Says I Am

I’ve heard some of my favorite painters, directors, and musicians proclaim themselves to be conduits through which other-worldly inspiration makes its way into the realm of human artistic expression. Taken at face-value, this explanation for creative genius seems indicative of the kind of circuity and pomposity that I’ve always resented in artistic virtuosos. The notion suggests that, while the artist herself claims and exercises no agency and no authority in the creative process, her particular presence is crucial in converting the raw inspiration she receives into the artistic masterpieces that she yields. In addition to this paradox, the idea of artist-as-intermediary is infuriatingly tautological. The notion first presupposes that there are essential and/or ultimate ideas that exist only to be filtered down to the plane of human perceptibility. Yet, because we automatically deem our reception of artwork to be both derivative and partial, we (as an audience) endeavor to imagine what we must already hold to be true for this kind of creation to occur in the first place…the existence of the absolute.
Upon first consideration, Maria Sabina seems to fit neatly into the artist-as-conduit category described above. After all, she reports that, after experiencing a life-changing vision, she “gave [her]self up for always to wisdom”(14). This statement of self-surrender suggests that Sabina chose to embrace the role of human mouthpiece for transcendent ideas and powers. While this is technically the case, Sabina sets herself apart from other artist-as-intermediaries when she goes on to state, “I cede my body and my voice to the saint children”(72) and, later, “Language belongs to the saint children. They speak and I have the power to translate”(76). Aha! So, Sabina’s role in the creative process is not that of a passive vessel, but of a finely attuned, directly active translator. Furthermore, the healing that she provides for humanity comes in poetic language that is not coded with words/coated in perception, but immediately and wholly relayed to those whom she seeks to cure. Sabina is no passive conduit. Her poetry demands both her complete surrender to its forces and her total involvement in its struggle to reach the verbal; it is motivated both by a functional purpose (i.e., curing the ill) and by a mystical desire (i.e., to expose the fluid nature of the human spirit/soul); finally, it reaches us as both the poetic language of humans and the literal language of the “saint children.” It is, perhaps, by consequence of its power to merge these would-be contradictions that Sabina’s poetry establishes its extraordinary resonance.