Technique Belongs in the Trash
…but he could not imagine that one could be utterly ignorant of all the kinds of painting and be inspired directly by what was in one’s soul, unconcerned whether what one painted belonged to any particular kind. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
He in this case is Vronsky, who in Part Five of Anna Karenina picks up the short-lived hobby of painting. In order to paint Vronsky becomes fascinated with what has been called: Technique. By learning technique, by replicating the Masters, by painting according to the rules is how Vronsky believes painting is done. Not much later on a friend introduces Anna and Vronsky to Mikhailov, who is a painter. Mikhailov is an eccentric, he fluctuates with poverty, he allows the lovers to see his works.
Here Tolstoy tears apart what Vronsky has been hailing as high above high: Technique. Here Tolstoy throws technique to the earth and grinds it into the dust. Bravo!
He [Mikhailov] had often heard this word ‘technique’ and decidedly did not understand what it implied. He knew that it implied a mechanical ability to paint and draw, completely independent of the content. He had often noticed… that technique was opposed to inner virtue, as if it were possible to make a good painting from something bad. He knew that great attention and care were needed to remove the wrappings without harming the work itself, and to remove all the wrappings; but there was no art of painting, no technique here…. But the most experienced and skilful painter-technician would be unable, for all his mechanical ability, to paint anything unless the boundaries of the content were first revealed to him.
I can’t help but thinking technique in writing is often called: Style. Wow! What a stylish hat! What lovely gloves! Style? Something conformed to? Planned out beforehand? I think I’ll take a little Proust (just a little, mind you) and shake on some John Cowper Powys, use a few extracts of DH Lawrence’s redundancy and mix it all up with some bombastic Miller. Or I’ll just call Content to the throne above all, create a plot, cut and snip, put rhyme to the reason, you’re done! A book!
O! Woe! I just can’t get it to make sense. Here we go again: Who would go to school to study creative writing? Someone who wants to learn technique. Someone who wants to belay the masters.
Inspired directly by what was in one’s soul. That’s what I’m talking about. That is what writes books, paints paintings, etc. That is the need to create, like a line hotwired to one’s innards, expression, voice.
Mind you, I don’t consider voice as neither style nor technique. Voice, to all my knowledge of my own speaking one, is that it is there within me and is something that doesn’t change much but when I have a sore throat or some such affliction. Voice is how I sound to myself and others when I speak. It is a pitch somewhere on a scale; it is what I use when I must be heard. To get to bare voice one must strip style, must trample any preconceptions of technique.
Don’t take it from me. Tolstoy said it way before: Technique belongs in the trash!
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