The question of whether or not artworks communicate truth is a difficult one to answer and depends entirely on how one defines truth. Truth isn’t an easy thing to define though and can be described on so many different levels. I tend to agree with Aristotle when he defines truth or the experience of truth in poetry through the “possible when he talks about tragedies and how they communicate truth.
Aristotle argues that poetry gives us universal truths over particular truths, and he is particularly interested in the possible. Aristotle states that all truth claims fall into one of 3 categories, either the actual, the possible or the necessary. He argues that the possible is what truth claims about art should be because when something is possible and probable without being necessary, it becomes interesting. I fully agree with this statement. If a work is too plausible, can it really be truth telling or is just something that we already knew and that no artwork had to give us?
Aristotle also focuses on the causal relationship of events in poems. If A then B. But he argues that poetry does this best and communicates the most truth when B seems to be a necessary consequence of A but a surprising one. Afterwards, we feel as if it should have always been that way. Perhaps this is why artworks seem to create truth for Aristotle because if the consequence was likely or guessable, we wouldn’t need the poem at all, we would already have the truth. So artworks communicate truths that we wouldn’t have ever concluded by any other experience. I think some of the best truths are those that you experience after the truth is revealed to you. It was like it was always floating somewhere under the surface, you just had to experience it or be exposed to the story for it to show itself. I think that art can evoke this kind of truth finding or that “aha” moment when everything is put into better clarity.
However unlike Aristotle, I don’t really see art as giving us general truths or for art’s purpose to be the communication of truth, rather that we sometimes find truth in art and that it isn’t something found in all artworks and that it isn’t the same for every person who views them. I tend to see art as something that says here I am, use me however you please, and perhaps this is what Nietzsche is getting at when he says art is an escape. There is a line in a song called “Breathe” that was popular a few years ago that talks about the song writer and the purpose of the song that I think puts this into more perspective. She sings: “And I feel like i’m naked in front of a crowd cause these words are my diary screaming out loud, and I know that you’ll use them however you want to.” This line really speaks volumes to me, and I think is applicable to this question. One can argue that the truth in her song takes shape in the events that are described in the song and that those are the song-writers or singer’s truths that she’s trying to express to her audience. However, she says while this may be my purpose or the truth that i’m trying to get across, I know my audience is going to take my words and what i’m singing about and apply them to whatever is going on in there life or in the way that is going to make them feel the best about themselves, etc.
Perhaps it’s those words that make me see Nietzsche’s point best over any of the other authors. While I do think that art in some ways points us towards truth or gives us a slice of our own truth, I think the purpose is to be a release or the purpose is to let us find our own kind of truth in a surprising way. Art isn’t trying to shove reality down your throat. It doesn’t ask you to analyze it from every angle in order to find the answers but almost releases you from feeling the need to find the answers or to figure out the world. Can’t there be truth in that release as well? I like that Nietzsche sees art as the attempt to find meaning in the absence of truth, but I want to push his argument further and say that the meaning you find when you disregard truth in the realistic, worldly sense can be a form of truth in itself. We discussed in class how Nietzsche believes that art is a way for us to remake the world to follow our aims in life or to make our lack of aims and misery more palatable. What we really want, in his opinion, is to live not to know everything at the end of the day, and we need art to go on living. He says that art is successful when it recognizes the nature of the obstacles the world shoves at us and overcomes then. It’s not an outlet but it changes the world so that it’s not an obstacle. We have to refigure ourselves and the world so that there is no opposition between us and the world. This refiguring while not based in reality becomes it’s own kind of truth.
Nietzsche says that we create this new world where Earth and being is no longer an obstacle to us through two impulses either Apollonian or Dionysian. Apollonian truth is based in dreams where we still see a tiny undercurrent of lucidity or when one can fully enjoy the dream but know it’s a dream at the same time. To me, this isn’t truth. This is just covering up reality for the time being. However, I think when art doesn’t have any lucidity and when you are motivated by Dionysian impulses, you fully absorb yourself into something else and completely forgo reality. This kind of experience tears away the veil of illusion and reveals to us a deeper truth of the world. I think that tearing away of the veil can be related to the aha moment in Aristotle’s tragedy. The moment when you see what was possible but highly impossible at the same time, and the thing that surprises you that you always knew was there but that you just needed to be shown. That’s the truth that art shows you in my opinion and the truth it communicates.
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