PARTISAN
.REVIEW
257
new book means starting all over again from the beginning. All
his
previous experience loses its significance. He is always in a hopeless
dilemma if he tries to put new raw material drawn from life into inap–
propriate artistic forms; in such a case it is impossible to submit the
laws of art to the laws of life, just as the reverse is equally impossible.
A certain creative tension
is
needed between what is conventionally
known as art and what can only be the product of the individual
artist's sensibility. To resolve the problem by the reimposition of a
cultural dictatorship is absolutely impossible without stifling art.
Is everyone in this country aware of this commonplace, not to say
banal truism? I'm afraid not. In everyday life we constantly encounter
the most crass incomprehension of literature, an incomprehension
which is particularly liable to evoke pain and despair when certain
impetuous zealots start drawing rash political conclusions from it.
It
is
amazing that in this day and age, on the forty-ninth anniver–
sary of Soviet power, where art is concerned people are still squeamish
about things they should have assimilated while they were still in
school. It makes no difference that people's intentions are well-meaning
and their ideological views impeccable; all that is irrelevant, because
the trouble stems from ignorance, a low standard of aesthetic culture
and what one might call licensed obscurantism.
The chief instance of this kind of obscurantism is to be found in
the attitude to social criticism in literature. In a famous article, written
over a century ago, the great Belinsky writes as
follow~:
By its very nature artistic creation demands unconditional freedom
in the choice of subject - freedom not only from critics, but from
the artist himself. No one has the right to prescribe his subject–
matter to him, nor should the artist force himself into a particular
approach. Whilst he may adopt a specific viewpoint, it will only
ring true if it harmonizes unconstrainedly with his talent, his nature,
his instincts and aspirations.
If
he depicts vice, debauch, and
vulgarity, then you must assess whether he has done it truthfully
and well, and not
try
to work out why he did that and not some–
thing else
[applause],
or why, having done this, he did not do
something else as well. People tend to say: what does this man
think he
is
doing by only describing what is base and vulgar? To
which I reply: why shouldn't he? ...
asks Vissarion Belinsky; and in another passage of the same article he
answers:
3. Visaarion Grigorievich
Belinsky
(1811-1848). Literary critic, nicknamed
"furious Vissarion" for the violence of his polemics. A leading "Westem–
izer,"
Belinsky
was the founder of the sociological school of literary criticism.
