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| In times like these, art has the power to make us feel less alone | |
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| Sadness gets a bad press. That, at least, was the view of William Trevor, the Irish novelist and short story writer who died, at the age of 88, this week. “If you take away the sadness from life,” he said in an interview, “then you are taking away a big and a good thing, because to be sad is rather like to be guilty.” Sometimes, he said, “people should feel guilty”. He had, he added, “written a lot about guilt”. | Sadness gets a bad press. That, at least, was the view of William Trevor, the Irish novelist and short story writer who died, at the age of 88, this week. “If you take away the sadness from life,” he said in an interview, “then you are taking away a big and a good thing, because to be sad is rather like to be guilty.” Sometimes, he said, “people should feel guilty”. He had, he added, “written a lot about guilt”. |
| Trevor, who won the Whitbread prize three times, was nominated for the Booker prize five times, and was hailed by Graham Greene as the best short story writer since James Joyce, certainly did write a lot about guilt.His own parents were, he said, “lace-curtain Protestant”, but he grew up in an Ireland as drenched in Catholic guilt as rain. He wrote about ordinary people struggling with disappointment and loneliness and shame. | Trevor, who won the Whitbread prize three times, was nominated for the Booker prize five times, and was hailed by Graham Greene as the best short story writer since James Joyce, certainly did write a lot about guilt.His own parents were, he said, “lace-curtain Protestant”, but he grew up in an Ireland as drenched in Catholic guilt as rain. He wrote about ordinary people struggling with disappointment and loneliness and shame. |
| And he wrote about sadness. His novel The Story of Lucy Gault, shortlisted for the Booker in 2002, was described by one reviewer as “quite possibly the saddest story you have ever heard”. It is sad, but it is also beautiful. It is as savagely beautiful as the glimpse at the end of the novel of “trees stark against the sky”. | And he wrote about sadness. His novel The Story of Lucy Gault, shortlisted for the Booker in 2002, was described by one reviewer as “quite possibly the saddest story you have ever heard”. It is sad, but it is also beautiful. It is as savagely beautiful as the glimpse at the end of the novel of “trees stark against the sky”. |
| Trevor, said a presenter on a late-night news programme this week, was “a gloomy writer”. Where, he asked the Irish novelist John Banville, did Trevor’s sadness come from? Banville sounded surprised by the question, but when he answered he was polite. “I don’t think,” he said carefully, “he was gloomy. I don’t think he was sad.”He didn’t say that it was, perhaps, a bit literal-minded to confuse the artist with the art. Trevor was, he said, a “very witty” man. “I think he presented a true portrayal of the world.” The world, he added, was “not a very happy place”. | Trevor, said a presenter on a late-night news programme this week, was “a gloomy writer”. Where, he asked the Irish novelist John Banville, did Trevor’s sadness come from? Banville sounded surprised by the question, but when he answered he was polite. “I don’t think,” he said carefully, “he was gloomy. I don’t think he was sad.”He didn’t say that it was, perhaps, a bit literal-minded to confuse the artist with the art. Trevor was, he said, a “very witty” man. “I think he presented a true portrayal of the world.” The world, he added, was “not a very happy place”. |
| Writers, or at least good writers, are careful with their words. So when Banville said the world is not a “very happy place”, he didn’t mean, of course, that there is no happiness in it. He is as aware as any other writer, and even any other “gloomy” writer, that amid the struggle and the loneliness and the guilt there is pleasure and curiosity and joy. He is aware, in fact, as even Facebook can be when it isn’t presenting made-up stories as facts, that “it’s complicated”. He believes, in other words, in nuance. He believes in ambiguity. “A writer,” Trevor once said, “needs to be doubtful. I believe in not quite knowing.” | Writers, or at least good writers, are careful with their words. So when Banville said the world is not a “very happy place”, he didn’t mean, of course, that there is no happiness in it. He is as aware as any other writer, and even any other “gloomy” writer, that amid the struggle and the loneliness and the guilt there is pleasure and curiosity and joy. He is aware, in fact, as even Facebook can be when it isn’t presenting made-up stories as facts, that “it’s complicated”. He believes, in other words, in nuance. He believes in ambiguity. “A writer,” Trevor once said, “needs to be doubtful. I believe in not quite knowing.” |
| At the Barbican this week it wasn’t clear whether the world was a “happy place”. It was clear that it was a thrilling place, as the American opera singer Joyce DiDonato stood on a stage and sang. She started her programme, which she called In War and Peace, with an extract from Handel’s opera Jephtha. It was hard not to think of Aleppo as she sang of “scenes of horror, scenes of woe”. It was hard not to think of what has happened in her own country, and of the many people in it who now feel unsafe because other people voted for a man supported by the Ku Klux Klan. | At the Barbican this week it wasn’t clear whether the world was a “happy place”. It was clear that it was a thrilling place, as the American opera singer Joyce DiDonato stood on a stage and sang. She started her programme, which she called In War and Peace, with an extract from Handel’s opera Jephtha. It was hard not to think of Aleppo as she sang of “scenes of horror, scenes of woe”. It was hard not to think of what has happened in her own country, and of the many people in it who now feel unsafe because other people voted for a man supported by the Ku Klux Klan. |
| And it was hard, to be honest, not to think of what has happened in Britain, where a vote has changed the course of history, and tried to set the clock back. If Boris Johnson had heard the libretto from Handel’s Rinaldo, he would probably have made a joke about prosecco. When I heard DiDonato sing Lascia ch’io piangia, in her pure, electric voice, it was like a thunderbolt from heaven, or hell. Allow me to weep, sings Almirena in the opera. Yes, allow me to weep. Sometimes it’s right to weep. When people who have served a country no longer feel wanted in that country, it’s right to weep. | And it was hard, to be honest, not to think of what has happened in Britain, where a vote has changed the course of history, and tried to set the clock back. If Boris Johnson had heard the libretto from Handel’s Rinaldo, he would probably have made a joke about prosecco. When I heard DiDonato sing Lascia ch’io piangia, in her pure, electric voice, it was like a thunderbolt from heaven, or hell. Allow me to weep, sings Almirena in the opera. Yes, allow me to weep. Sometimes it’s right to weep. When people who have served a country no longer feel wanted in that country, it’s right to weep. |
| When old people haven’t had the care they needed because services were cut to pay off a debt, and £60bn has just been added to that debt, it is certainly right to weep. Our foreign secretary might call this a “whinge-o-rama”, but some of us would call it grief. | When old people haven’t had the care they needed because services were cut to pay off a debt, and £60bn has just been added to that debt, it is certainly right to weep. Our foreign secretary might call this a “whinge-o-rama”, but some of us would call it grief. |
| “As a citizen of the world in 2016,” says DiDonato in the introduction to the concert programme, “at times I feel overwhelmed by the temptation to spiral down into the turmoil and pessimism that threatens to invade all corners of our lives”. But the creators of “great art”, she says, show us “both our brutal nature and our elevated humanity.” Art,she says, “unifies, transcends borders” and “is a valiant path to peace”. I don’t know if art can be a path to peace. I don’t know if it could end the war in Syria, or create jobs in the so-called rust belt of America, or fill a £122bn Brexit “black hole”. What I do know is this. When bad things happen in the world, or in our lives,that art can make us feel less alone. And I know that to create the kind of art that hits us at the deepest levels, you need to be a master of your craft. You need, you could say, to be an expert. You need to think that expertise is good. | “As a citizen of the world in 2016,” says DiDonato in the introduction to the concert programme, “at times I feel overwhelmed by the temptation to spiral down into the turmoil and pessimism that threatens to invade all corners of our lives”. But the creators of “great art”, she says, show us “both our brutal nature and our elevated humanity.” Art,she says, “unifies, transcends borders” and “is a valiant path to peace”. I don’t know if art can be a path to peace. I don’t know if it could end the war in Syria, or create jobs in the so-called rust belt of America, or fill a £122bn Brexit “black hole”. What I do know is this. When bad things happen in the world, or in our lives,that art can make us feel less alone. And I know that to create the kind of art that hits us at the deepest levels, you need to be a master of your craft. You need, you could say, to be an expert. You need to think that expertise is good. |
| We now face four years of a world poring over every Trump tweet. We face all this in a climate where any kind of reality check is seen as “gloom”. We can try to fight it, but we can’t opt out of it. What we can do is find comfort in the beauty of the music and art and poems and stories that face up to the dark, and tell us the truth. | We now face four years of a world poring over every Trump tweet. We face all this in a climate where any kind of reality check is seen as “gloom”. We can try to fight it, but we can’t opt out of it. What we can do is find comfort in the beauty of the music and art and poems and stories that face up to the dark, and tell us the truth. |