on ruination

In Venice we were discussing a particular sculpture, and I found it easiest to think about that sculpture and what it does by imagining possible ways of ruining it. What could the artist have done to make it worse?

We’re familiar with the idea that a statement is scientific only if it can be falsified (Popper). I’m tempted to make the analogous claim that anything aesthetic is better the more different ways it can be ruined.

It makes sense, if you think about it. If any object or utterance has some subtle total effect that achieves many different things at once, there should be multiple different ways to undercut it.

I’ve said this before concerning a nice line from Nietzsche with which most people are familiar. It’s this one about Shakespeare: “What must a man have suffered to have found it that necessary to be a buffoon!”

Though I seem to have lost the notes I once took on this passage, I once found about 20 different ways to ruin this nice little sentence, and gave each one the name of a stock figure who might be able to do the ruining. For instance…

The simpleton: “How happy he must have been to be a buffoon so often!”

The bore: “What must a man have suffered to have found it that necessary to be a buffoon! For while it might seem like the contents of Shakespeare’s writings should be a direct reflection of his personality, modern psychology teaches differently. In fact, what people write is often the opposite of what they are feeling inside. In Shakespeare’s case, it may be an effort to counterbalance painful personal experience with an outward show of good humor.”

The moralistic resenter: “What must a man have suffered to have found it that necessary to be a buffoon! Personally, I find it a bit pathetic that he was that needy and always trying to get as much attention as he did.”

I’ll write an article about this some time. But it occurs to me that one of the ways to show that Lovecraft is a stronger writer than many believe is to show how many different ways there are to ruin his sentences. In other words, they’re not already ruined.