In this article, I wish to provide a brief synopsis of why I believe the arts are a testament to humanity. I am going to speak to you all through the common denominator that we all possess. For regardless of our orientation, origin, nationality, sexuality, or gender, all of us as citizens and students at Marquette are human.
We all endure the same trials, witness the same beauty in the faintness of our hearts, and swelter with the same passionate love. Our minds are all fragmented by the same crucibles and we all express pain through tears shivering in the November rain. Simultaneously we all perceive the same vibrant qualities of this Earth and yet through art can imagine and articulate these dimensions of our world in a thousand different ways.
It is in this context, in the duality of our emotion and ambition, that art functions as a testament to the individual, to society, and to civilization. Art allows us to attain solace and feeling beyond the entrapment of our lives and to return to our humanity.
In the film “The Great Dictator” starring Charlie Chaplin, Chaplin (the dictator) solemnly proclaims “We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.”
Although the film was released in 1940, in a world entrenched in tyrants and the reins of industry, this quote is still remarkably applicable today. That is because this statement, at only twenty letters, encapsulates the fundamental flaw of modern civilization: in the monotony, idleness, and dissonance of our lives, we have forgotten how to feel.
Whereas in our youth, as our hearts burgeoned with innocence and a pacifying wonder, we rapidly became enslaved to our ambitions. Although in our hearts we pledge that our ambitions deliver us from destitution and into the embrace of fulfillment, we simultaneously sacrifice the beautiful imagination that we once possessed.
Herein lies the beauty of the arts. Through literature, poetry, music, theater, and painting, humanity is able to glimpse beyond the fog of its trials and into the enlightenment of feeling - of feeling love, hatred, pride, and the other beautiful dimensions of our perfect yet flawed character.
The arts enable us to return to our origin, thus delivering us from the gauntlet of a post-modern era dictated by industry and into the sovereign light of our true character. The arts, through their depictions of a world more vibrant than our idle hearts may imagine, open our eyes so that we may see the true dimensions of our world and feel once more.
Thus, through the ability of art to articulate emotion and vast, triumphant worlds, it also articulates the human condition: despite our apprehension under the illusion of fulfillment, we are beautiful individuals led astray from our humanity. Although this new age may repress our hearts, art shows us that, beneath the ash of our destitution, we are not automatons. We are human.
When I first arrived at Marquette University, after my father had left, I laid down on my new bed, in the shelter of my room. I pressed my impassioned cheek against the frozen pillow and I cried. I did not cry because I was sorrowful or afraid.
I cried because at last I felt that I was delivered from the exhausting monotony and idleness of my life into a vibrant and beautiful new world. What Marquette did for me is what literature, poetry, theater, music, and painting do for the individual: they remind us of our humanity and articulate the dimensions of our world that we so often disregard and so often repress.
