356
PARTISAN REVIEW
truth which is complementary to it, is that
in
the immense world
organization of modern wealth, everyone has an obvious dependence
on his position
in
the economic system, everyone is to some extent
conditioned by his environment, and one of the most obvious charac–
teristics of modern thought is that we cannot dissociate the individual
completely from his environment. A modern St. Francis who stripped
himself of all his possessions and lived a life of saintly poverty might
be
respected today, but could not be regarded as likely to influence
the conditions of life because we have too clear a picture of the inter–
connectedness of the modern system to believe that anyone can help
humanity by separating himself completely from it within some atti–
tude of personal saintliness. The artist who proclaims himself isolated
within the values of his art is in much the same position as the mod–
ern St. Francis would be. "Art for art's sake" may be treated with
respect, but the connection of the esthetes with a political and eco–
nomic situation is felt by everyone except themselves. Therefore the
attempt today to be a pure artist, having renounced all political con–
nections with society, although
it
has been made and will be made
again and again, is simply a failure to be conscious of the artist's
position in the modern world. Ruskin and William Morris were right
to draw the conclusion that if the artist does not accept the social
system in which he lives, he cannot wash his hands of it; unless he
is for it, he must be
agt~inst
it.
The esthetes foreshadowed the attitude of many wealthy people
in fascist countries towards fascism. Disdaining the social system in
which they lived, they sought to cultivate a world of their own values,
isolated from it, while accepting the position which the system gave
them. Ultimately they supported fascism, because it supported them.
It is interesting to note that the survivors of the esthetic movement,
D'Annunzio, the futurist Marinetti, the imagist Ezra Pound, and
W. B. Yeats, all showed a certain enthusiasm for fascism, because
they saw in it a violent assertion of the aristocratic principle, which
although decaying, kept them in their position of detachment from
society. While I am writing this, a bitter controversy is raging among
Italian writers. The school of "hermetic" poets claims that the mys–
terious obscurity of their poems written between 1923 and 1942 proves
that they would never compromise with fascism. An embittered group
of anti-fascists points out, however, that it is exactly this "pure" style
of literature which
fa~cism
could afford to support, and whose expo–
nents, in fact, supported fascism.
Here, though, I am not concerned with recriminations which
are only of local importance, in so far as certain unfortunates (Ezra
