MODERN AS VISION
355
him from, or decide him on, taking it. This is usually an example of
the functioning of the aesthetic sense (however underdeveloped it may
be
in him) of which we are talking. The painting, sculpture and
general design of today, such as can be included in the movement we
support, aims at nothing short of a physical reconstructing and record–
ing of the visible part of the world.
The theme of hope re-connects an art, which has been driven
inwards into the isolated being of the artist, with the external world,
by accomplishing a revolution in the community which is taught to
share the visions of modern artists. In being victimized, oppressed,
and in having dreams, the artist already meets the insulted and
the oppressed who pray for change, although their aspirations may
be far removed from his visions. But it is important to him that
his
visions are nevertheless closer to the poor and the powerless than
to those who are rich and enjoy power. Hence the current of
revolutionary feeling which runs alike through dadaist, expressionist
and surrealist manifestoes. Each group claims to be the true revolu–
tionaries of life, and that the stream which it represents would join
with the stream of the social revolution; if only the revolutionaries
were not too philistine to realize that modern 'art represents the
democracy of the unconscious forces which should be equated with
economic democracy! Hence the surrealists were later to insist that
they were Communists. Some of them-Aragon, Tristan Tzara–
even, as surrealists, joined the Communist Party, later to renounce
surrealism as bourgeois. The smile was on the face of the tiger.
3. Art which will transform reality into shared inner life, is the
converse of (2) which would transform inner vision into outer social
change. It is the idea that the images of the materialist modern
world can be "interpreted," made to become symbols of inner life
where they are reconciled with the older things symbolized by words
like "jug," "mountain," "star," "cross." This process was the in–
ftnitely patient research of experience of Rilke. It finds its completest
realization in the
Duino Elegies,
where the Angels are set up as almost
machine-like figures over the human landscape in which there is
the fair, the world of values that are money. The angels are per–
petually occupied in transforming the world of outward materialism
back into inner tragic values.
