The Mind of the Maker [Paperback]

 

 

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This is a series of essays on the nature of the Trinity of God. In order to bring it home to us Sayers writes in terms of the creative experience. Sayers explains using her experiences as a writer and as a playwright. She describes, explains, gives examples and, in general tries to define the creative experience. Not God's creative experience, ours! Not just the methods and means of writers and playwrights but she also applies it to painting, sculpture, any and all artistry and craft. It is a large concept. Yes, that is an understatement, but I cannot find a word suitable enough to fit such a scheme. However, as far as I am concerned she makes her position on the subject quite clear, and in doing so teaches me how much I don't know about things that, unfortunately, just get taken for granted, without any real understanding.

She is, as always, readable, entertaining, lucid, funny and right on the button. Her explanations range through time and space, from the nature of "Laws", through Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and contemporary authors to a comprehensive explanation of the Creed. She even manages to use examples of various failures in literature that explain why something is not quite as good as it should be. Anyway, read the book it explains things much better.

From time to time I pick up one of Fr Schall's book recommendations (as set out in his book: "Another sort of learning") and I am never disappointed. This short book by an artist, which seeks to explain Christian doctrines (including the doctrine of the Trinity) through the analogy of the creative work of the artist, is really excellent. It is crystal clear and amusing. Indeed, I would recommend not just for those looking for an intelligent exposition of Christian doctrines but does who wish to know how to approach the act of writing.

Like Augustine, Sayers sees the "structure" of the Trinity manifest in us but she sees it particularly in the work of the artist.
The following quote should illustrate the analogy Sayers was trying to make:

Book-as -Thought, Book-as-Writen, Book-as-Read corresponding to Idea (Father), Energy (Son) and Power (Holy Ghost)

"The implication is that we find the threefold structure in ourselves (the Book-as Read) because that is the actual structure of the universe (the- Book-as Written), and that is the universe because it is God's idea about the universe (the-Book-as Thought); further, that this structure is in God's Idea because it is the structure of God's mind".

Weaknesses in the Literary Trinty

" What is really damaging to a writer's creation is a serious and settled weakness in any side of the Trinity. Thus, a confirmed feebleness in the "father" or Idea, betrays itself in diffusion, in incoherence, in the breach of the Aristotelian unity of action or, still more disastrously, of the over-riding unity of theme. Not all works of rambling and episodic form are "fatherless" creations; form is the domain of the son, and a rambling form, like that of the picaresque novel, may be exquisitely and rightly adapted to the exact expression of the Idea. But if there is no unity of Idea, within which the whole meandering structure can be included; or if the work having started our as one kind of thing, end us up as another kind of thing; or if it contradicts its own nature and purpose in the process of developments; or if (and this happens curiously often) it enchants us in the reading by the elegant succession of its parts, and yet leaves in our memories no distinct impression of itself as a whole - in such cases, there is something radically wrong with the paternal Idea."

"Everything in the visible structure of the work belongs to the son; so that a really disastrous failure in this person of the trinity produces not a good writer with a weakness, but simply a bad writer."
"A failure of the ghost - the playwright has not been able to "sit in the stalls" as he writes and watch the effect of his work as a completed "response in power". "Whereas failure in the father may be roughly summed up as a failure in Thought and failure in the son as a failure in Action, failure in ghost is a failure in Wisdom (wisdom of the heart and bowels)".

Liteary criticisms: defects in the Literary Trinity

In light of the above analogy Sayers engages in some very amusing literary criticism by "distinguishing those writers who are respectively "father-ridden", "son-ridden" and "ghost-ridden". It is the mark of the father-ridden that they endeavour to impose the Idea directly upon the mind and senses, believing that that this is the whole of the work". She sees Joyce as a particularly good example of the "son-ridden"! "the ghost-ridden writer, on the other hand, conceives that the emotion which he feels is in itself sufficient to awaken response". "It is true that an implicit reliance on technique (which is the besetting heresy of the son-ridden) will reduce the art of acting to an assemblage of mechanical tricks".


Pushing here analogy further Sayers teams up various heresies with literary defects:

"A bodiless Gnosticism is the besetting heresy of the "literary" dramatist and assumes many forms: such as, for example, the "literary" dialogue, which reads elegantly, but which no living actor can get his tongue round. "

Problems and solutions

Finally, Sayers ends off the book with a discussion of the modern obsession with presenting things as "problems" with their attendant "solutions". She sees this embodied particularly in the detective but she notes that life is not like that. Pausing here, note how Government thinks it can solve the problems of human nature by continuing to enact more and more legislation. But Sayers rightly notes that some things (such as death) do not have a solution. They are strictly speaking insoluble but this should not prevent us, like the artist, from approaching it with our creative minds - lets not solve the problem but create something new out of the "problem".

I found this short book to be a real treat. Thanks Fr Schall for the recommendation.

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