Back in college, a girl I dated recommended Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. So, over Christmas break that year, I bought the paperback version with the Pepto-Bismol pink cover. I devoured it. Though it was written in the 70s, the book’s ideas made quite an impression on me.
Robert Pirsig lays out a story of a father and son taking a motorcycle trip across the country. This trip becomes a parallel for the intellectual journey into philosophy. The motorcycle they ride is a metaphor for the Self. The underlying theme is the notion of Quality and the two modes of looking at it as exemplified by the Classic/Romantic Split.
Classic
The “Classic mode” is distinguished by rational, analytic thought. It is typical of Enlightenment thinking and embraces technology.Romantic
On the other hand, the “Romantic mode” refers to an intuitive way of thinking, characterized by inspiration and creativity. I’ve come to understand this to be a somewhat inaccurate definition of Romanticism. I knew it in my gut when I read it all those years ago, but it was cleared up recently when I read Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcy. But for Pirsig’s purposes, it works since the point of ZMM is to learn to think of Quality beyond those two modes, as a thing just beyond consciousness that we strive for.What this means for art
In regards to Art — the implications for this split are pretty huge. It underscores a large division in the world for two main types of people you are likely to encounter. Rationalist and Romantic thinkers. Or, put another way, technophiles and technophobes. It also points to two directions in art. The Classical mode is rooted in rationalism either based on what can literally be seen or in an abstract sense based on numbers such as De Stijl or Constructivism.The Romantic line of thinking manifests itself in art that is rooted in myth and imagination. The best example I can think of is the art of William Blake and the Surrealists.
In the end, I don’t think the split is as clean as Pirsig wants it to be since most of us fall somewhere on a continuum between reason and intuition (or technology-loving and technology-fearing) but again it provides a rudimentary framework for understanding two ways of thinking.
[…] the forefront of knowledge and consciousness. It’s strikingly similar to an illustration in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the forefront of consciousness is at the nose of a train, and everything else catches up to […]
You conclude that the split isn't as clean as Pirsig wants it to be since it isn't a black or white situation with people falling into one camp or the other.
But I thought this was the point of the book. Didn't the narrator have to recognise a duality within himself and reconcile one half with the other?