The Impressionability of Lucien de Rubempre--and of Artists

In discussing how artists perceive and cognize the world, and what it means for their art, Upton Sinclair (among others) laid great stress on the "impressionability" of artists. Interestingly, in portraying Lucien Chardon/de Rubempre in Lost Illusions Balzac made impressionability a cultural aspect of the character--and his fate. Seeing his brother-in-law and lifelong friend Lucien off to Paris, David Sechard worried about "his friend's unlucky instability of character . . . so easily led for good or evil." Ultimately it was not good that he was led for--but for the purposes of this discussion it is that instability that matters, and which Sinclair saw as the key to the way in which artists portray the world, with this not least the case with their politics. Impressionable beings that they are, those who are more free, open, active, better-resourced and socially "respectable" are the more likely to succeed in swaying them--and it is, of course, those in favor of things as they are whose propaganda is necessarily most pervasive and most affecting on that level.