As William Faulkner tells it, failure drives creators toward perfecting their work:
By artist I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him, with no other tools and material than the uncommercial ones of the human spirit; who has tried to carve, no matter how crudely, on the wall of that final oblivion, in the tongue of the human spirit, “Kilroy was here.”
That is primarily, and I think in its essence, all that we ever really tried to do. And I believe we will all agree that we failed. That what we made never quite matched and never will match the shape, the dream of perfection which we inherited and which drove us and will continue to drive us, even after each failure, until anguish frees us and the hand falls still at last.
Maybe it’s just as well that we are doomed to fail, since, as long as we do fail and the hand continues to hold blood, we will try again; where, if we ever did attain the dream, match the shape, scale that ultimate peak of perfection, nothing would remain but to jump off the other side of it into suicide. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 187.)
* * *
For a brief biography of William Faulkner, click here.
Comments