Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

Art is long, life is short.   Odds are, if you're involved in any job that could be considered 'creative', you've met someone with this, or the original Latin, tattooed on their body¹.  It's the quintessential motto of the modern artist; my life is brief, a momentary flash in a greater universe, but the things I create will have life eternal.  They will stand the test of time, and be my immortality.  And make no mistake, artists seek immortality.  We may prattle on and on about the joy of creation, and the splendor of birthing something that brings joy to others, but at the end of the day we, like every other human being on the planet, are concerned with our legacy.  Simply put - we want to be remembered.  But back to the titular phrase.   You can attack 'Art is long, life is short', and the sentiment behind it, from any number of angles.  But the simplest way?  Well that's just to translate it.



'Ars Longa, Vita Brevis' - 'The Craft is long, and life is fleeting'.  It's got some poetic floruish, to be sure, but in terms of the meaning of the words, and not just the literal translation, it's far more accurate.  The original Greek actually shifted the order - Life being fleeting coming before the craft being long - but that's neither here nor there.  What's important is that word Ars.  It's taken to mean Art, in part because it looks like it should, but also because that is one of the many meanings of the Latin Ars.  But a better translation, and the one the author² had in mind?  Technique, or, my personal favorite, craft.  The phrase itself comes from the introduction of a medical textbook, and it continues as follows:

Life is short, and the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience perilous, and decision difficult.  The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.

In short; acquiring mastery is hard, and even with that in hand doing the right thing, the correct thing, is perhaps harder.  It's a commentary on how, no matter how intelligent and diligent we are, mastery is in many ways an unattainable goal: we simply don't live long enough to understand everything out there.

It's easy to look at this and scoff; silly art students running around, quoting people they don't understand.  And, to be fair, we'd all be better off if everyone did a bit more research.  But I take heart - call me melancholic, but the idea of countless people carrying around a reminder of their own mortality, and the futility of their actions, somehow gives me heart.  I guess it's born from how I interpret the quote, and the struggle of life at large.  Yes, true mastery is impossible, and yes, no one will ever understand their craft in a way that is complete and whole.  But the beauty is in the struggle, not in the victory.  The point of climbing a mountain is not to stand at the top but to savor the gradual and gratifying rise.  And while our lives are too short to ever master our craft, if that craft is important to you, and if you do truly love it, every second you spend in the struggle will be one you never regret.

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<sup>1. The ORIGINAL original Greek is a bit more rare. But incredibly cool.↩
2. Hippocrates, from whose name we get that oath doctors have to take.↩</sup>