Psychology and the Arts
ISTENING to James K. Baxter is rather like listening to Dylan Thomas. Not superficially so — he doesn’t, like those who merely imitate the Thomas style, draw out a string of unlikely adjectives. He insinuates into the ear a procession of lively pictures, which the ear would like to stop and delight in while the mind hurries on to see what kind of an argument they make. I find this process so seductive, and so overwhelming, that I do not usually discover any reservations I might have about his theme unless I have a later opportunity to read the script in cold print and cold blood. So I have as yet no reservations about his talk on Psychology and the Arts, and may never have any. I liked his insistence that for all the help a knowledge of psychology can give the artist, especially in arming him with the courage to look deeper into his own perceptions, a really great poem leaves both the psychologist and layman limping behind on crutches. This disposes of the psychologists who patronise Sophocles and Shakespeare for having seen, however’ crudely, things we now know to be indubitable scientific fact.
R.D.
McE.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 23
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200Psychology and the Arts New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 23
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