I don’t know if this is normal, but when I’m making art in any form, it contains a kernel of something extremely personal. I dress it up so it’s not immediately obvious– at least not to strangers– then present it to the world to be analyzed. (Y’all can look through my past stories and exercises to try and identify my various personal problems, if you’d like.) It’s hard to bring anything actually new into the world, so you chop off pieces of yourself and call it creation.
If we look at Eisenheim’s illusions, I think we would be able to say he does the same. This is of course true with feats such as Passauer, a means through which to demonstrate a different side of his personality and talents, but I think the same can be said of the likes of Greta, Frankel, and Elis. Frankel, being a magician himself, has the most obvious connection to the illusionist, but that doesn’t mean we should neglect the others. Greta, his first manifestation, was also the child of a craftsmen, had “dark, sad eyes,” and was completely puzzled by her being on a stage. With Elis, though audiences continually were shocked by the contrast between them, I believe he was yet another one of Eisenheim’s faces, and the inclusion of Rosa served as a means to spare for Elis the loneliness Eisenheim faced, with his only love interest in the story being unavailable to him because of her father’s bigotry.
Consider Harlan Crane, who vanished due to lack of recognition. Eisenheim, though obviously commercially successful, can be said to have done the same. This lack of recognition, though, was not about his art not being seen as great but instead about his art not being seen for what it was– himself. There are only so many times you can put yourself out before the world before you get fed up of no one seeing that. Though prompted by police, for sure, Eisenheim’s disappearance was another Millhauser story about artists deciding for themselves, in spite of audiences’ tastes, when their careers would come to an end.
Rachel: It’s also interesting in this story that Millhauser explores the ways in which art can be perceived as dangerous, as somehow gaining access to our emotional and psychological lives to a degree that feels threatening — which is, of course, exactly what art seeks to do. Our intellectual response to magic and illusion is to want to know “how it’s done.” But the point — the true, emotional, psychological point — is not how it’s done but what it does — the wonder it creates, the truths it tells. Your recognition that you pull from your own experience to make your art is, in a way, much less significant for the reader (or listener or viewer) than the fact that what you’ve pulled from your experience echoes (and plumbs and expands and dissects) the experiences of those who encounter your art.
I tried to find something to comment on about this post, but I just came back to “It’s hard to bring anything actually new into the world, so you chop off pieces of yourself and call it creation.” I know this is just a throw away blog post for a college class (Sorry JGB) but that is one of the best things I’ve ever read. It so true, now I cannot think of a single thing I have ever written that this doesn’t apply to. So now it’s 1 in the morning and I’m trying to comment on every single post so I can catch up and get a good grade in this class but now I’m just going to be staring off into space and psychoanalyzing myself. So thank you for that. Haven’t done that yet this week. Props to you.
You know what? I’m going to sleep.
EEK! I’ve been doing some comments as well. We have until tomorrow to catch up. That is a whole 24 hours! You can do it
I think being able to psychoanalyze yourself because of someone else’s blog post is a result of a good post. It creates a response that is different for each person. It is the sign of a thoughtful post. I think the line that made me think the most was, ” I dress it up so it’s not immediately obvious– at least not to strangers– then present it to the world to be analyzed.” because it made me wonder how many authors do this.
I would agree that art does have a touch of the personal, but perhaps I would disagree and say that maybe it does not have to be so much of our own experience but what we know as a possibility. In the fantastic we know the possibilities and then try to push their bounds, to create something fit for the imagination. Just as any part of the fantastic or story-telling, creating art, music, etc. I would say there is a spectrum of what we know, what we know we don’t know, what we don’t know we know, and the things we don’t know which we are not aware of, and THAT right there is what we might write or create art about.
I believe that any good writer has to have a personal connection to the story and have a passion for bringing it to life. It is difficult to write anything new in this world as you said, “It’s hard to bring anything actually new into the world, so you chop off pieces of yourself and call it creation.” However, if you “chop of” enough pieces of yourself in multiple pieces, you can create something new and beautiful through those pieces. Art is a beautiful thing, even if it is chopped up pieces of ourselves. The pieces don’t even have to fit into this world’s definition of possible, which then leads them into the fantastic.