One More Time: Constraint of Subject

TO SET THE STAGE for today’s article about the constraint of subject, we recently examined the process of poetic translation (“Three Poets, One Poem,” March 2011). From that article emerged a very difficult question: Is a poet being a poet when the verses she crafts in English derive from those which already exist in Spanish or Arabic?

This question has no simple answer, as the many thoughtful comments from readers of About the Artist demonstrated. But to understand the general concept of CONSTRAINT OF SUBJECT itself is easy: An artist will face a constraint of subject when he takes an existing work of art as a model, so that the fundamental ideas which lend structure and meaning to the old and the new are identical. Like all constraints, this provides a path towards a classical style.

To illustrate the variety of ways in which a constraint of subject can come into play, I now shine the spotlight on one of the greatest living songwriters in rock and roll: ERIC CLAPTON. Given his history of roaming from band to band, style to style, and addiction to addiction, you might be wondering how this artist’s work could possibly exemplify the virtues of a classical constraint. Clapton’s maximalist career has undoubtedly produced some wonderful music, but it sometimes seems a miracle that he has survived to sustain it for so many years! (Rest in peace, Bob Marley. Jimi Hendrix. Duane Allman. Jim Morrison. Janis Joplin.)

Immediately, this draws our attention to the most unique property of the constraint of subject: artists can benefit, to some extent, regardless of whether or not they have maintained a classical artistry in their own right. In other words, the power of this constraint originates more in the quality of the original artwork (the model) than in the long-term behaviors of the artist himself. The constraint of subject has its own ways of encouraging craftsmanship and creativity, as we shall see, but it will likely encourage the artist to maintain a classical artistry, as other external constraints do, only if practiced in the long term by engaging the same subject repeatedly.

You might be wondering how such conditions could possibly be called an external constraint, when an artist is so obviously duplicating a work of art itself. But as you learn exactly how the constraint of subject works in these next examples, you will find that pinning down the “art itself” is not always so easy:

THE MOST STRAIGHTFORWARD of cases that involve a constraint of subject occurs when an artist simply approaches anew the subject of a piece which he himself has already produced. For example, let’s consider one of Eric Clapton’s most popular songs, LAYLA. But I don’t mean the recording that you were rockin’ out to in 1970; I mean the “unplugged” acoustic version that Clapton recorded in front of a live MTV audience in 1992 (below). Unlike a typical live performance, this rendition of “Layla” constituted a deliberate departure from the style of the original.

“See if you can spot this one,” Clapton famously told the audience before beginning to play. As heard in the recording below, the increased level of applause suggests that many did not recognize the hit song until Clapton sang the first line. Listeners loved the new “Layla” so much that Clapton earned a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song of the Year.

Clapton is certainly not the only musician to have recast a favorite song: Elton John, for instance, saw different versions of “Candle in the Wind” rise to #1 on the pop charts for three decades in a row. The nineteenth-century composer Gustav Mahler recycled some of his own Lieder (art songs) when writing the melodies for his first symphony. In other fields, consider how Claude Monet painted his lily pond again and again—a fine example of this constraint at work in the long term—or how science-fiction author Orson Scott Card rewrote his popular short story “Ender’s Game” (1975) as a full-length novel ten years later.

RECYCLED IDEAS needn’t always originate from the same artist, of course. Just as classicized can be the style of the composer whose music incorporates ancient folk melodies, the director who shoots a remake of a vintage film, or the sculptor who chisels the familiar figure of Jesus on the cross. A good artist is often a good borrower.

Eric Clapton released his first number-one hit as a solo artist in 1974. The song was “I Shot the Sheriff,” which many of today’s listeners know had been composed the year before not by Clapton but by Bob Marley. However, Marley’s own recording was at first quite unknown even as Clapton’s enjoyed much success. Why was this version the first to achieve widespread popularity? One might argue that the English guitarist had been simply better-known than Marley to begin with, which would have exposed the song to more listeners. But also possible is that Clapton—with tune and lyrics already in hand—had more opportunity for creative tweaking in areas such as rhythm and instrumentation as he reworked the song to fit his own musical style, thereby producing a more finely-crafted arrangement.

Clapton wasn’t vainly trying to out-sing Marley at his own song; he merely sought to honor the song by giving it his own groove…the same but different, timeless but new. And therein lies the classicism.

In literature, Jean Rhys’s 1966 book Wide Sargasso Sea engages this constraint by retelling the fictional events of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from a different character’s point of view. Following the big screen success of Cooper and Schoedsack’s King Kong in 1933, directors John Guillermin and Peter Jackson brought their own styles to the story in 1976 and 2005, respectively. And while a number of important constraints likely supported the classical artistry of William Shakespeare, remember that many of his most beloved plays—from Hamlet to King Lear—are in fact reworkings of tales which had circulated for centuries beforehand.

The artisan who wove this Keshan carpet was inspired, like Clapton, by Nezami's "Layla and Majnun." (Wikimedia Commons)

MORE COMMON STILL may be the artist who reaches across media to reinterpret works of art from a very different field: the photographer whose visual subject is modern architecture, the Hollywood director who adapts a favorite novel to film, the singer whose lyrics derive from ancient poetry.

Such was the case with “Layla,” and this time I do mean the version from 1970 (below). Having lost his heart to Pattie Boyd, wife of his good friend George Harrison, Clapton found sympathy in the epic tale of Layla and Majnun, composed by the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi in the twelfth century (and itself a retelling of far older Persian and Arabic folklore). It tells of a love-struck young man who is similarly prevented from wooing the woman he loves.

According to professor María Rosa Menocal in her book Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric, Clapton was drawn to the story for two reasons: “First, no doubt, there was the solace of explicitly knowing himself not alone in the torments of a love that seemed impossible and literally maddening,” she explains. “Second . . . he found the consolation of the classical model that he needed to create poetry from his pain.”

In this form, we see that the constraint of subject is often a very loose one, but subjects gleaned from other media can nonetheless provide just the sort of stable platform from which an artist is best positioned to spot creative ideas as his project takes shape.

TO CONCLUDE OUR LOOK at constraints of subject, I hope you will now acknowledge some significant similarities between the poet who artfully translates the verses of another and the many well-respected artists discussed above who have found inspiration in their previous work, the work of their peers, or the work of artists in different fields entirely.

Think about “Layla.” Does Clapton read ancient Persian? Of course not! It was the art of the translator (Rudolph Gelpke) that allowed him to feel so strongly the remote power of this text.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this article, it may be that art, as an aesthetic phenomenon, encompasses more than subject alone; factors such as craftsmanship, style, and medium can equally become, in the hands of the right artist, a work’s definitive characteristic. A maximalist artistry will often obscure this fact. Cravings for personal fame and profit make a poor substrate for classicism, and so to witness an artist embrace an openly borrowed subject with the same care she shows her own can provide one of the best indications as to where her true priorities lie.