Languages and the arts

T.T. Cloete

Universities are old institutions. The oldest universities educated in the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and dialectics to which literature also belonged) and in the quadrivium (accounting, geometry, astronomy and music). It is significant that at the time music was classified along with the more exact geometry, arithmetic and astronomy. Through the old trivium and quadrivium we can see that literature and arts are at the origin of university affairs. Today we group these fields of study together under the heading of “the arts”.

Main branches of the arts

There are several main branches of the arts, but the most important distinction is between the spatial or visual arts and the duration or course of time arts.

The art of building and fine arts (sculpting, painting, drawing and photography) are spatial arts. At the same time they also are visual arts, and you can even experience the art of building and sculpting with your sense of touch.

The music (singing, instrumental music, opera) and literature (poetry, prose, drama, et cetera) are duration or course of time arts. Rhythm is duration; course of time follows a certain pattern, and is apparently related to our heartbeat. The art of film is related to drama and opera and can also be classified under the course of time arts.

The wonderful thing is that a person can create art with their body and face, for example the many forms of dance (from the oldest body arts), ballet, mime, acting, fencing or jujitsu.

At university all of a person’s senses along with your intellect becomes involved and developed by the arts. The visually perceivable art of painting or architecture develops the optical sense, music as acoustic art develops your auditory and bodily perception. A person can experience a building, an ornament or a sculpture as tactile art with their sense of touch.

Some artworks are utensils; that is the so-called serviceable art. A piece of architecture is both beautiful and useful. But other artworks mainly have an aesthetic function, for example a painting, even if it has a trade or monetary value.

For a student in the arts it is therefore important to know that the aesthetic – how beautiful something is – is of such vital importance that some utility items at the same time even are beautiful art items, for example the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, the temples Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom in Cambodia, or the simple fisherman’s huts along our coast. Even when buying a car the aesthetic principles apply. Car owners want a beautiful, elegant car. Originally the pyramids of Egypt were mausoleums, but today we see them as masterly building art works. One of the prettiest buildings on earth is the Taj Mahal, but it was also built as a mausoleum. Some of the most beautiful sculptures and reliefs are those on temples, in Java (the famous Borobudur), in India, in Central America, in Egypt, Greece and Italy. Today the ruins in Zimbabwe are not protected and admired for their usage value as a fortress or temple, but for their beauty.

There are many other things not primarily meant as art, but that got art value, for example technical objects like a knife, or a sword primarily designed for war. Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield in Ilias changes a shield primarily meant for fighting where another person is killed into an artwork. Old decorated manuscripts, like those in the Bodleian library at the University of Oxford, which weren’t primarily meant as artworks, but as historical, religious or moralising reading material, are today treasured as the most beautiful aesthetic objects, not only because of their miniatures, but also on account of their beautiful calligraphy, the valuable way in which these books are connected to the pre-industrial era. Museums everywhere on earth are full of “beautiful” aesthetic objects that weren’t originally created for aesthetic purposes.

Arts has a central place at a university

The study of the arts belongs at universities. Art objects in any culture are from the earliest objects made by man and are found in many contexts even before writing was discovered. Early man was already an art man thousands of years before he became a scientific man. The earliest art usually has its origin in magic and religion, for example dance, or the rock art and engravings of the San in our country or the land of the Aborigines in Australia, the rock art at Twyfelfontein and the so-called White Woman from the Brandberg in Namibia. The prehistoric drawings in Southern France and Northern Spain are, like the drawings in the cave of Alta Mira, some of the most beautiful and famous art works.

Art objects, written art works and art in general are not only of the oldest artefacts, but also the most lasting, because man is inclined to save artful objects, also at universities – not just those that are contemporary or that of the own country, but also those from earlier and elsewhere. In many of man’s activities the one thing replaces the other very quickly, but art objects continue to exist for many years and are irreplaceable. A San drawing on a rock in South Africa or a rock drawing in Australia are just as contemporary as a Picasso painting. Today’s news ends up in the rubbish bin today, but “literature is news that stays news”, like the English poet Ezra Pound once said.

The arts and the sciences at the universities are related to each other, because they deal with the same reality. Sometimes arts and science are combined in one person. CL Dodgson’s two names are actually symbolic. As Dodgson he was an English mathematician, but as Lewis Carroll he was the author of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland (1865), a well-known book that is still being reprinted and translated into other languages, in the same way that Mozart’s music is meant for everyone from children to elderly people. The statesman, politician and philosopher Jan Smuts read poetry. Leipoldt was a physician. Einstein read literary works and said that fantasy and imagination have just as must right of existence as the intellect. Nietzsche saw the arts and sciences as correlates. Cicero was both a statesman and writer. The previous pope was not only a theologian but also a poet.

The word quark used by natural scientists, comes from a poet by the novelist James Joyce’s Finnegan’s wake. Kitty Ferguson’s The fire in the equations, a book in natural sciences, refers to “[The] beauty in physics [and] in science”. One chapter has the meaningful title “The muse of science”: “It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment … Beauty is a familiar pointer in physics … The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful … Beauty is a practical tool for finding truth … Black holes are mathematically beautiful …”

Career opportunities

The university is an institution that prepares your for an occupation. Certain arts (for example the performing arts) are aimed at a profession and prepare the student very specifically for a certain occupation, for example students in architecture. Students at a conservatory get practical training in singing or the playing of certain instruments. Some universities also teach drawing, painting and sculpting in their courses on art history and art appreciation.

With regard to literature, some universities do offer writing classes or workshops, but in the case of singing or music students, these workshops, training in writing, are only meant for people who already have a literary talent. Without an innate talent or ability you can teach no-one to write, draw or make music.

Careers that the languages and language arts prepare you for at university, are the education, librarianship, journalistic work in the media, newspapers and magazines, the television and radio, work in archives and museums, work at publishers, translation work, as well as working with dictionaries, secretarial work and work in interpreting arts (stage and theatre).