What is sprezzatura? The word, which has its origin in Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, describes the skill of making difficult tasks appear effortless by consciously concealing the effort that went into completing them. My interest was first sparked last year after picking up the June 2010 issue of The New Criterion and reading Christopher Caldwell's review of Christopher Hitchens' memoir, Hitch-22.
Caldwell used the word to describe Hitchens, and it fit perfectly. We might picture Hitchens entertaining guests at a dinner party and enjoying copious amounts of food and wine when suddenly he disappears for half an hour to spit out a Vanity Fair piece on the evils of tyranny (complete with detailed examples and a hat tip to Orwell) or perhaps a meditation on death, for which his present situation is a case study. Is there a better way to describe his air of effortlessness when debating, reading, and writing? I don't think so.
I am attracted to those who make it look easy, even if it's not. After all, isn't it taken for granted that most things in life are burdensome, tedious, and time-consuming? Why, then, would I want to listen to someone go on about how difficult it was to drive to work or remodel his kitchen? These things do not interest me. What does interest me is the guy who goes on a weekend bender and then destroys an exam on a Monday morning, or the girl who never has a book in her hand, yet has a knack for delivering apt literary analogies at perfect moments. "When the hell did she have time to read that?" I might ask myself. Now that's interesting.
I remember reading a New York Times profile last year on David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, called "Making It Look Easy at The New Yorker" (5 April 2010). And this is exactly what Remnick does: he makes everything look so damn easy. In the article, Stephanie Clifford writes that Remnick "works hard to seem as if he is not working hard." She also quotes Malcolm Gladwell: "He cruises around and chats with people and then disappears and writes thousands of words in fifteen minutes. It's all part of that 'making it look easy' thing." And when he was writing The Bridge, Remnick would wake up "at 5:30 a.m. to write and often stayed up past midnight, but rarely discussed the book at work." I was blown away by his method of getting everything done and keeping his mouth shut. These little morsels instantly attracted me to Remnick. I am drawn toward people who seem to do nothing and yet everything—sprezzatura, in a word.
Last year I watched The Limits of Control. Critics panned the film. In fact, Roger Ebert thought it was quite awful, giving it half a star in his Chicago Sun-Times review. Rarely does he give anything half a star. But I loved it. Why did I love it? I loved it because Jim Jarmusch didn't concern himself with plot. Instead, he wrote and directed a film in which he portrayed life in a purely aesthetic way, like a work of abstract art. I think this disconcerted some people, including the critics. They expected a film that went somewhere, resolved itself. But that's not what they got, and they wanted to make Jarmusch suffer for it. Good luck to them.
I think the film resonates with me because it depicts life in a way I would like to live it. It presents a world in which actions are disconnected from consequences and beauty is an end in itself. Let me give examples to explain what I mean by these two aspects of the film.
First, there is the disconnect between action and consequence. The main character in the film, the Lone Man, played by Isaach De Bankolé, is the epitome of cool. He does not sleep; he merely lies in bed. He does not eat; he just chases pieces of paper with double espressos (in two separate cups). He communicates with people but let's silence do most of the work.
I think this is what Thorsten Botz-Borstein means when he says the cool person manages to "personify paradoxes": He is of this world yet not of this world. He sleeps yet doesn't sleep. He eats yet doesn't eat (in that rare moment when there's food in front of him, the dish looks like something straight out of a Cézanne painting). And he communicates by saying nothing at all. In other words, the Lone Man enjoys the consequences of actions he has chosen not to engage in. He is alert, healthy, and sociable without stooping to behavior human beings find necessary to live in this way. In the ideal world, I think this would be the ultimate resolution of ambivalence: reaching the end we desire without engaging in the act we disdain. But since we must sleep, we can never really be cool.
Now, should we believe that the Lone Man in fact does not sleep, eat, or talk? I don't think so. Jarmusch has chosen not to show those moments that make the main character human, and so we start to believe that he isn't. In a scene at the end of the film, the main character surveys the compound and then mysteriously appears in a room with Bill Murray. "How the hell did he get in there?" we ask ourselves. We have no way of knowing the answer. There must be an answer. After all, he is in a room with Bill Murray—he must have done something to get inside. But since the act of entering is hidden, it's almost as if it didn't happen. "I used my imagination," the hero tells us. And so he did. If only we could be like the Lone Man, entering rooms without opening doors—how amazing would that be? In hiding the Lone Man's humanity, Jarmusch enables us to believe he isn't human at all.
Second, there is the idea of beauty as an end in itself—the aesthetic experience. I think the film is best viewed from this perspective. It is a visual masterpiece that should not be corrupted by a search for meaning or intent beyond the portrayal of life in a purely aesthetic way. Jarmusch directly conveys this idea in the scene in which the Lone Man stares at a cityscape that slowly morphs into a painting. Here we see life as a literal work of art, which is also the way the Lone Man strives to live it.
Why can't we live life this way? I'm not so sure we can't. I don't think we can perfect the aesthetic experience. After all, if we bought fruits and vegetables merely to enjoy how beautiful they are, or if we painted them to enhance their beauty (much like Michelangelo Antonioni famously painted the grass in his film Blow-Up), we probably wouldn't live very long. In other words, for those who view life from an aesthetic vantage point, the decision to be a part of this world has attached to it a certain degree of ambivalence. They don't want to die—they don't care about beauty that much—but they want to enjoy beauty for beauty's sake without having to suffer for it. Yet they do suffer for it because, well, they want to live. Films like The Limits of Control ease this tension and allow us to resolve the ambivalence by pretending, if only for a couple hours, that it really is possible to disconnect action and reaction or live in a way that is fully reconciled with beauty.
The Lone Man is the embodiment of sprezzatura in the extreme. Everything he does, he does without effort or—in many instances—without doing it at all. By cultivating this image, the Lone Man consciously decides to approach his life as a work of art. He assumes the role of aesthete, choosing which movements to display and which to conceal. Everything he does is beautiful.
Last month I walked up to the Hollywood sign with an old college friend. I admire him for deciding to take a chance and move to LA to pursue acting. I love people who can do this—I doubt I could. We talked about a lot of things on the way up and down the trail. And I took some time to mention a story he had told me years ago about a friend he knew who worked as a cashier. He had explained to me how his friend would count bills with an unreal level of focus. His friend would slowly and deliberately pass each bill to the customer, as if each bill were the last one he would ever count. I reminded my friend of this story. We laughed because he didn't remember it and I wasn't even sure why I did.
But maybe there is a lesson to be learned here. Often we are so caught up in the narrative that we view everything we do as a means to an end. We walk to get in shape, or we drive a car to go to the store. Might it not be healthy from time to time to strive to be fully conscious of every movement we make, savoring every muscle twitch because we know that someday we'll die and never be able to move our arms again?
This is why, when the summer comes, I walk to walk. I like to feel the sun beat down on me and savor the opportunity to get a sunburn, even though I know it will hurt like hell afterward. I ask myself, "What is the most beautiful way to walk? What makes me look the best?" I'll experiment with the movement of my arms. For example, I'll try to figure out how much I can reduce their motion and still appear as a normal walker. Flailing them around looks ridiculous; so does moving them not at all. My arms must inhabit a world of movement somewhere in between. I walk in circles to perfect this.
Sometimes I'll drive my car to drive my car. I'll practice the art of stopping smoothly at a traffic light, minimizing the lurch of the car that always seems to occur when I put on the brakes. When I turn the wheel, I'll try different hand configurations that result in smoother arcs. I will do this until I get it right, or at least think I do. There are times I align the direction of the car with the position of the sun to achieve a brilliant shine off the hood ornament, which exhibits a high level of rotational symmetry—a circle segmented into arcs of 120 degrees. I would like my behavior to rise to its level of beauty, my movement to align with its motion, my clothing to complement its color. I can't concentrate on aesthetics when I know a gallon of milk is getting warm in the back seat.
The art of sprezzatura—and it is an art—can be found in those spaces divorced from the realm of the everyday, where we accomplish everything and yet nothing, where utility takes a back seat to beauty. We envy those who appear to do things effortlessly, gracefully—as if it were nothing at all. We wish to be like them. We study their movements and try to enter their world in spite of its impossibility.
And it is impossible. This carefully constructed world is merely an illusion—a work of art that hides all the hard work. Sure, it's beautiful to look at, but it doesn't really exist. Take Shakespeare, who we thought trafficked in such effortlessness. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, "Did Shakespeare Ever Think Twice?" (5 February 2011), Stephen Greenblatt has this to say about The Bard of Avon:
Caldwell used the word to describe Hitchens, and it fit perfectly. We might picture Hitchens entertaining guests at a dinner party and enjoying copious amounts of food and wine when suddenly he disappears for half an hour to spit out a Vanity Fair piece on the evils of tyranny (complete with detailed examples and a hat tip to Orwell) or perhaps a meditation on death, for which his present situation is a case study. Is there a better way to describe his air of effortlessness when debating, reading, and writing? I don't think so.
I am attracted to those who make it look easy, even if it's not. After all, isn't it taken for granted that most things in life are burdensome, tedious, and time-consuming? Why, then, would I want to listen to someone go on about how difficult it was to drive to work or remodel his kitchen? These things do not interest me. What does interest me is the guy who goes on a weekend bender and then destroys an exam on a Monday morning, or the girl who never has a book in her hand, yet has a knack for delivering apt literary analogies at perfect moments. "When the hell did she have time to read that?" I might ask myself. Now that's interesting.
I remember reading a New York Times profile last year on David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, called "Making It Look Easy at The New Yorker" (5 April 2010). And this is exactly what Remnick does: he makes everything look so damn easy. In the article, Stephanie Clifford writes that Remnick "works hard to seem as if he is not working hard." She also quotes Malcolm Gladwell: "He cruises around and chats with people and then disappears and writes thousands of words in fifteen minutes. It's all part of that 'making it look easy' thing." And when he was writing The Bridge, Remnick would wake up "at 5:30 a.m. to write and often stayed up past midnight, but rarely discussed the book at work." I was blown away by his method of getting everything done and keeping his mouth shut. These little morsels instantly attracted me to Remnick. I am drawn toward people who seem to do nothing and yet everything—sprezzatura, in a word.
Last year I watched The Limits of Control. Critics panned the film. In fact, Roger Ebert thought it was quite awful, giving it half a star in his Chicago Sun-Times review. Rarely does he give anything half a star. But I loved it. Why did I love it? I loved it because Jim Jarmusch didn't concern himself with plot. Instead, he wrote and directed a film in which he portrayed life in a purely aesthetic way, like a work of abstract art. I think this disconcerted some people, including the critics. They expected a film that went somewhere, resolved itself. But that's not what they got, and they wanted to make Jarmusch suffer for it. Good luck to them.
I think the film resonates with me because it depicts life in a way I would like to live it. It presents a world in which actions are disconnected from consequences and beauty is an end in itself. Let me give examples to explain what I mean by these two aspects of the film.
First, there is the disconnect between action and consequence. The main character in the film, the Lone Man, played by Isaach De Bankolé, is the epitome of cool. He does not sleep; he merely lies in bed. He does not eat; he just chases pieces of paper with double espressos (in two separate cups). He communicates with people but let's silence do most of the work.
I think this is what Thorsten Botz-Borstein means when he says the cool person manages to "personify paradoxes": He is of this world yet not of this world. He sleeps yet doesn't sleep. He eats yet doesn't eat (in that rare moment when there's food in front of him, the dish looks like something straight out of a Cézanne painting). And he communicates by saying nothing at all. In other words, the Lone Man enjoys the consequences of actions he has chosen not to engage in. He is alert, healthy, and sociable without stooping to behavior human beings find necessary to live in this way. In the ideal world, I think this would be the ultimate resolution of ambivalence: reaching the end we desire without engaging in the act we disdain. But since we must sleep, we can never really be cool.
Now, should we believe that the Lone Man in fact does not sleep, eat, or talk? I don't think so. Jarmusch has chosen not to show those moments that make the main character human, and so we start to believe that he isn't. In a scene at the end of the film, the main character surveys the compound and then mysteriously appears in a room with Bill Murray. "How the hell did he get in there?" we ask ourselves. We have no way of knowing the answer. There must be an answer. After all, he is in a room with Bill Murray—he must have done something to get inside. But since the act of entering is hidden, it's almost as if it didn't happen. "I used my imagination," the hero tells us. And so he did. If only we could be like the Lone Man, entering rooms without opening doors—how amazing would that be? In hiding the Lone Man's humanity, Jarmusch enables us to believe he isn't human at all.
Second, there is the idea of beauty as an end in itself—the aesthetic experience. I think the film is best viewed from this perspective. It is a visual masterpiece that should not be corrupted by a search for meaning or intent beyond the portrayal of life in a purely aesthetic way. Jarmusch directly conveys this idea in the scene in which the Lone Man stares at a cityscape that slowly morphs into a painting. Here we see life as a literal work of art, which is also the way the Lone Man strives to live it.
Why can't we live life this way? I'm not so sure we can't. I don't think we can perfect the aesthetic experience. After all, if we bought fruits and vegetables merely to enjoy how beautiful they are, or if we painted them to enhance their beauty (much like Michelangelo Antonioni famously painted the grass in his film Blow-Up), we probably wouldn't live very long. In other words, for those who view life from an aesthetic vantage point, the decision to be a part of this world has attached to it a certain degree of ambivalence. They don't want to die—they don't care about beauty that much—but they want to enjoy beauty for beauty's sake without having to suffer for it. Yet they do suffer for it because, well, they want to live. Films like The Limits of Control ease this tension and allow us to resolve the ambivalence by pretending, if only for a couple hours, that it really is possible to disconnect action and reaction or live in a way that is fully reconciled with beauty.
The Lone Man is the embodiment of sprezzatura in the extreme. Everything he does, he does without effort or—in many instances—without doing it at all. By cultivating this image, the Lone Man consciously decides to approach his life as a work of art. He assumes the role of aesthete, choosing which movements to display and which to conceal. Everything he does is beautiful.
Last month I walked up to the Hollywood sign with an old college friend. I admire him for deciding to take a chance and move to LA to pursue acting. I love people who can do this—I doubt I could. We talked about a lot of things on the way up and down the trail. And I took some time to mention a story he had told me years ago about a friend he knew who worked as a cashier. He had explained to me how his friend would count bills with an unreal level of focus. His friend would slowly and deliberately pass each bill to the customer, as if each bill were the last one he would ever count. I reminded my friend of this story. We laughed because he didn't remember it and I wasn't even sure why I did.
But maybe there is a lesson to be learned here. Often we are so caught up in the narrative that we view everything we do as a means to an end. We walk to get in shape, or we drive a car to go to the store. Might it not be healthy from time to time to strive to be fully conscious of every movement we make, savoring every muscle twitch because we know that someday we'll die and never be able to move our arms again?
This is why, when the summer comes, I walk to walk. I like to feel the sun beat down on me and savor the opportunity to get a sunburn, even though I know it will hurt like hell afterward. I ask myself, "What is the most beautiful way to walk? What makes me look the best?" I'll experiment with the movement of my arms. For example, I'll try to figure out how much I can reduce their motion and still appear as a normal walker. Flailing them around looks ridiculous; so does moving them not at all. My arms must inhabit a world of movement somewhere in between. I walk in circles to perfect this.
Sometimes I'll drive my car to drive my car. I'll practice the art of stopping smoothly at a traffic light, minimizing the lurch of the car that always seems to occur when I put on the brakes. When I turn the wheel, I'll try different hand configurations that result in smoother arcs. I will do this until I get it right, or at least think I do. There are times I align the direction of the car with the position of the sun to achieve a brilliant shine off the hood ornament, which exhibits a high level of rotational symmetry—a circle segmented into arcs of 120 degrees. I would like my behavior to rise to its level of beauty, my movement to align with its motion, my clothing to complement its color. I can't concentrate on aesthetics when I know a gallon of milk is getting warm in the back seat.
The art of sprezzatura—and it is an art—can be found in those spaces divorced from the realm of the everyday, where we accomplish everything and yet nothing, where utility takes a back seat to beauty. We envy those who appear to do things effortlessly, gracefully—as if it were nothing at all. We wish to be like them. We study their movements and try to enter their world in spite of its impossibility.
And it is impossible. This carefully constructed world is merely an illusion—a work of art that hides all the hard work. Sure, it's beautiful to look at, but it doesn't really exist. Take Shakespeare, who we thought trafficked in such effortlessness. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, "Did Shakespeare Ever Think Twice?" (5 February 2011), Stephen Greenblatt has this to say about The Bard of Avon:
There are literally thousands of these tiny changes. What then of Shakespeare's reputation for "easiness"? He evidently had a stake in hiding all of the hard work that went into his apparent fluency. His was a culture that prized what the famous Italian courtier Baldassare Castiglione called sprezzatura, that is, nonchalance. Castiglione understood that the only way to achieve this nonchalance—in writing as in dancing or riding or telling jokes—was through fantastically painstaking revisions that all had to be carefully concealed.
So that's the way it really is. Maintaining such appearances is hard work—maybe even harder work than the task at hand. And those who make it look so easy are a breath of fresh air in a world filled with people clamoring in the streets, telling us how difficult life can be. Let's be thankful, then, for those who allow us to forget.
