Primitivism

Woodcuts and poetics on other people’s gods

Primitives: Poems and Woodcuts by Max Weber

What is it that an artistic pioneer thinks of when he thinks of poetry? When he admixes poetry with his illustrations? He may produce results unwanted — results that might be, in a word, retreading. More of the same. Things seen and done before. The same or comparable ground gone over again.

(This Max Weber, I ought to stress, is not the German political theorist and pioneer of sociology. Instead, this Max Weber is the artist, the pioneer of Cubism.)

Or what results could diverge. Could be elaboration. Things taken further or differently.

The woodcuts could be illustrating the poetry, not the poetry adorning the art.

That might be possible. It might be the intention of the artist — to change tack. For words to be the primary medium, and not ink or paint.

I think that is the intention: the latter. Poetry with art following on behind. Art only making the same point more emphatically.

That’s all well and good, but what does Weber — all that decided — want his poetry to convey? Spiritual themes — I use the phrase very broadly, as it is meant. He wants to discuss spiritual themes. But perhaps more than that, he wants also to show off some thoughts on art — other art, the art of other civilisations. Art staring at us across history’s abyss. An art that illuminates disparate and vanished traditions. The art that gives statues of the Buddha what Weber thinks is a benevolent expression.

Much of this book is the worship of graven images. Images of the long-lost Greek religion: their gods, their demigods, their idols. Images of the deities and sacredness of central and south America. Tribal customs, animal-men, stone heads. Images that appear to defy time, to defy the collapse of faith and the caving in or looting of the temples: images that stare out from hard, dark rock — impassively, seeming to see all and to be beyond all. Stones whom thousands of pairs of eyes may have beheld over centuries. That thousands of hands may have reached out and held.

Masks from the far east, crude in form but strong in implied power. African art devoid of what Weber calls ‘Greek’ perfection and form. But profoundly, deeply alive. ‘The laws eternal here dwell,’ Weber writes: ‘A black mask, bearded and tattooed is eternal here.’

A sculpture, a great commemorative work, of the Aztec god of flowers, Xochipilli — with a brutally cruel, merciless, all-seeing eye.

The Kuan Yin, a bodhisattva of mercy and compassion. Eternity surrounds her like a veil, like a bridal veil or a burial shroud.

Weber’s verse is unstructured, without clear form. Some of his phrasing is akin to vague new age poetry which itself borrowed from earlier, denser spiritual and philosophical traditions in poetry.

Those eyes that have seen a thousand generations; that hand that has dripped out the blood of so many men — and so on.

Much of this is free verse of the plainest possible style. It’s a series of declarative sentences. Sentences that go on one after the other. That do not vary much. Except that they are in verse. The airport thriller version of poetry. And art. This can become monotonous. As you are most likely noticing.

The themes become monotonous, too.

O, great god, or great being, or great wellspring of philosophical tradition, look humbly upon me, mortal though I am. Though your eyes see much and your visage strands, impassive, before history’s cruelties, see me — if me you see with sightless eyes, eyes that have seen eternity, eyes that have seen the cycle of life and death and all things — and on and on and on.

Accompanying this are the woodcuts. They are spare and they are stark, as woodcuts tend to be. Some of them are recognisably human or near-human forms. A sharp-faced, dagger-featured female, wearing what seems a cloak or a cowl. The eyes of a young woman, likely a mother. Two figures clutching each other, cowering together. Strange eyes staring out of the side of the frame.

The art is not the centrepiece of this collection, of course. The verse is, as I may have hinted above, a surprise. It’s childish, child-like. The author of the preface, Benjamin De Casseres, writes of Weber that he has the ‘child-mind, the Earth-mind, a mind innocent of the stupefying complications and complexities of civilization. His soul is always in the attitude of wonder, awe and worship.’

‘Max Weber is a reaction against intellectualism,’ De Casseres notes in summing up. And we have all grown so tired of intellectualism, have we not? The endless subjection of private, essentially quixotic parts of the human heart and mind to minute interrogation. The demand that everything make sense and explain itself. That’s what Weber is reacting to. What he’s throwing out.

This may all be true. But if a man worships the stones and the rivers and the trees, and every ancient stone, and all about him he sees, is this primitivism charming or simple? Is it naive in a brave or in an empty way?

I enjoyed this book. For all its wide-eyed wonder, which can grate, it’s different — and interesting, in spells. Would I recommend you read it? Absolutely not. There’s only so much primitivism to go around.