OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
427
through two centuries of mechanical change, they were using coercion
and control on an unprecedented scale. Culture becoming a weapon
in the struggle ceased to have any meaning as criticism of life. It
could not attract-indeed it could only repel and appall, the Amer–
ican artist reared in the Western tradition of individualism and
protest. When such an artist reflected that his own country largely
maintained the old bourgeois freedoms, and had acquired since
1920 not a few of the European amenities conducive to the apprecia–
tion of
art,
he could
be
excused for falling into chauvinism. And from
cherishing American institutions he might even come to think that
only American subject matter and techniques were worthy of his
art.
Yet this renewed attachment to the republic, explicable as It IS
historically and rationally, does not begin to answer the perennial
questions, What shall the artist give to his country and to the world?
What is he entitled to expect in return? The answers, we know, can–
not be legislated into existence- that is the error and the crime of all
totalitarian regimes. Nor can the legislation we disallow take the
form of pre-established demands by theorists-that is the error of
the "native soil" critics who insist upon American themes and
treatments as a prerequisite of merit. They fall into the same confusion
as the proponents of "political commitment," which is to take a
frequent ingredient of great art for a necessary condition. In truth, the
relation of give and take between artist and nation can only be dis–
cussed retrospectively- we discover that it has been excellent or
deplorable. And our inability to legislate or prophesy must remain
because in any good relation the coming together of the parties can
only result from mutual desire; as in love or friendship, the expecta–
tion on each side must be lively but indefinite.
Here precisely stands the great obstacle to contemporary cul–
ture in American society: too many people know what they want
from art, expect it, and of course get it. Our political ideals dignify
this tendency; our economic habits support it. The sovereignty of the
people turns out to resemble closely the infallibility of the customer.
We call this the working of democratic opinion and we dislike the
resulting mass culture, but it would be a mistake to explain its char–
.acter by a mere lack of cultivation, a crudity of instinct or outlook.
