THE DOUBLE CRISIS
together in the cultural centers
all
published books and records, but
only those that have genuine cultural interest. A qualified commis–
sion would select the works to be deposited, and would thereby guar–
antee the quality. Even the movie producers have agreed to the idea
of making their films available for circulation among the cultural
centers, in the hope that the certifications of quality would give them
the likelihood of greater profit. I may add that such a plan would
probably stimulate interest abroad, particularly in your country. Many
American colleges would be delighted to see the outstanding master–
pieces of French painting, which for a century has led the world,
published in full-size reproductions-not to mention the paintings
of the rest of the world.
This is not merely a more or less clever scheme, but a concrete
expression of what I call cultural democracy: democratic in the sense
that it creates a facility which invites use by anyone who cares to
take advantage of it, but does not force the masses through another
political rolling mill. The Russians issue their new icons in the form
of portraits of Stalin. With us, it isn't a question of spreading pictures
of General de Gaulle, but of opening, to all comers, the doors of their
cultural past.
Burnham:
What is to be the relation between the life of art
and the life of action?
It has been of extraordinary interest to me to discover that just
now, when you are involved in political struggle more fully and
prominently than ever before, there have been published in Skira's
beautiful editions your essay on Goya and the first volume of the
Psychologie de l'art : le musee imaginaire.
Malraux:
When I wrote the Goya piece, it must have been
because Goya was one of the few painters whose work was in accord
with struggle.
As
for my
Psychologie de l'art,
the volume which has
now been published was actually planned before the war. The
Germans destroyed my manuscript. I rewrote it, helped by the memory.
The idea of an incompatibility between the life of art and the
life of action seems to me comparatively recent. After all, Sophocles,
Dante, Bacon, and Cervantes were men of action, and three of them
were soldiers. Henry James and Flaubert do not represent the eternal
prototype of the artist.
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