ARTIST AGAINST SOCIETY
61
costly undertaking, which society should
in
some way regularly sup–
port. Granted. Therefore the artist has a duty to society. But of
course we don't want to dictate his style or his opinions-the results
of totalitarian practice are too fresh in our minds and all too clear.
At the same time, ours being a democratic country, the people should
get what they like-especially if their taxes pay for it-and they
don't seem to like high art. It follows that the really great artist finds
no support, and feels alienated from his society, divorced-and without
alimony. Now since in our conscious moments we admire only great
artists, and as they are all alienated, we are forced to conclude that
art has never been so little honored as now. This is because America
is materialistic, everyone seeking coarse pleasures with automobiles
and iceboxes. Now in the thirteenth century, when men had a com–
mon faith, why--
And so it goes, from plausibility to plausibility without once
touching the earth. Consider the vagueness- and the vulgarity--of
that fundamental phrase, "the artist and his society." What lies be–
hind this personification and this possessiveness? "Herman Melville
and
his
society."
"OUT
society and
its
artists." The implication seems
to be that these are two contracting parties, who in a healthy state
would live together on terms of amiable give-and-take. Society above
all would give and would take. Herman Melville should have had
readers
and
royalties, and in return the American society of 1865
should have been "expressed," embalmed, apotheosized, by Melville.
But who composes this "society" and how is its contract with
anyone artist, who is necessarily self-appointed, to be drawn up
and enforced? Again, what is the exact meaning of the artist's "ex–
pressing" his society? To illustrate once more with novelists, it is clear
that what Proust and Henry James are praised for is damning "their"
society; they are cheered for depicting its fatal illness and elaborately
jumping upon the corpse.
It
is true that they also lived rather com–
fortably out of
its
pocket; but that did not disarm their enrnity–
surely a curious relation for contracting parties under the rule of
give-and-take.
Is it not obvious that innumerable confusions hide behind the
phrase which sets up artist and society as two sovereigns in com–
pulsory alliance, and prescribes their conduct in the language of
claim and counterclaim? To question this is not to imply that an
