“The highest art…sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood.” - Herman Hesse

 “The highest art…sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood.” - Herman Hesse (1877-1962). Reflections, 516, ed. Volker Michels, 1974

It is a terribly frightening thing, to send your art out into the world. Who are you to have created something which is worthy of remembrance, worthy of care, worthy of immortality? We are always afraid of two things when we show somebody our art - We have the fear that it will seem unremarkable, and we have the fear that it will be totally misunderstood. As regards the fear of our art being unremarkable, there is no sure way to tell that it is remarkable for other people except by showing it to them. The only way we can even begin to guess whether it will be so is by trusting in ourselves, and in our own sense of good and bad. We constantly alternate between being the most brutal and the most forgiving of our critics, for we may look on a doodle we dew or a poem we wrote in the middle of a rainstorm, or right before falling asleep, and think that it is sublime and beautiful, the best work we have ever created. We can also wake up in the morning, or lookback at something we wrote last month, and upon further reflection decide that our work has only birthed either an ugly abomination, or a completely unnoticeable, and thus unartistic, facade. 

The fear that our art may be misunderstood is sometimes an event we dread, and sometimes an event we cherish - I think it depends on what we were trying to do with our art. That is, were we trying to say something, to make a statement, to take a stand or remark on some aspect of human existence? If we are misunderstood, then this represents a failure of our vision and our powers. It means that we might have created something remarkable, but that it was not what we intended it to be. We doubt not only our hands, but also our eyes and ears - do we even know what makes good art? If instead we try to look at things in a brighter fashion, we will find that the new lights that the minds of other people cast onto our art reveals things in the artwork that we did not even know existed. New shades of meaning, new graceful allusions,and new personal significance, may all arise from a few choice words said to us by a stranger. 

If we seek to live by our art, then is the failure of the work to sell a sign of our mediocrity, or a sign of the great blindness the people of the modern day possess? If we do sell our work, then is our success a signifier that our art is banal and acceptable because the masses adore it, or does this mean that our art has struck a deep chord in the hearts of mankind? In either case, I feel that trusting too much to the response of our fellow man can often be a limiting factor, one that holds us back. We can create, but we dare not create something too dangerous. It feels to me that the most artistic of all endeavors is a time in our lives where we have to get something out. A piece of artwork, a painting, a poem, a song, a life that we simply cannot dare to let die in our breast, unborn. A piece of highest art is not made, it is born. It knows it will be misunderstood, and it chooses to fly anyway, it chooses to exist anyway. It chooses to trust itself anyway, because it is an expression of life, of our life. After all, there is a reason that the first precept, for life and, perhaps, for art, is - trust thyself - For it is the most necessary part in our attempts to achieve something remarkable.