PETER ESTERHAZY
273
Today
The 'today' of the title means that there is also a yesterday, i.e. there
is
time;
let us pay attention to time. And if we pay attention to time, we
must pay attention to
space.
This much, at least, we should understand of
the physics of 'today'.
The old problem
To say that the old problem was that we lacked freedom would be
precipitate. For one thing, someone could counter saying that he person–
ally was free; nor would it make our approach any more accurate if we
tried to pinpoint the problem in the lack of freedom of our respective
countries. The relationship of art and freedom is inordinately complex. It
is a messy sort of relationship. Put fair and square, it is impossible to say
what benefits art, what makes it bloom. Sometimes a bit of harassing will
do the trick, sometimes a bit of caressing (which, however, does not le–
gitimize the harassing), and sometimes when it is completely ignored.
1913
Be it as it may, living in a dictatorship is a dangerous business, more
dangerous than living in a non-dictatorship. The margin of error is
greater. For instance, if someone in Paris should happen to say that capi–
talism will last forever, he is not running an appreciable risk. But if
someone happened to think (as indeed everyone did think) that this
thing,
even if it was not going to last forever, was lasting an inconceivably long
time, and built his strategy for life on this conviction, then it is not incon–
ceivable that right now he's in a bit of a pickle whenever he looks in a
mirror, and if it's not the feeling of shame that catches up with him, then
it's the uncomfortable feeling of awkwardness and embarrassment. To
resort to an old metaphor, in 1913 we lived knowing that the Monarchy
would last forever.
Clarification
From a distance, one might have thought that a soft-core dictatorship
is not a dictatorship.
It
is more like democracy, except its degree of free–
dom is not one hundred or ninety-nine, but more like forty-three. One
of these days, of course, it would reach fifty-one . This is a blunder. A
soft-core dictatorship is still a dictatorship, its degree of freedom is zero; it
has no freedom, all it has is scope for action. (Which is something, of
course, since in any self-respecting dictatorship you have buttoning up,
not scope for action. Freedoms instead of freedom.
Remembering is the most steadfast enemy of dictatorship. A real dic–
tatorship clamps down mercilessly on remembering, freezing everything
