Undoubtedly the first man was an artist.
A science of paleontology that sets forth this proposition can be
written if it builds on the postulate that the aesthetic act always precedes
the social one. The totemic act of wonder in front of the tiger-ancestor came
before the act of murder. It is important to keep in mind that the necessity
for dream is stronger than any utilitarian need. In the language of science,
the necessity for understanding the unknowable comes before any desire to discover
the unknown. Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic
one.
Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original
man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic
state, at his own self-awareness, and at his own helplessness before the void.
Philologists and semioticians are beginning to accept the concept that, if
language is to be defined as the ability to communicate by means of signs, be they
sounds or gestures, then language is an animal power. Anyone who has watched
the common pigeon circle his female knows that she knows what he wants.
The human in language is literature, not communication. Man's first
cry was a song. Man's first address to a neighbor was a cry of power and solemn
weakness, not a request for a drink of water. Even the animal makes a futile attempt
at poetry. Ornithologists explain the cock's crow as an ecstatic outburst of
his power. The loon gliding lonesome over the lake, with whom is he
communicating? The dog, alone, howls at the moon. Are we to say that the first
man called the sun and the stars God as an act of communication and only after
he had finished his day's labor? The myth came before the hunt. The purpose of
man's first speech was an address to the unknowable. His behavior had its
origin in his artistic nature.
Excerpt from Tiger's Eye (New York), No.1 (October 1947)
