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RICHARD WOLLHEIM
intelligent, much that is amusing, much that is disturbing, a great
deal that is lively and provocative: but little that is substantial,
and even less that is vigorously creative. I cannot believe that the
main stream of the art of our fu ture will stem from this thin trickle
of social realism.
The Glittering Coffin
was conceived as an act of political
dedication: an effort by a young man who would "very much
like to make a career in politics" to remind himself as he grows
older and stuffier of "what I once believed and hoped": a kind of
memento vivere.
But, it may be said, what has all this about
class and culture to do with politics? And Potter's answer would
be, roughly, Everything. For
him
and those who think like him
the future of progressive politics in England, and of the Labour
Party in particular, is to be found in the "oblique" approach to
politics. And by this what is meant is that political programs
should be created out of our awareness of what we wish society
to be like, that practical policies should be composed under the
influence of some vision of men living and working and creating
together.
To this approach I am not unsympathetic. But surely it is
unjustified to call our speculations about society and culture
"political" until we have worked our way back from the more
imaginative vision to some suggestion, however fragmentary, of how
the vision can be realized. Furthermore, to attack the suggestions
of others not because they disagree with what ours are or would
be, but just because they
are
practical suggestions and not visionary
speculations, is absurd. Potter criticizes the Labour leadership for
its "cautious and feeble pragmatism," but he nowhere suggests
a single step, not one, that he would take beyond it. His criticisms
are directed not against the play, but against the production:
and a bit, it must be said, against the accents of the actors.
If
Potter were not such a young man, one might well think that
oblique politics was going to be another word for misguided
thinking.
Richard Wollheim
