Formalism in life is not strictly about having your bedroom, living room and home office in apple-pie order and colour concordance without uncleared litter or unmanaged clutter. It’s an overall outlook that demands perfect pruning and levelling or balancing at whatever step life lands you in.
Visible material orderliness apart, it ascends to the plane of individual vision where the same neat-stacking tendencies show in organising thought content too, with precise categories correlated by clear lines and/or areas of similarity or contrast or overlap or intersection. Everything here is explainable, predictable and packageable by the instruments of logic. Even esoteric matters are neatly explained without bluff or rebuff. See, alliterating and rhyming also follow from that powerhouse of orderliness!
The two kinds of formalism more often than not co-exist in an individual. Modes of individual expression are the most powerful indicators of the convergence. Where the convergence is absent, or where the material orderliness does not marry mental organization, a serious personality rift, often going towards a drift, occurs. Very sad cases, such.
The most serious and perhaps the only cause of formalism initially present but later lapsing in manifestation are either the individual’s low energy levels that cannot meet the demands of spatial organization due to health debility, or a very low quotient of stretchable time. Leave out cases of brain damage resulting in aberrant states overall that does not pertain here.
Note that one has one’s vital time and stretchable time, the former for the most needed activities of daily life and the latter for self-inspired projection to the outer world. When such a thing occurs as paucity of creativity-enhancing energy or shaping-up time, the “primal fastidious,” as I would call such a fussy formalist, feels very low self esteem.
The worst thing about such a situation is, the fussy one cannot often, due to hampering pride go down to acknowledge drastic need of help, or withdraws fearing being dominated by helpers over-utilizing this huge idiosyncratic weakness. Or, in less innocuous cases, the candidate cannot trust another to do the job just as right and fears high words with the helper in the bargain. And simply recoils from asking for help.
Morbid fears are inbuilt in every obsession. But do not call this an OCD but a simple finicky aspect.
All three cases are highly deplorable and pathetic. Net result, a stubborn muddle that crucifies the helpless onlooker with more nails at every turn.
The stress-free solutions proposed by others will simply not be acceptable due to the psychological blockades of, shall we coin a phrase for another such circumstancial condition, “parity distrust?” Only choice, Hobson’s choice, is to sufffer hell and be absolved in suffering’s own purgatory to attain the paradise of a miraculous transformation in the state of affairs, if so granted.
Sounds very neatly argued, doesn’t it? Testimony of the first witness is strongest and best. So, take it from me, I’m living a moment of uncleared commotion around me in my physical world though I’ve proved to you hereby my mental organization is precisely intact.
My reasons have been forecast already– poor health that doesn’t give me enough tappable calories to haul or even rub off every noisome thing out of the way. And colour questions horrify me! Sadly, I cannot even use my abundant household and intellectual resources sufficient to manifest ten times the loved change, for my low energy levels and poor orthopedic prospects.
And I can’t have just anybody to finish the work after my heart for me, just because life taught me nobody applies as hard for another (unlike me), and I will not be able to hold my peace with laxity. Because thought systems are a tough mould with me. You think me conceited but I can’t counter it. Enough? Are you answered?
Let me now climb back with you to the adamantine thing of a word, Formalism. Now recognize it as the all-round luxury of the most blessed and comfortable souls in the Elysiums of the Earth. I think the Yale critics were just that, irrespective of individual biographies. And I suspect the inner world of the author of “The Waste Land” too was quite a settled one, for the same soul authored in a very laidback mode the Sacred Wood essays, reflecting calm poise and content. Envy finds many facile reasons for others’ victory. Again, unable to counter.
My Formalism… Simply failed me, for God and I really know what.
Altitude of Art 