"The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon"
About this Quote
Miller is warning you not to mistake the artist for a delivery service. To "take him at his word" is to treat art like testimony: literal, solvable, closed. That impulse is flattering to the audience because it turns interpretation into extraction - find the message, cash it out, move on. Miller calls it a sin because it kills the one thing he thinks art is for: propulsion.
The key turn is "fulfillment instead of an horizon". Fulfillment is consumer logic. It implies completion, satisfaction, moral accounting: the work delivers a meaning and the reader gets to feel finished. An horizon is the opposite: a line you walk toward that recedes as you approach. Miller's phrasing makes the artwork an instrument of appetite rather than answer, a machine for expanding desire, perception, and possibility. The subtext is defensive but not paranoid: artists, especially those who write autobiographically or provocatively, are routinely reduced to their content. The reader wants the author pinned down - confession, creed, scandal, program. Miller wants the artist left unstable.
Context matters. Miller's career (Tropic of Cancer, the censorship fights, the notorious sexual candor) trained audiences to read him as either pornographer or prophet. Both camps commit the same error: they treat the book as a verdict. His line insists that the work isn't a culmination of the artist's life or philosophy; it's a frontier he has staked out, inviting you to push past it.
Irony lingers in "at his word": writers trade in words, yet the mature reader knows not to trust them too literally. Miller is arguing for an art that stays unfinished inside you - less a statement than a weather system.
The key turn is "fulfillment instead of an horizon". Fulfillment is consumer logic. It implies completion, satisfaction, moral accounting: the work delivers a meaning and the reader gets to feel finished. An horizon is the opposite: a line you walk toward that recedes as you approach. Miller's phrasing makes the artwork an instrument of appetite rather than answer, a machine for expanding desire, perception, and possibility. The subtext is defensive but not paranoid: artists, especially those who write autobiographically or provocatively, are routinely reduced to their content. The reader wants the author pinned down - confession, creed, scandal, program. Miller wants the artist left unstable.
Context matters. Miller's career (Tropic of Cancer, the censorship fights, the notorious sexual candor) trained audiences to read him as either pornographer or prophet. Both camps commit the same error: they treat the book as a verdict. His line insists that the work isn't a culmination of the artist's life or philosophy; it's a frontier he has staked out, inviting you to push past it.
Irony lingers in "at his word": writers trade in words, yet the mature reader knows not to trust them too literally. Miller is arguing for an art that stays unfinished inside you - less a statement than a weather system.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Henry
Add to List
