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PARTISAN REVIEW
nity have deep roots within democratic culture itself. This doesn't mean
that anyone should consider discarding democratic culture, nor that ten–
sions in that culture must inevitably lead to attacks. But making these
tensions clearer may shed light on the ways in which those who intend
to destroy sometimes enjoy what they oppose.
Some of these tensions are latent in the very idea of democracy.
Democracy is, in one respect, extraordinarily idealistic. It assumes that if
freedom is available to all, the best of all possible human worlds might
come to be; each citizen will find satisfaction of his wants, and all citi–
zens will be free of the threat of tyranny. At the same time, democracy is
extraordinarily pragmatic.
It
acknowledges that no one will be com–
pletely free, that no idea will be universally accepted, that everything will
require compromise.
It
is an inherently imperfect and tension-filled sys–
tem of government-which is its virtue. But these tensions can be pro–
found. Autonomy is promised by democracy, but autonomy can also be
a threat. There is always a question about how much liberty can exist; it
must be tempered to accommodate the liberty of others. In addition, each
individual in a democracy, educated in liberty and expecting equality, has
his own particular vision of what should or must be. But no
particular
vision can ever be fully realized. This means that dissent is the natural
state of affairs. Democracy is created out of discontents and dissents.
This is all the more evident in the realm of culture. Tocqueville
believed that in a democracy the crafts aim not for perfection but for
"imperfect satisfaction"-a term descriptive of much in democratic life.
But the drive for autonomy is even greater in the arts; the artist who is
not primarily interested in commercial success or in courting the many,
will aim to be extraordinarily distinctive and seek only the few.
If
dissent
is the natural state in democratic civic life, for these artists dissent
becomes essential. For example, at the end of the nineteenth century,
European avant-garde modernists were beginning to wrestle with the
future of the Western musical tradition. But American modernists were
still more puzzled, unhappy with the seemingly exclusive European influ–
ence on concert life and uncomfortable with a popular music rife with
sentimentality. In the
1890S
even Dvorak, on coming to New York,
spoke about the need to develop a distinctively New World musical tra–
dition, which he felt would arise out of the music of American blacks and
Indians. But he did not reckon with the even more powerful impulse
toward self-invention and self-assertion in American culture. Charles
Ives, for example, attacked what he referred to as the "sissy" sentiments
of concert music and envisioned a music that would celebrate the indi–
viduality of American life by refusing allegiance to any of music's tradi-
