Art and Politics
A Leiter to the Editors of PARTISAN REVIEW
You
HAVE BEEN
kind enough to invite me to express my views on the
state of present-day arts and letters. I do this not without some hesitation.
Since my book
Literature and Revolution
(1923), I have not once returned
to the problem of artistic creation and only occasionally have I been able
to follow the latest developments in this sphere. I am far from pretending
to offer an exhaustive reply. The task of this letter is to correctly pose the
question.
Generally speaking, art is an expression of man's need for an harmo–
nious and complete life, that is to say, his need for those major benefits of
which a society of classes has deprived him. That is why a protest against
reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or
pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work. Every new
tendency in art has begun with rebellion. Bourgeois society showed its
strength throughout long periods of history in the fact that,. combining
repression and
encourag~ment,
boycott and flattery, it was able to control
and assimilate every "rebel" movement in art and raise it to the level of
official "recognition." But each time this "recognition" betokened, when all
is said and done, the approach of trouble.
It
was then that from the left wing
of the academic school or below it-i.e. from the ranks of a new generation
of bohemian artists-a fresher revolt would surge up to attain in its turn,
after a decent interval, the steps of the academy. Through these stages
passed classicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism, impression–
ism, cubism, futurism ... Nevertheless, the union of art and the bourgeoisie
remained stable, even if not happy, only
SQ
long as the bourgeoisie itself
took the initiative and was capable of maintaining a regime both politically
and morally "democratic." This was a question of not only giving free rein
to artists and playing up to them in every possible way, but also of granting
special privileges to the top layer of the working class, and of mastering
and subduing the bureaucracy of the unions and workers' parties. All these
phenomena exist in the same historical plane.
The decline of bourgeois society means an intolerable exacerbation of
social contradictions, which are transformed inevitably into personal contra-
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