Example's of An Artist's Craftsmanship at Work - 4

We circle back now to the second example of an artist's craftsmanship at work, this from Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell. We briefly addressed this superb writing in a recent post. But this time let's drill deeper. 

Our author is describing an incident in the flow of her story here. But we cannot miss the underlying evil that she's addressing as well: homosexual acts, for one, and child exploitation for another - something we now call child sex trafficking.

We could of course simply reference the Bible's (God's Word) condemnation of homosexual acts. Nothing wrong with that. But those are dry words compared to our author's words. 

And sometimes dry words - simple declaratory sentences - can come and go without our paying much attention to them, beyond a more mental registering, perhaps intellectual assent to the truth of those words. But here our mere mental recognition is now riddled and prodded with words that elicit the raw emotions that Luke experiences. With that, we not only recognize an evil, but understand the real depths of depravity that the evil brings with it. 

 "Lucanus, in spite of the confusion and rage which roared in his mind, became aware, for the first time in his life, of profound evil and its loathsomeness. He heard Linus' murmurous words as the inspection continued, and his white flesh prickled and became cold, and he could not have moved, any more than the marble he resembled could have moved of its own volition. But his heart quivered and his spirit sickened with this horror. He perceived depths never known to him before, and abysses, and the hot black obscenities of the human spirit. These he had never encountered in the home of the virtuous tribune, nor had dreamt of them. Nor was he fully aware of the implications, nor did he understand them completely. He was like a child who, running laughing to a green and hidden grotto, comes upon a scene of licentiousness and, while not fully comprehending, is impressed that here is something wanton and shameful, and is terrified."

The chapter from which this passage is taken contains more that this one passage. The point is driven home like a stake into the hart of a Vampire. Any pretense of acceptance of homosexual acts is extinguished. Any superficial acknowledgement of the depravity of child trafficking becomes impossible. We cannot help but see and feel how awful these sins are and have always been.

This is the artist at work, using finely crafted words to penetrate through the flood of daily distraction and busyness that so often takes up our time and attention.

Which, by the way, brings up the subject of reading. 

It would seem many if not most of us no longer read - especially when it comes to books. If you have children or grandchildren, you may be aware of this. Two of our sons teach. They have described to us in detail not only that their students don't read, but that they literally can't read. 

In any case, this diversion from our subject is intended as a reminder of the value of real reading, particularly reading good literature as a regular part of our daily endeavor, no matter how busy our work flow.

We'll wrap up with some questions that have popped up while working through our artist/craftsman series. While we most likely can see how the mind set of the craftsman can be applied to our daily labor, what about artistic inspiration, creative imagination. Can the artist's temperament be applied in any way to those of us who work at decidedly non-artistic jobs? 

Next time...