Limited Edition Giclee Print

30 Units

22 1/8” x 30”

Original: Gouache on Paper

Background excerpts and quotes, partially written on the painting:

“Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilized life.”

— Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents chapter 3

 “Every person who is greater than the other, [their]impulse (drive, urge) is greater than [theirs].”

— Sukkah, 52 Sefer Ha’agadah, p. 662

“Rabbi Akiva used to scoff at [sexual] transgressors. Once, Satan, disguised as a woman, appeared to him on top of a palm tree. Akiva took hold of the tree and started to climb it. But when he reached halfway, his impulse let go of him. It said to him: Had it not been proclaimed of you in the firmament ‘Take heed of Rabbi Akiva and his learning’ I would have made your life worth no more than two ma’ot (pennies).”

— Kiddushin, 81a (The Book of Legends [Sefer Ha’agadah] p. 237)

“…this is no art in you to speak well about Homer; no, some divine power is moving you, such as there is in that stone which Euripides called the Magnesian…so the Muse not only inspires people herself, but through these inspired ones others are inspired…In fact, all the good poets who make epic poems use no art at all, but they are inspired and possessed when they utter all these beautiful poems…God takes the mind out of the poets, and uses them as his servants…because he wishes us to know that not those we hear, who have no mind in them, are those who say such precious things, but God himself is the speaker, and through them he shows his meaning to us.”

— Plato, Ion, 533—535

“In this Man, […] the soul, which longs and desires to be joined with G-d […] and, on the other hand, the body, which pulls Man downwards, to material and beastly things, and to the vanities of this world, have met…But Man, by seeing and pondering the greatness of the creator and the superiority and preciousness of the divine, is able to influence and persuade his beastly soul that the true goodness lies only in clinging to the living G-d and by that, his beastly soul too is awakened to love G-d and to strip itself of the mean clothes and pictures it had been clothed in.”

— Lessons on Tanya, the Chabad book, by Rabbi Nachum Goldschmidt

 There is only one joy in the world, the joy of creating […] all other joys are nothing but shadows.

— Romain Rolland

 In Hebrew, if you add the letters Yod and Hei (which together make Yah – one of the names of G-d) to the word Yetzer (drive, instinct, urge) you get the word Yetzirah (creation, creating).*

When I noticed this, I started thinking about the role of our drives and instincts in the process of creating, which until then I had thought of as coming from a more spiritual source. I’ve always been puzzled by the story of Rabbi Akiva who was tempted by Satan in the shape of a woman, and by the saying that a person whose drive is greater than another’s is a greater person.

Then I thought of the Greek mythology creatures that are part animal part gods (or god-like), like Pan, Cheron the Centaur, and the Sirens. Like the Chabad Chassidic division of a person into an animal soul, which pulls the person towards the bodily pleasures, and a G-dly soul, which pulls towards G-d and the control of the urges, or their transformation into more spiritual expression, these creatures are divided into an animal part and a godly part, and they all have a gift of music, dance, or healing. This reminded me of Plato’s proposition (in Ion) that the great poets and actors are not in their right mind when they recite poetry, but are a vehicle, or a “channel”, for the gods’ or muses’ spirit.

That led me to Freud’s concept of Sublimation, and to the idea that animal instincts, when harnessed or elevated by a spiritual power, can create great art.

*The more famous such word-play is from Lekach Tov Bereshit:  Eesh--Eesha: Man–Woman: if they are lucky, G-d (Yah, made of the Yod of  Eesh and the Hei of  Eesha) is present with them, but if not, if Yah (the Yod and Hei) leaves them, what is left of the two words is Esh, fire, and the two fires of each of them stick together to one fire, which consumes both of them.