<430
PARTISAN REVIEW
American artists should bear in mind when striving to keep open
for themselves and for the unpredictable genius among them the
opportunity of adding to the sum of culture.
1. The first requisite
is
of course intellectual
laisser-faire)
taken
in the literal meaning of the original French. To secure this it seems
important to maintain, cherish and defend the American tradition of
federalism--of pluralism, if that term is preferred-: the dispersion
of power, enterprise and authority as much as is compatible with
gregariousness and local strength.
In
other words, resist all centraliza–
tion, suspect all claims of efficiency, and reject the temptations of
state aid and private bureaucratic support.
2. A second condition is to sustain all the feelings of solidarity
that experiences of the recent past may have engendered. Difficult as
it may be for the convinced artist, he should feel that another's devo–
tion to art constitutes a claim upon his own good will, even though
that other's devotion appears misguided, childish or poisonous. Class
consciousness among intellectuals
as
intellectuals will never come, but
it should be a social virtue and a source of moral strength to aim for
it. As they do this, artists should unceasingly combat the dogmatisms
which forever try to entangle them in polemics that they have
neither the time nor the talent to pursue. This applies to critical
dogmas as well as to religious and political, though it does not of
course exclude the possibility of an artist's making a career of
criticism or politics in addition to his art; but he should then exem–
plify the co-existence and separation of the spiritual and temporal
powers.
3. The American artist who rightly deplores the grinding on of
mass culture might usefully remember that his work, depersonalized
though it is by the "media" which "make it available," is none the less
desired.
The stuff is made into rations but rations are food of a kind.
He can therefore exert a certain pressure whenever he compromises
with the agencies that use him. Like political parties and big business,
the "media" are queerly sensitive to censure properly applied, and
even responsive to guidance. The intellectual who gives up sterile
contempt for the middle man, and on the contrary applies his wits to
understanding his technological mind, can often circumvent it and
destroy some, at least, of its superstitions.
In
so doing he is acting on
the public mind as well, and making it more flexible too. The great
