Inside the void, there are nuggets of honesty and humility, like when he falls in love with Molly, an American prostitute, but has to leave her because of his desire to continue the unnameable journey. Céline writes:

“If only I had met Molly sooner, when it was still possible to choose one road rather than the other… it was too late to start being young again. I didn’t believe in it any more! We grow old so quickly and, what’s more, irremediably. You can tell by the way you start loving your misery in spite of yourself. Little by little, without realizing it, you begin to take your role and fate seriously, and, before you know it, it’s too late to change. You’re a hundred per cent restless, and it’s set that way for good.”

And the journey itself, where does the night end? There is no journey, there is no end. Our lives are one great, miscellaneous summoning from the night, a call we must answer, a call that leads nowhere.

Céline is on the same literary pillar as Marcel Proust, both are regarded as prolific French writers of the 20th century. His influence extends to consequential writers such as Bukowski, Kerouac, Burroughs, Vonnegut, and Miller; all who made their art out of exploring the guts and gristle of our collective ribcage. However, Céline was an anti-Semite. Three pamphlets he wrote between the 1930’s and ‘40’s recently resurfaced on the docket for publication that contained insane anti-Semitic rhetoric. He called for the destruction of anyone “non-Aryan,” the “Jews, Afro-Asiatic hybrids, one-fourth, one-half blacks, and near-Easterners, fornicators…[they] have nothing to do with this country. They must piss off.” These were terrible things he wrote, terrible things he believed in.

Anyone whose passion aligns with reading and writing will know how a piece of literature will burrow inside, snatch its wistful claws into that indeterminable soul, and never let go. How, as someone who is intertwined with Céline’s oeuvre, supposed to teeter a line of respect and disgust? There lies the essential question- when I found out about Céline’s anti-Semitism, did I put down the book? No. Is that because I am a white woman; If I were Jewish, would this fare differently for me? Possibly, but as a woman, I can say it is hard to swallow some of his objectifications, his debasements on women’s intelligence. Although, do we need to be a member of the subjugated party to bristle at the author’s demoralizations?

I believe we can separate the artist’s work from their beliefs, I do not believe we should bury their character under suffocating, one-dimensional, titles that require us to turn our backs, even if we aren’t 100% willing. If the work is good, then it simply is. But we do have an obligation to be honest about what they said, the power it has, and the context in which it exists.

Adam Gopnik writes in “A Newly Discovered Céline Novel Creates a Stir,” for The New Yorker, “When it comes to Céline, then or now, an ability to admire, a refusal to censor, and a readiness to condemn, should be — must be — part of a single compound response. Evil genius demands no less.” It would be wise to follow this advice into every similar quandary we approach with hesitation. The artist has a duty to portray the inglorious messiness of humanity without adhering or hiding behind a ridiculous, perfunctory order; when looking at the world, we must, in a sense, trust the artist. Or, as James Baldwin writes in his 1962 essay ‘The Creative Process,’ “a society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.” •

Photo: Céline, Angence Meurisse, Bibliothèque nationale de France.