'What Is Called an Amateur'

I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was unashamedly serious. She dismissed some of these inferior species as “amateurs.” 

I like amateurs, in the etymological sense. Amateurs work out of love, the purest of motives. I’m an amateur, and proud of it. In 1846, when Robert Browning and his new wife moved to Italy, Robert took up the hands-on study of sculpture. He made busts of clay and destroyed them almost as soon as they were finished in order to start molding another. Browning went on to write good poems about painters and painting – “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea del Sarto” and “Pictor Ignotus.”

 

“This is Browning’s interest in art,” writes G.K. Chesterton in his 1903 monograph on the poet, “the interest in a living thing, the interest in a growing thing, the insatiable interest in how things are done.” Chesterton then goes on to define Browning’s efforts:

 

“He was, in other words, what is called an amateur. The word amateur has come by the thousand oddities of language to convey an idea of tepidity; whereas the word itself has the meaning of passion. Nor is this peculiarity confined to the mere form of the word; the actual characteristic of these nameless dilettanti is a genuine fire and reality. A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame or money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it. Browning was in this strict sense a strenuous amateur. He tried and practised in the course of his life half a hundred things at which he can never have even for a moment expected to succeed.”

 

Chesterton praises Browning’s “fruitless vivacity.” Life becomes more rewarding when we engage in “unprofessional” activities, pursued strictly for the enjoyment and fulfillment they give us.