God as artist…
“A Mirror Up To Nothing”
by Howard Jacobson, originally published in Harper’s (link).
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. —Genesis 1:31
It won’t get much better for God or for his creations than it is on the evening and the morning of the sixth day. Genesis 2 ends on a high romantic note, with the first man and the first woman naked in each other’s trembling presence—I’ve invented the “trembling” but I think it’s warranted—and entirely unashamed. But by the time Genesis 3 is through, the gates to the garden are shut fast and Cherubim with flaming swords bar the way back. What went wrong is usually what engages our attention, but what went right in those thirty-one verses of Genesis 1 is no less arresting if you are interested in art.
You don’t have to believe in the Judeo-Christian God to be pleased he was an artist. When it comes to making something out of nothing, an artist-god beats a warrior-god every time. As though on a whim—there are some who say he must have been lonely, but it could just as easily be argued that he was bored—he creates the heaven and the earth. “And God said, Let there be light”: who he said that to has long been a matter of theological controversy—a council of angels? himself?—but it is clearly not an order, or even a wish that needs to explain itself. He would have it that way, that’s all. The creative urge is upon him. No sooner does he speak for light, than light is. “And God saw the light, that it was good,” meaning that he didn’t know for sure how it was going to be before he made it.
The question of the artist’s autonomy has plagued literary criticism; can the artist be said to owe responsibility to anything outside his work, does he hold a mirror up to nature, or is the nature that the artist manufactures the only one safe to refer to when it comes to art? If God is the model of the artist, then the question is settled: there was no world prior to God the artist’s creating it, not even a blueprint for one. He holds the mirror up to nothing. Seeing the light, he doesn’t worry that it fails to measure up to some idea of light existent already in his mind or in the still formless void. He conjures up the concept at the same time that he creates the thing, and sees that it is good.
Had God not turned out to have a plan for the man and woman he went on to create, he might be open to the charge of mere aestheticism, and his work dismissed as art for art’s sake. With a plan, the question of how art that cannot refer to anything outside itself can nonetheless have a function beyond itself is also settled: the art both is and isn’t all there is. With the creation of beauty comes the responsibility of purpose. The light is good in and of itself, but what is it good for? It’s good because I say it is, God will later tell Job. But that’s just the bluster of the artist. It’s good because it reveals an idea. The artist isn’t obliged to explain what that idea is.
Hour by hour, what he has done reveals itself to him. Only when the six days of creation are complete is he able to stand back and admire. “… and, behold, it was very good.” This revelation is profoundly touching in its innocence. Behold—look, somebody! If he was lonely before he started to make art he is even lonelier now, like every artist, in the moment he seeks appreciation. He is thrown back on the only praise that ultimately counts—his own. “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was” … no longer just good but “very good.”
In the delight it takes in itself, in its childlike self-wonderment, this is the most perfect expression of artistic satisfaction. No wonder Coleridge echoed it in his fanciful encomium on Shakespeare, who, once he is satisfied that “creation in its outline” is perfect, “seems to rest from his labour, and to smile upon his work, and tell himself that it is very good.”
Later on, when laying down the law, God remembers his long-abandoned artistry—morality has come to occupy his time now—and in language recalling his original dynamic cosmogony, forbids his people from making any “likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” No artist will be surprised by the jealousy of this. One impulse in the making of art is the negation of the art of others. When it comes to the creation of worlds, yours, if you mean what you are about, must prevail.
Ever since Moses conveyed the second commandment to the Israelites, Jewish artists have trembled at their own temerity. Hence the in- tense seriousness of Jewish art. You do not set out lightly to rival God. But also, you do not set out without his example forever before you. The light you create must be like no other. Nothing less than its being very good will satisfy you.
And you must not expect that those it shines upon will either thank you for it or behave well as a consequence. That disappointment inevitably waits on art explains why God the artist first destroyed his work and then walked out on it.
