16
PARTISAN REVIEW
taking so seriously his responsibilities as an intellectual. We must
agree with
him
when he says that the man of letters cannot keep
aloof from politics today if he is to fulfill his function. But there is
a certain hypocrisy in Mann's treatment of politics. He is constantly
protesting his inadequate understanding of the subject, thus claiming
the indulgence granted the amateur. And he is as constantly .taking
the most extreme and reckless -political positions, lending his Olym–
pian, above-the-battle prestige to political doctrines of the most
dubious kind. The contradiction is summed up in the title of the book
he wrote in 1918 defending German imperialism. He called it:
Reflections of a Non-PoliticalMan.lfThomasMann
is actually a non–
political humanist, then we should like to ask how it happens that
his political position at any given moment in history always happens
to be that of any 'liberal' bourgeois concerned, above all things, to
defend his kind of capitalism.
THE CARNEGIE
INTERNATIONAL
It
would probably be difficult to unearth a more
diverse collection of artists than those who
have been carrying off first prize at the Carnegie
Internationals during the last few years. The list reads somewhat as
follows: Derain, Franklin G. Watkins, Picasso, Peter Blume, Braque,
and
this
year, Karl Hofer. Surely the curve of taste implied by that
sequence presents such unexpected gyrations that any one not familiar
with the workings of art-committees might attribute to the judges a
sort of biennial whimsicality. Whereas on some occasions they would
appear to honor some outstanding contribution to culture, the follow–
ing year they would seemingly retaliate by snatching the prize–
painting out of a grab-bag.
As
the 1938 winner has already received
his customary publicity from the press, it is perhaps superfluous to add
that this has been decidedly one of the grab-bag years, so let us confine
our enthusiasm to the recollection that Fate, after all, did direct the
Jury's hand toward a painter onder Fuhrer's black-list. (And may we
express the fond hope that we shall encounter no more grab-bags that
might disgorge any such unpalatable wares as the 1938 recipients of
the second and third awards,-Vlaminck and Arnold Blanche
resp'"ectively. )
-
Returning to our original list of all-time winners, we might note
a consistent effort on the part of the juries toward the selection of
something "mode:rn" for top honors. They evidently set about their
annual tasks with a grim determination that no one should ever call
them academic moss-backs. Such a resolution might have been wel–
come had the committee's understanding of the nature of modem
