William Hogarth, The Distrest Poet

This image is full of tension for me, since it can be taken as either comic or tragic, and one may either condemn or sympathize with the hapless writer. 

The usual interpretation I come across is that this foolish man has squandered his prospects by committing himself to the arts, while his family is reduced to poverty out of his vanity and indolence. As he struggles with his writer's block, the child cries, the wife darns the old clothes, the dog runs off with their last morsel of food, and the cupboard is empty. The milkmaid demands that her bill be paid. 

While the poor poet attempts to write a work about riches, sitting in his nightgown, there are still signs of the life he has so recklessly abandoned: he is sloppily wearing his wig, a gentleman's sword is on the floor, and his lace cuffs are drying by the fire. Through it all, it seems that he still partakes of his beer and his pipe. 

From the perspective of proper society, this man is a failure, because he refuses to do proper work, to make something of himself. I imagine most viewers take it this way: "Get a job, you lazy bum!" 

At the same time, I can't help but wonder about the relative merits of being a rich man and being a romantic, of selling out to convenience or standing firm on principle. Couldn't he do both, by going to the office by day and expressing his soul by night? That would be ideal, but we all know what happens when we try to serve two masters. 

I am sure Hogarth intends for us to heed a grim warning here, and yet I suspect he may also be asking us to feel a touch of pity. No man should let his child go hungry on account of his daydreaming, and yet what kind of world do we live in, when success is defined by accumulating more and more property, instead of loving the true, the good, and the beautiful? 

"Sure, buddy, but he needs to put food on the table before he has the luxury of thinking!" 

Indeed, that would certainly be the case if we defined the merit of a man by his wallet, not by his virtues, by his gut in the place of his head. If the world has so much room for bankers and lawyers, shouldn't it also have some room for poets? 

I dare to suggest that the problem with this distressed fellow is not a commitment to higher values, but rather his self-imposed blindness to the mundane. He can't really be a good poet if he isn't first a virtuous man, and a virtuous man wouldn't just sit back as his family wastes away. 

Art isn't the problem, and money isn't the problem—the presence or absence of character is the problem, whether it be in the slums or on an estate. 

William Hogarth, The Distrest Poet (painting, c. 1736) 

William Hogarth, The Distrest Poet (engraving, 1741)