227

One Step from Pessimism to Avant-gardism

p What is modernist art? Is it an expression of spiritual exhaustion, a symptom of the "destructive urge" or the first bold step to a "new Renaissance" and an appeal lo the "generations to come"? For about eighty years now bourgeois philosophers, historians and art crilics have been raising Ihis question, and so far nol one of them has succeeded in giving a more or less coherent answer. Bui maybe they prefer Ihe agony of uncertainly lo Ihe harsh Iruth.

p Some of them declare lhal modernism is like the " innocence of Ihe beast striving for freedom from all culture”. Is this a censure? It would seem so. Yel whenever modernism is altackcd from the “left” these same crilics spring to its defence, declaring it to be a meaningless but essential product of historical progress. They even claim thai modernism alone offers Ihe possibilily of cullural progress, since il caters for the needs of "complex individuals”. The masses are dismissed as being indifferent to cullure and hostile lo Ihe arts. "The culture of the masses is a denial of culture,"  [227•1  the champions of modernism declare. Bourgeois ideologists who scorn the culture of the masses fluctuate between viewing modernist art as a symptom of regression and decline and hailing il as a movement thai is ahead of its lime, avant-gardism which is beyond the understanding of the “anti-culture” masses.

p Thomas Munro, Honorary President of the American Society for Aesthetics, sees avant-gardism as a rejection of 228 rigid views and forms. Formerly, he says, painting was subordinated to Hie laws of perspective and colour, whereas now Hie painter splits up the various components ol I’orm and specialises in one ol them such as line or colour, etc. "He combines different aspects of things as seen from different points of view at different moments, thus giving an impression of shilling instability.... Avant-garde poetry likewise lends lo avoid steady meter and rhyme as well as clear language. It prefers ambiguity, fleeting impressions and obscure suggesliveness. Ficlion and drama lend lo avoid a definite plot as a framework of action, as well as the depiction of stable characters; instead they lend lo stress psychological change and the instability of human relations. Thus the boundaries between reality and illusion are pro gressively blurred,"  [228•1  Munro concludes.

p Why should these destructive tendencies be regarded as progressive? Thomas Munro sees them as an indication that the arlisls representing modern bourgeois art have "lost their nerve”. Yet in spile of this he regards modernism as a "romantic-revolutionary movement away from op pressive rules and centralised authority.... This may open the way to new discoveries ... and new kinds of aestheticexperience".  [228•2 

p This implies that the quest of modernism is the entirely negative one of revealing the possibility of "gelling nowhere”. The assumption that the destruction of artistic form is a "new kind of aesthetic experience" is surely absurd.

p Recently attempts have been made lo pass olf avantgardism as a social movement as well as an aesthetic experience. Camilla Gray, for instance, claims that the Russian formalists, the “nichevoki”, non-objectivisls, painters of the "Knave of Diamonds" and "Donkey’s Tail" groups were the forerunners and the prophets of the 1917 Revolution. Together with them, writes Miss Gray, "from all over Weslern Europe artists looked lo Russia for the realisation of their ’new vision’, for in communism they saw the answer to the sad isolation of the artist from society 229 which the capitalist economy had introduced".  [229•1  The period of "heroic communism" (1917 22), i.e., the Civil War, it is fashionable to assert, was the most fruitful because official support was given to arlisls such as Kandinsky, Malevieh, Gabo and other champions of Western “ revolutionary” ideas (Hie concept of "art lor art’s sake”).

p What happened later? Miss Gray explains that the ideas of “progressive” Europe did not manage lo withstand the onslaught of “backward” Russia. Nationalist, Slavophil conception of art (art as a means of social change) gained the upper hand over Europeanism. This, she claims, happened because the Bolsheviks were materialists. Faced with the dilemma of choosing between Shakespeare and a pair of boots, they decided in favour of the boots. The New Economic Policy was introduced and the bourgeoisie resurrected. It soon began to patronise the arts, unlike the penniless government, encouraging a return to the reactionary forms of nineteenth century realism. Russian art began to preach the special "mystical mission of isolated Russia”. Such conditions compelled the representatives of "intellectual liberalism”, i.e., Kandinsky, Gabo and a few others, to leave Russia.

p The pendulum of history has swung tragically backwards.

p A review of Miss Gray’s book published in the magazine Art in America reads as follows: "Between 1863 and 1922 Russian painting experienced a brief flowering which, culminating in the work of Tallin, Malevieh, Gabo, Pevsner, inspired Weslern art wilh some of its most courageous and revolutionary ideas.”  [229•2 

p The period from 1917 lo 1922, when the abstract painters and their patrons (Trotsky is mentioned among the latter) were fighting against realism, is referred to as the "golden age" of Russian art. The magazine sheds tears over the fate of the artists of the socialist realist school branding thorn as “conservatives”.

p Reading this magazine one gets the impression that nothing is dearer to the American bourgeoisie than the inleresls of art inspired by "heroic communism”.

230

p The “nichevoki” for whom an ordinary donkey’s tail became the instrument and symbol of "creative discovery" arc acclaimed as heroes half a century later. It is made lo appear as though all cultural development originates in the West whore a single style, a single classless form of art is being created. This is why it is being claimed today that the "old story” of the struggle between bourgeois and proletarian culture is out of date. The new formula is that bourgeois culture contradicts socialist culture only lo the extent that it is isolated from it. This idea has recently been developed wilh special zeal by the English specialist on fine arts, Herbert Read, who says: "Art is one. It always was one in all its cssenlial characteristics.”  [230•1  According to him the unity of world art is determined by the widespread development of technology, means of communication and the press owing to which world art absorbs the features of all races and conditions. "One world, one art: the alternative is a reversal of the present course of history,” he concludes.  [230•2 

p Bourgeois ideologists do not deny that modernism springs from a pessimistic philosophy of life, but they object to it being interpreted as the decline of art brought about by the disintegration of capitalist society. Munro, for instance, believes that pessimism is a psychological rather than a social phenomenon. "Pessimism,” he says, "as a ’tragic sense of life’ is to some extent a perennial protest against the inevitable disappointments and frustrations of life in animal bodies on this planet, wherein man’s wishes and ideals reach far ahead of his potential attainment under any social order.”  [230•3 

Why and in what sense do Ihey "reach far ahead"? Because, according to Munro, man and society are incompatible: one being biological and the other social. The former, man, is more mobile and flexible and therefore always in conflict with the social system whatever it may be. Such an argument is patently speculative and arbitrary. It shows nothing but the author’s desire to make his case sound convincing.

231

In Search of "Rational Cores"

p The mask of learning like the masks of innovation, avantgardism, romanticism and revolutionary fervour, are all devices used by the modernists to exploit people’s credulity. Sometimes they succeed in finding people naive enough to believe (hem. There must be something lo modernism, these people imagine, otherwise so much would not be written about it. Time and again they begin searching in it for thai “something”, for the "rational core”, the "elementary particles" of the aesthetic problems of our time, etc. They criticise the “dogmatism” and "vulgar sociology" of those who seek lo "explain everything in terms of social conditions”. They themselves prefer to stress the importance of non-social factors, such as ’Technical absolutism”, “ alienation”, etc.

p Modernism destroys the norms of arlistic language and de-humanises art, but it is precisely these distorlions and misinlerpretations Ihal are seen by some as an expression of Ihe Irue freedom of Hie arlist and proof of his crealive independence. In fact this “independence” is nothing but unrestrained subjective arbitrariness even Ihough some regard the opposition of one’s “ego” lo objeclive realily as a romantic mutiny, as a protest and ’revolutionary selfassertion" of the individual.

p In recent years Franz Kafka’s work has been interpreted in this light.

p According to Kafka’s followers, vulgar sociology sees in his works only the author’s deliberate isolation. Sociologists concentrate exclusively on external causes and consequently regard works of art as Ihe automatic product of social influences. But Kafka’s world is not merely the expression of a given environment at a certain point in time, because it expresses the “alienation” between the individual and society, symptomatic of the industrial era as a whole.

p Vulgar sociology, especially in ils “classical” sense, never claimed that arl was the product of social forces, bul attempted to prove thai arlistic style was directly determined by Ihe mode of production. This is the principal reason why vulgar sociologists supported the idea of a "single style”. It was they who called modernism "Iwentielh century realism”, seeing it as "Ihe style best suited to the highly 232 developed mechanisation, industrialism and urbanism of Western society".  [232•1  Thus vulgar sociologists ascribed certain positive features to modernism.

p Unfortunately certain modern critics of vulgar sociology propound views which are very similar to those which they criticise, inasmuch as they too see a "universal human" element in modernism. Gachcv, for example, maintains that modernist literature is not negative escapism from objective reality but a unique positive expression of that reality, lie thinks that the inarticulate primitivism typical of modern ism is more expressive than the “cultured” form and content of realism. He sees modernist "sensuality in revolt" as a tremendously powerful aesthetic force. For him "stream of consciousness" literature is a “struggle” against capitalist “alienation”, etc. In modernist art man is generally depicted as a psychically incoherent being split into separate independent “egos”. But it is precisely this spiritual disintegration which (lachcv regards, albeit with reservations, as a true reflection of reality. "This break-down of man in the literary image,” he says, "has an objective basis since it reflects the actual relations between man and capitalist society, for example, the consistent division between physical and mental labour.”  [232•2  Gachcv is not in the least embarrassed by the fact that the consistent division between physical and mental labour began in slave-owning society, while artistic thought of the Ancients was “normal”, i.e., synthetic.

p This argument is developed in greater detail in Yuri Borev’s Introduction to Aesthetics. According to the author modernism is the product of the crisis of realism, resulting from its social invalidity. He writes: "The fact thai the aesthetic ideals advanced by realist art were not translated into reality has given birth to the modernist type of artistic thought which rejects traditional thought.”  [232•3  Realism, in Borev’s opinion, is both ineffective and useless. And that is why it must be superseded by modernism. " Modernism,” he says, "is a unique attempt to escape from lethargic art to direct action art.”  [232•4 

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p There is nothing in this argument which could not be found in any modernist textbook on aesthetics. We could overlook Borev’s credulity, but not his attempt to pass off bourgeois conceptions as the latest Marxist view on aesthetics. It is difficult lo understand why Borev, whilst emphasising the inferiority of realism, tries lo "save it" in I lie same breath. He does this in a very strange way, by declaring that realism remains viable because it absorbs the achievements of modernism. "Realism,” Borev says, ’ turned out lo be strong and viable. It managed to absorb the best achievements of modernism, without losing its strong points, namely, completeness and diversity of thought. By digesting these limited discoveries, realism succeeded in adding new depth to its intellectual, psychological and emotional content and in developing new forms (Brecht, Gorky, Eluard, Mayakovsky).”  [233•1  In his evaluation of modernism Borev omits all social and class criteria and this explains the awful muddle in his book. To give a last example of his views, here is one more quotation: "... it is assumed that everything can be explained in terms of the social and class elements of this literary trend (as though because of its complex and contradictory nature modernism does not include the most divergent sociopolitical trends, from anti-fascism to pro fascism, from Catholicism to atheism, from abstract humanitarian and abstract democratic thinking to concrete bourgeois and openly reactionary ideas).” It appears that modernism is linked neither with capitalist economy nor bourgeois ideology, and Borev is left with no alternative but to see it as a school existing outside class and ideology.

p Oilier authors declare that the positive aspects of modernism are to be found in form and that many modernist “ discoveries” are of importance for the development of modern art. They then proceed to describe modernist techniques: "automatic writing”, poems which sound like baby prattle, coded symbolism.

p Strange “discoveries”! Obviously, it is impossible to produce any real proof. Naturally, nothing valuable, truly poetic can be found when figurative thinking is rejected! The history of modernism is characterised l>v a consistently 234 progressive disintegration of the image: its structure becomes more and more abstract and insipid, it is broken up into its components, being given the form of conditional symbols, and valued only for its ability to appeal to the imagination with some new gimmick. In its attempt to justify the artist’s right to deform the image (distort would be the more suitable word), modern bourgeois aesthetics speaks of the need lo create a new mythology.

p This "neo mythology" is not a religious form of thinking but a poetic convention for the aesthetic interpretation of history and modern social conflicts. Incidentally, modern ism does preserve a connection v, ith religious and mystical thought. The surrealists, for example, do not conceal the fact that their “mylhs”’ are rooted in mysticism. Many of them consider Ilieronymus Bosch to be their spiritual father.

p Hieronymus Bosch, the ITemmish sixteenth century painter who combined a lively imagination with the gift of observation and subtle psychologism. was one of the first to give up purely religious painting and begin to look for subjects in the world around him; naturally, lie is no representative of decadence but one of world culture. However, the medieval, mystical, uniquely symbolic in the art of this painter greatly impresses the decadents and this striving towards mysticism is typical of modernist trends.

p Unfortunately, some of our critics seem to believe in modernist mythology and see in it a “discovery” characteristic of the twentieth century. "Modernist art,” Shragin wrote, "is the only possible method for the reflection and aesthetic perception of our epoch within the framesvork of bourgeois society and consciousness.”  [234•1  Because, he continues, in the imperialist epoch the inner world of the artist tends to become his on/// and obsolnLe reality. The inner world, i.e., something disassociated from real life, wounded personal feeling, is being turned into something of general and universal validity. Shragin imagines that by advancing this thesis he is rejecting vulgar sociology, whereas in fact he is reasoning along the very same lines.

235

p We could make allowances for Shragin’s simple-minded credulity (he quotes the theoreticians of modernism A. Leepa, .1. Sweeney, not the artists, and agrees with them unreservedly). However, it is difficult to understand how a person professing to think in terms of his age can see modernism as its only possible “reflection”, and fail to notice the phenomenon of socialist realism, which is to be found in bourgeois society but is not the product of hour geois consciousness. How could the realism of Remarque. Boll and Aldington, developing within the framework of bourgeois society, escape his notice?

p Naturally, the "word system”, the basic principles of which Shragin describes, has more to it than the statement that modernism is not only an "historical fact" but also "an essential historical product”. (The vulgarisation contained in this statement is so obvious that it would be a waste of lime to refute it.) The system is based on a series of other propositions and concepts which have been the subject of penetrating criticism in the Soviet Union (Yevgeniya Knipovich, Dmitry Zatonsky, Boris Suchkov), the G.D.R. (Alfred Kurclla), Hungary (Stefan Matrai), and Poland (Zolkiewski). But this polemic cannot be considered exhausted. More and more articles are being written lo prove that modernism reflects the changing world, is a new understanding of art, a search for flic “Zeitgeisl” (spiril of the time), and the striving for "universal humanism”, the sources of which spring from the French Revolution of 1789 and German classical philosophy (Fichte).

p Modern art, these people say, is an expression of nonconformity, of the individual’s independence, an assertion of the right to create reality instead of imitating it. Under Ihese conditions, they say, Ihere is no longer any need for the criterion of beauly in relalion lo external reality. Moreover, doubt is thrown upon reality itself. II is defined as a function of the historical development of man, science, technology, social relationships, in brief, as a function of human activily.

p The exposition of these ideas is generally accompanied by a comparison between pasl and present.

Is this contrasting of today with yesterday really justified? This question is not easily answered. However, one thing can be said with certainly: not everything in the pasl 236 deserves censure and not everything modern deserves praise. For example, certain authors who formerly recognised objective reality as existing independently of people, now explain it as a product oi’ human activity; formerly they spoke of bourgeois and socialist humanism, now they declare themselves champions of "universal humanism”; formerly they recognised the existence of two cultures in the culture of every’nation, now they see in modernism a classless movement, an expression of the universal human "spirit which has acquired new qualities in the age of cybernetics, atomic physics and machines”. Such evolution can be seen in the works of some critics and aeslhelicians. It is difficult to find any "rational cores" in their “new” concepts. All these views speak of a desire to com promise with modernism, and portray it as a movement that is "ahead of its time”. In order to reveal the ambiguity and fallacy of this compromise let us analyse the "word systems" that have recently become most popidar.

Art and ... a Snail’s Shell

p Is the comparison of art with a snail’s shell dogmatism or idle fantasy?

p The Austrian writer, Ernst Fischer, says, for example, that "dogmatic Marxists" regard art and literature .. . as a kind of snail’s shell, as the product of given historical and social conditions, and nothing else. "Each social class or social system,” he writes, describing the views of those whom he has christened “dogmatists”, "carries its own snail’s shell on its back, the product of precisely this and of no other snail.”  [236•1 

p “Overcoming" the narrow-mindedness of vulgar sociology, Fischer poses the question: is art historically determined by concrete conditions, is it their superstructure, or is it subject to the operation of “wider” aesthetic and psychological laws expressing man’s "inner world"? The problem of the ideological superstructure framed in such a way changes into a cause which gives rise to consequences unsuspected by Mr. Fischer.

237

p The chapter from Fischer’s book published in Marxism Today provoked widespread discussion, and views both “for” and “against” were expressed. Honor Arundel, for example, thinks that Fischer’s ideas represent a new "relaxed altitude to artists and the arts achieved since the death of Stalin".  [237•1  Miss Arundel interprets it in the spirit of ideological neutralism. In art there should be no class differences, since a class approach may give rise to "such labels as ‘bourgeois’ or ‘proletarian’ which carry with them moral overtones of praise or disgust. ‘Bourgeois’ art is a ’Had Thing’, ‘Proletarian’ art is a ’Good Thing’.”  [237•2 

p But most of the participants in the discussion, Herbert Smith, David Craig, Peter Pink, Julian Hart and others, criticise Fischer’s point of view and see it as an attempt to "drape Marxism with scholastics and a supra-liberal bouquet”.

p Marx, Eiigels and Lenin saw art as a product of the material living conditions of people. "The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.”  [237•3  Considering all forms of consciousness as a product of material conditions, Marxism draws the only possible conclusion: that art, too, is a superstructure on the economic basis of society.

p When Stalin published his Marxism and Problems of Linguistics the question of whether art is part of the ideological superstructure or transcends it became the subject of widespread discussions. The discussion was hampered by the tenet contained in Stalin’s book, saying that the superstructure must perish together with the basis on which it evolved, while the superstructure refuses to comply with this theory.

p Art, science, morals, religion and other forms of social consciousness develop as a continuum even when a revolution destroys the basis. But they still maintain their superstruclural character. During the discussion Soviet theoreticians proved this beyond doubt.

238

p Fischer completely ignores these conclusions. The for inula "art is superstructure" brings only one tiling to his mind: if art is a superstructure, it is a shell which must grow and perish together with the body of the snail. Having formed this opinion of the superstructure, Fischer immediately rebels against it. He says: "Such statements as ’expressionism reilects the ideological superstructure of the decadent bourgeoisie’ or ’abstract painting represents the ideological superstructure of imperialism’ are all too convenient, dogmatic blue prints. If literature and art were nothing more than the ideological superstructure of deiinite economic social relations, then works of art would die out along with their social preconditions.”  [238•1 

p This is a strange argument. Fischer “refutes” Stalin’s dogmatism by resorting to dogmatism of his own. Having taken up this paradoxical position Fischer naturally arrives at unexpected and curious conclusions: the works of mediocre artists, who are following the ruling ideas of their time are part of the superstructure since they are dead and forgotten. But significant works of art are not part of the superstructure since they live on and are not forgotten. Significant works of art, he says, transcend the limits of the given social conditions and ideological superstructure and anticipate the future.

p The superstructure is the ideological relations of a given social epoch. Specific interpretations of these relations were given, for example, by Faddei Bulgarin and Alexander Pushkin. The works of the former are dead and forgot ten, those of the latter anticipated the future. Why?

p None can disagree with Fischer’s statement that the mediocre dies with the social relations that have given birth to it, and sometimes even sooner. Boring novels die early. This happens irrespective of whether they portray ruling ideas or try to anticipate the future. On the other hand, the historical conditions that gave mankind Pushkin’s poetry have long since disappeared but his poetry continues to delight the reader.

p Permanently present in art is Truth, containing a particle of the absolute knowledge which mankind is striving to grasp. We mean genuine unadulterated truth and not a 239 vapid semblance, an uninspired depiction of "any experience”. Truth is brought to life by the artist’s skill in unfolding the main trends, the leading tendencies of life, that which is typical, unrepeatable and yet essential. Therein lies the strength of "down to earth" artistic thinking. Art, which absorbs the “fruits” of human activity must of necessity be humanitarian. This is proved by the whole history of art. Humanitarian ideals always embracetwo aspects: form as a manifestation of true beauty, and content, unfolding the ideals of classes and society. Humanitarian ideals are the “fruits” of the positive experience accumulated by mankind. The progressive classes of every epoch are interested in an objective knowledge of the trends in life, for the course of history is on their side. It is therefore no accident that the works of art which have retained their value up to the present day are those connected with the struggle of progressive social forces. It is well known that the works of Aeschylus were linked with the Athenian demos, those of Rabelais with the people of early bourgeois society, of Pushkin with the Decembrists, of Rcpiii and Tolstoi with the peasant movement of postreform Russia, of Maxim Gorky with the revolutionary proletariat.

p Although all these artists arc clearly connected with the "historical moment”, their art extends far beyond that moment.

p But Fischer’s interpretation of the superstructure makes it possible both to deny historical continuity in the development of art, and to embrace the concept of "boundless realism”. These two concepts would appear to contradict each other, but Fischer somehow manages to combine them.

p How does he manage to do this? According to Fischer (see his book Von dcr Notwendigkeit der Kunst) art is imagination, and its main function is a magical one. Man “disenchants” the world around him, reshapes nature unconsciously (artistically)—this function of art is an expression of beauty, transcending historical and social condi lions. Social conditions, on the other hand, are transient, being linked with the economic basis and narrow mercenary interests. This is the basis of the conllict between the aesthetic and the social. Hans Koch, a philosopher from 240 the (ierniim Democratic Rej)iiblic, commented on Ibis concept as follows: "Fischer’s constant contrasting of aes Ihelic and social principles . .. has serious consequences for his whole concept. A single materialistic theory of art as a special form of social consciousness becomes impossible from Ibis approach.”  [240•1 

p In addition to this juxtaposing of the aesthetic to the social, Fischer also sets oil’ universal human principles against class principles. According to Fischer, man wilh all his contradictions loves and sutlers, breathes and dies like any other man and thus overcomes his "class destiny”. His emotional life extends beyond the framework of the concrete social system since "human conflicts, problems, disasters, are a feature of all social systems".  [240•2 

p Fischer builds his conception, which ascribes everything “passing” to the superstructure, and excludes from it everything “eternal” by making a sharp, but false distinction between the aesthetic (eternal) and the social ( passing), and between universal human (eternal) and class principles (passing). Social and class principles are thus excluded from aesthetics. This makes him sceptical of socialist realism and indulgent towards all the faults of modernism.

p The artist and the "social commands"—this is the problem for which Fischer shows a deep concern. He considers it necessary to stress that the artist’s work can be only a "free decision”, and not a response to a given "resolu tion, not the result of some guidance.”  [240•3  "If the socialist artist were to become nothing more than the mouthpiece of a Central Committee, merely a highly skilled member of an agitation and propaganda department, then the result would be not merely that he would be degraded as an artist, but also that he would be ineffective as an agitator and propagandist. Were socialist art compelled to adapt itself to the exigencies of the current tactical situation, then the life would go out of it.”  [240•4 

241

This is a strange conclusion. But there is more to it than just strangeness. "To put it bluntly,” Koch says, "the people to whom Fischer ascribes such ‘views’, even in caricature-, arc made to look a bunch of fools quite alien to the arts. We do not know what it was that made Ernst Fischer criticise them so caustically and angrily. Nor can we understand how a person with as much political experience as Fischer could aim at a target his enemies are trying to strike even though this attack was only ten lines long. This is a personal matter concerning Ernst Fischer alone and we will not presume to judge him.”  [241•1  Of course, there is no point in discussing the personal aspect. But as for his attempts to depict modernism as an art that anticipates the future, we feel obliged to say the following: by destroying the continuity in the development of world culture, modernism deprives itself of the possibility of becoming a starting point for a progressive movement.

The Alienation Problem and Franz Kafka

p “The individual and society confronted one another as alien forces,"  [241•2  Fischer says.

p In his opinion this confrontation is the mystery of creation. The arlist expresses his refusal to obey, to belong to capitalism, sometimes by romantic mutiny and somelimes by his crilical frame of mind.

p British Marxists justly note thai Fischer regards art as a form for the expression of the elernal human essence. "Here,” David Craig says, "is Ihe arid cipher of Ihe humanisls, a weak and featureless theory which ignores changing society and specific conditions—little different from that very popular fallacy which has it that ’human nature never changes’.”  [241•3 

p Fischer’s conception is the result of an interprelation of art by contrasts: he opposes the class approach to the universally human approach, art to society, the freedom of the arlist to guidance by the parly. Peler Pink says with 242 sarcasm that according to Fischer’s ideas the artist with his sensibility, his intense reaction to new situations and realities, his greater perceptions and fantasy is contrasted to "the Party Secretary, who lives in a world of cadre reports, statistics, leading articles and resolutions"’.  [242•1 

p According to Fischer the artist’s exclusive individuality is the driving force behind his eternal and unequal struggle against society.

p The theory of the romantic mutiny of the individual against society is not new. It takes its beginning from the romanticists, and the literature of the "superfluous man”. In one form or another this theory can be found in the works of modern bourgeois aesthclicians—Thomas Munro, Herbert Read, Andrew Ritchie and others. But whereas in the nineteenth century it was mainly anti-bourgeois, in the twentieth it lays claim to universal significance.

p Its authors contend that every society is in a slate of integrity, while the individual is in a stale of alienation. This alienation is held to be due to the fact thai "man’s life is governed by laws outside his will".  [242•2  For this reason objective reality always exerts coercion on the individual and causes suffering. This makes every writer who raises the subject of alienation a realist and mutinous revolutionary, such as Franz Kafka, for example. This gives him something to say to those people of the modern world who are building socialism and communism.

p There is no need to describe all the variations of this modern conception. But we certainly must refute its claim to universality. The German critic Siegfried Dallmann points out correctly that there is alienation between individuals, between the individual and society, between art and the people, etc. But this alienation is the specific disease of imperialism.  [242•3  The existentialists, on the other hand, who see man as a lonely being, abandoned and helpless, consider alienation, i.e., the conflict between man and so ciety to be an absolute, eternal principle of existence.

p World literature has not ignored the “fatal” conflict, or to use modern language, the alienation between the artist 243 and bourgeois society. II has been the subject of such novels as L’Ocuvrc by Zola, The Genius by Dreiser, Of Human liondaye by Somerset Maugham, Lust for Life by Irving Slone, Doklor l*amlus by Thomas Mann, Crusader’s Tomb by Cronin, elc. The history of Claude Lantier and his friends, the characters of Emile Zola’s novel, begins with the description of their "crazy striving to be nothing but artists”. They thought that problems of beauty and form existed independently of social contradictions. This explains their conviction that "the day will come when an originally drawn carrot will revolutionise painting".  [243•1  But this day turned out to be their downfall. Some of them committed suicide, others stopped half-way "tired and anxious”, falling victim to unscrupulous dealers. All this happened because their “mutiny” was based on the same morals against which they rebelled. It was a mutiny of champions of individualism against successful egoists.

p Eugene Witla’s (The Genius by Dreiser) “mutiny” had even less chance of success. He tried to "make his way in life" with true American energy. From a pragmatic point of view this meant that he had to "keep moving”, "be enterprising”, "be a success”. But neither hard work nor his daring and interesting pictures won him material independence. Eugene is a born individualist. His unwavering purpose made him "lake the last step" and he perished, broken by the bourgeois society against which he had “revolted” and “mutinied”.

p Correcting Fischer who is also a champion of the " eternal romantic mutiny" conception, David Craig remarks: "Fischer docs not seem to leave himself any grounds for distinguishing between incoherent revolt and purposeful, clear-eyed revolt.”  [243•2 

p The “mutiny” often takes the form of an escape of the artist from reality, a “self-isolation” in an ivory tower, a submersion in “pure” thought, elc. All these forms somelimes make the artist appear proudly independent and often mislead credulous people. To them thoughts “ opposing” reality (for example, expressionist and surrealist nightmares) seem like ideas of protest and mutiny. Some 244 arc even inclined lo see in this “mutiny”’ a stimulus which makes the artist transcend the limits of bourgeois ideology. They even see in modernist thought something that makes it rank with Marxism. Speaking of the boundary between dialectic and metaphysical materialism, Karl Marx wrote in the eleventh thesis on Fcuerbaeh: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is lo cliange it.”  [244•1  Modernism, some authors believe, substitutes action for meditation. But this action. aimed at changing the world looks like a deformed projection of the world on a canvas, in other words, it is a purely theoretical construction. Some interpreters of mod ernism pay no heed to Karl Marx’s second thesis: "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question.”  [244•2 

p We have already mentioned Borev’s view that Gorky. Mayakovsky and Brecht first digested the "achievements of modernism" and only after that “renewed” realism. Some also hold the opinion that Eluard and Aragon saw in surrealist madness a protest theme, which prepared their transition to progressive realist art, etc.

p But it would be more correct to presume that " surrealism—an offshoot of gloom and fury"—fettered the will and choked protest. In his essay on Eluard, Aragon emphasises that a talented poet could become a true poet of the people only by rejecting surrealism. Eluard’s life was a dramatic struggle with himself. "lie died,” writes Aragon, "having lived his life not the way he wanted to. As he himself appraised il, his life was unsuccessful. that is he had lost too much time at the crossroads. rambling and looking for a path in common with the whole world.”

p The reason for the alienation between the individual and bourgeois society should be sought in private prop erty. This explains also why no novel of any importance about human fate in a society of property-owners and money-grubbers can be written without showing the contradictions, conflict and enmity between the individual and 245 society. Franz Kafka is by no means the only author who touched upon this subject. It is therefore wrong to hail him as a writer who discovered a new subject. The critical realism of the nineteenth century initially connected this subject with the problem of the "superfluous man”. In the twentieth century it became the subject of the "lost gen eration”. the "broken generation”. It is "in the air" because the contradictions of capitalism have become exacerbated to the extreme.

p In his book I*’rom Grillparzcr to Kafka Fischer notes that Kafka lived alone, in "no-man‘s-land”. Prague was to him a "town of alienation”,  [245•1  Austria a "land of alienation”, where the ruling bureaucracy transformed everything into ils opposite: "activity into suffering, power into impotence, conception into emasculation".  [245•2  The whole world, the whole history of mankind seemed to Kafka "a history of alienation”. The only reason for this was his failure to understand history. lie saw in capitalism a system of causal interrelations, where everything was interdependent: from lop to bottom and bottom to top, where Ihc instability and corruption of social lies deprived man of his individuality, turning him into a cipher.

p Kafka criticises capitalism, hut his criticism is not convincing because he looks for its sources in the "anger of the soul”. Kafka saw not only capitalism but also the socialist revolution as universal violence. It is said that he was in sympathy with the Russian revolulion but did not consider it a turning-point in history because he was possessed by his idee fixe, the horrible "spectre of bureaucracy”. "Every revolution ends in bonapartism,” Kafka said. "The revolution disappears and all that remains is a new type of bureaucracy.”  [245•3 

p Kafka’s followers depict him as a prophet and a soothsayer. As a mailer of fact he was under the spell of mystical nihilism, which was extremely popular at that time in bourgeois intellectual circles.

p Kafka’s aesthetic ideas coincide in many respects with the programme of "metaphysical art”. Expressionism, which at thai time was coming into fashion, proclaimed 246 the right of the artist to reject nature, "the physics of everyday life”, the logic of the senses, "to change beast and man into freaks in defiance of all laws of anatomy”, in order to express "terrible fate”. Kafka approaches this idea very closely.

p Some students of Kafka’s works say that they are not so much distortions of objective reality as a specific system of symbolic references. (This view is being developed by the existentialists who claim thai works of art are coded writing. The code lo Ihem is a secret one does not always succeed in unravelling.) To understand these symbols a purely "human code” must be used, and they must be read in the same poetic code in which they were written. Each symbol is polysemantic, i.e., has as many meanings as there are possible interpretations.

p Kafka’s models arc not as polysemantic as some seem to think. Soviet readers know some of Kafka’s novels, stories and fragments: 7n the Penal Settlement, Metamorphosis, Before the Law, Passengers and others. They are characterised by an extreme degree of convention, illusionism and irrationality. Kafka sees life as a catastrophe in a tunnel, in a spot so dark that "one cannot even be sure that there is a beginning and an end”. Under these conditions man’s mind conjures up wild fancies and he believes that some of them are a true manifestation of life.

p For Kafka the irrational takes the place of a true understanding of objective reality. But his mind is split, for il is subject not only to the irrational but also to grim reality, which it perceives directly. Naturalist description which evokes nothing but disgust (the description of the execution in the penal settlement, the portrayal of Gregor Samsa who became an insect, etc.) are also part of his method.

p Franz Kafka sees the world of alienation but he makes no attempt to remedy it.

p In his story In the Penal Settlement he describes a traveller who witnesses the execution of a soldier. In spite of the obvious injustice of the sentence and the inhumanity of the punishment, the traveller thinks: "Resolute interference in other people’s business is always dangerous.” Franz Kafka considered the world about him, reality, as other people’s business.

247

p What has this policy of non interference and unlimited lolerance of social evil to do with the people who are building socialism?

p Yet some people reason as follows: the alienation of the individual from society cannot disappear immediately after the socialist revolution. It continues to persist in the period of communist construction (the personality cult, various distortions, entering into contradiction with socialist humanism, etc.). If this is so, Kafka’s ideas, they say, can become part of our experience.

p Can there be a conflict between the individual and society under socialism? Of course, there can. But this will happen only if the individual deslroys social ties and violates the norms and laws on which the unity of society is founded. We can therefore draw only one conclusion: it is not alienation but a friendly unity of individuals that impels the socialist community to further progress. Art becomes a means for cementing this unity, for uniting the people and therefore needs an atmosphere of genuine humanism to flourish.

p As we have already mentioned, Kafka’s philosophy has something in common with expressionism, surrealism, Freud ism, existentialism, etc. It is no wonder therefore that many proponents of contemporary modernist schools see in Kafka’s literary heritage all the principles which they call their own. But it would be wrong to identify Kafka’s works entirely with one of these schools. Being a modernist Kafka is not orthodox—his works transcend the limits of purely aesthetic searching and dogmas. Kafka showed an interest in the social problems of his time, in the fate of the little man. True this interest was always a morbid one, connected with his irrationalist idea of reality and tragic world-view.

p In the introduction to Kafka’s Castle, Thomas Mann wrote: "He was a dreamer, and his compositions are often dream-like in conception and form: they are as oppressive, illogical, and absurd as dreams, those strange shadow- pictures of actual life. But they are full of a reasoned morality, an ironic, satiric, desperately reasoned morality. . . .”  [247•1  No matter how much Thomas Mann was in 248 sympathy with Kafka, whom he considered a highly gifted writer, lie could not fail to see in Kafka’s work traits which were entirely unacceptable to Mann the realist.

An even greater distance lies between Kafka and those realists who are inspired by socialist ideals, the ideals of people transforming the world and assuming full responsibility for it to the peoples of our planet.

Is Realism Boundless?

p Some philosophical maxims (for example, that things exist irrespectively of our consciousness, that consciousness is a reflection of life, etc.) are so universal that they require no proof. They are indisputable so long as they serve as methodological truths and as initial principles. But let us imagine that in investigating some form of social consciousness the student confines himself only to repeating one of these maxims not attempting to apply the formula to the analysis of a real phenomenon. Then the following inferences might be drawn: realist art recognises the existence of things independent of our consciousness, or realist art is a reflection of life. Such declarations are unable to enrich our idea of art. What is more, they may even distort the understanding of art. We often encounter such definitions in modern bourgeois aesthetics. Here is an example. Rene Dumcsnil replies to the question: "What is realism?" as follows: "Realism is a philosophical doctrine which, in contrast to Berkeley’s philosophy, regards the external world as an objective reality. This word does not change its meaning when applied to aesthetics.”  [248•1  Those who assert that all art is realistic, because it is always rooted in reality which is independent of it, also define realism by means of a vast number of general categories.

p Many artists are able to say that they make it the aim of their lives to reflect the world existing outside of their consciousness. But if that is all they say how are we to distinguish them from "naive realists"? Or, for that matter, from the modernist, who says that the things existing 249 independently of his consciousness are not reflected objects, but the point of departure from which he leaves for a world in which pure words, lines, colours, volumes, sounds, etc., reign supreme.

p The realism of an artist who holds a position some where in between "naive realism"’ and modernism becomes boundless. This happens, I think, because he ignores not only the essence of artistic content but also the stability of realistic form, which depends on how adequately the given reflection shows reality.

p There are some who say that art resembles a game played according to definite rules made by people. Therefore there can be no fixed definition of realism since everybody has his own brand. But this view conflicts with the idea that realism is everybody’s art. This idea is said to reduce art to the ordinary consciousness, thereby debasing it. What sort of realism was it when people thought that the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around it?

p The conviction that truth can be learned only through Ihe senses forming a direct link with reality is not realism. It only confirms the view that the artistic image should not be based on people’s beliefs or opinions, even if they are in the majority, but on objective reality itself and its laws. This correlation of art with objective reality is negated by those who see objective reality merely as a point of departure enabling them to open the door to subjectivism. Correlating art with human aspirations and desires, which form a "second reality”, these authors endow it with a relativistic content, which changes depending on the individuality of the artist and the observer. In their opinion realism is exactly such an expression of individuality.

p The proponents of aesthetic subjectivism advance the following paradox: the artist docs not copy nature but subjugates it, protests against it. Why does he protest? Because, they say, nature stands above human consciousness since it exists independently of it. This is supposed to give the artist the right to see nature as an alien force. Cubism, for example, gives the artist the right to create a different reality within nature and outside of il, lo apply differenl creative; laws, a different standard of beauty, different norms, etc. Thus art is deprived of the mission of ilepiclin;/ 250 the objective world. II becomes a means of subjective self expression.

p We find something very similar in Fischer’s book. He says: "If we want realism in art to give an objective evaluation of reality, we must not attempt to reduce this many-faceted reality to an external world existing independently of our consciousness. Reality is the complex of interaction into which man experiencing and perceiving reality is drawn.”  [250•1 

p An attempt is being made to prove with the help of such paradoxes that the artist creates a different reality outside of nature, or that there is no reality outside the man perceiving it, etc. One occasionally encounters the banal view, that everybody is a realist in his own way. But realism is the reflection of life in the forms of life. Vulgarisers misinterpret this formula by saying that realism is what “ resembles” existing objects, and that which docs not resemble real objects is not realism. They say: Mayakovsky’s character Pobedonosikov does not remind us of real people; in real life there are no such people. Hence, satire, caricature and the grotesque "do not fit" into the formula "a reflection of life in the forms of life”. Their other arguments are equally “irrefutable”.

p Such arguments naturally cannot shake the principles of the reflection theory. The artistic image is not independent of the object, content and function of reflection. In addition to realistic images we find naturalistic, romantic, fantastic, illusory, impressionist images (under impressionism the image already begins to disintegrate), but realism alone creates images according to the law of necessity and probability. This is a specific feature of artistic realism. We cannot agree with Shragin who says that to demand that the specifics of art be expressed in the form of images is tantamount to transforming it into illnstrativeness.  [250•2  Of course, realism cannot be reduced to a set of formal precepts, but a refusal to recognise that it is linked with a definite form of reflection leads to the acceptance of the "boundless realism" conception.

p If any reflection of reality is considered to constitute 251 realism, realism becomes “boundless” and embraces everything from Kafka, Picasso and Robbe-Grillet to Dubuffet, who even thinks it correct to use “real” matting, “real” tar, etc., in his painting.

p The theoreticians of modernism are willing to interpret every formalislic “ism” in the "spirit of realism”. They say that surrealist nightmares are more real than reality itself, that iauvism and futurism are creating a "new reality”, and that dadaism expresses the true law of our time, namely, the law of general destruction, that abstractionism is an expression of the internal rhythm of our modern reality, etc. All these statements are completely arbitrary. They extend the concept of “realism” lo infinity. But it is exactly in this extenlion that realism loses its links with objective reality, while its followers adopt the currently widespread views of Ihe modernists that art is meaningless and aimless and therefore no more than a sophism.

p A few years ago there was a debate on realism in the Soviet Union. In the course of the discussion it was proved beyond doubt that the conception “ realism-antirealism”, on which the history of art is founded, is scholastic and contradicts history. But even now some authors hold that there are two types of realism in Soviet literature. One of them has been christened the “expanding” and the other the “limited” realism. Proponents of the "expanding realism" conception look for realism even in the art of a primitive man (cave drawings). Their opponents declare that realism began to take form and assumed its final shape in the Renaissance. The “ limited” view on realism has been acclaimed by followers of various formalislic trends. But, on the other hand, the "expanding realism" conception contains a kernel of the "boundless realism" idea. The proponents of the " expanding realism" conception consider that the term "twentieth century realism”, which, they say, is gaining a firm foothold in our literature on art, is used to describe a multitude of "phenomena which often differ widely from one another”. They believe that this designation of many different phenomena by a single term is due to the genetic links between twentieth century realism and a great many unrealistic I rends (expressionism and surrealism), and also because a great many artists are at present standing at the 252 crossroads and hesitating about which road to choose. Un fortunately, they do not explain how twentieth century realism is linked with expressionism and surrealism. We can only guess what they have in mind. Bertolt Brecht and Johannes Beclier, for example, were expressionists, Ara gon and Eluard- surrealists, etc. But does that justify the claim that twentieth century realism is genetically linked with modernism? It is well known that Mayakovsky was a futurist, and Bidstrup an abstractionist. But it would be ridiculous to assert on these grounds that socialist realism is genetically linked with futurism and abstractionism. Obviously the concept "twentieth cenlury realism" is made to embrace so wide and motley a content that realism begins to "burst its bounds”.

p The "boundless realism" conception arises on the basis of false epistemological conclusions.

p Fischer, for example, says: "The concept realism in art is unfortunately both loose and indefinite. In one case realism is described as a trend, as an evaluation of objective reality, in another as a style and a method. The bound aries between these two definitions often lend to be blurred out.”  [252•1  This criticism is just in some respects. The participants in the debate on realism can justly be reproached for a lack of lexical precision. But even if the boundary between the concepts “trend”, “evaluation”, “style”, and “method” is somewhat blurred out and this tends to extend the scope of realism, the dividing line bclwecn realism and modernism is still clearly visible. Yet some authors refuse lo see it.

p They claim that the world of Kafka’s images is created out of material drawn from the real world. This is true, of course. But they draw a false conclusion from this correct premise, they declare that Kafka is a realist. Realism can be interpreted in this sense only if the question of forms of reflection is ignored, and with it the assumption that form should correspond to objective reality. Objective reality is unambiguous. It is the same for all artists. The point is that some artists give a true reflection of it. and others a distorted one. In the first case the artist looks for the scale for the reflection of the objective world in 253 that world, in the second—he looks for il within himself. One bases his activity on objective knowledge, whilst the oilier lives in a world of illusions. One searches for Untruth, whilst the other becomes a victim of delusions. One can be called a realist, whilst the other is a subjeetivist. Both create their world out of material drawn from the real world, yet there is a deep gulf between them. It is precisely this deep gulf that goes unnoticed by those who in their definition of realism accentuate only the point of departure (objective reality) and ignore the final result, the product of that reflection (the writer’s creative method, his world view, the artistic form of his work).

The crucial point about artistic consciousness is not that it proceeds to a greater or lesser extent from objective reality; it is the orientation it gives lo the people, what it teaches them, whether it can become a manual for action, for the transformalion of the world, whether il unites Ihe will and feelings of people or sows disunity and enmitv.

On the De-heroisation of Literature

p Consequently, when the limits of realism are exlended excessively, Ihe exacl meaning of Ihe term tends to be blurred out. This is also what Fischer says in his Zeitgeist und Literatur. "The concept socialist realism is justified. Bui il is incorrectly applied both lo academic historical paintings and lo genre paintings, to propaganda art and lo idealising novels and plays. Besides, in discussions il is often difficult to understand what is being talked about— Ihe author’s views or Ihe arlislic means of expression, Ihe subject or criteria of form, politics or arl.”  [253•1  While Fischer is righl in poinling out thai there is a certain confusion of meaning, he himself adds to it by objecting to socialist realism’s orientation on the future, i.e., against the image of a positive hero.

p According to Fischer, socialisl realist art pictures the future as though it already exisled "wrapped in brighl celophane like a X’mas present".  [253•2  As regards Ihe concept 254 of the positive hero, Fischer puts it in inverted commas. "The ’positive hero’.” lie says, "embodies his own negation, disappointment, pain, a. conflict with passion, consciousness and the sense oi’ ethics, the problem of the limits of achievement, the question ol the limits set to human perfection; if he were only ‘positive’, if internal contradictions were strange to him, he would perhaps appeal to children, but lo grown-ups he must appear comical and disgusting.”  [254•1 

p During the years of the Stalin cull some writers painted images of heroes so ideal that they towered above reality. There is little truth in such a hero, but plenty of false pathos, rhetoric and affectation. They ascribed lo him trails which were "not of this world" and qualities of a saviour and demiurge, whose one word moved mountains, changed the course of rivers and turned deserls inlo flowering orchards; he emanated a light thai rejuvenated the world and the people inhabiting it. Creating such counterfeit images these writers became traitors to realism, lo the basic principle of Marxist Leninist aesthetics.

p Later another extreme view became popular: the deep resentment some artists fell against such counterfeit heroes resulted in their efforts lo do away with heroes altogether, lo de-heroise art.

p This atlempt to make man "come down lo earlh" often resulted in his portrayal as a primitive, coarse elemental creature, "resembling nature itself”.

p The pronounced “non-heroes” evoked unanimous censure in the Soviet Union. We do occasionally meet people, who have a lot of rubbish inside and admit it. But this does not mean thai they should be hailed as a counterpart to "enthusiastic yes men”. Life brings many real heroes to the fore: those who defended the Brest fortress and preferred death to surrender; those who harnessed the enormous energy of mailer to make it serve mankind and sacrificed their lives for this noble cause; those Avho blazed new trails inlo space; those who make the Antarctic habitable; those who show the future in the present.

p Strange as il may seem, il is often necessary lo defend real heroes, some of whom are still alive, against the allempl lo de-heroise them.

255

p Thus, there are Iwo tendencies: one that countcrposes Ihe ideal to the real, the oilier that denies the ideal. The two trends appear to contradict each other but actually arrive at Ihe same result—a distortion of truth.

p Some theoreticians consider Alexander Solzhenilsyn’s works an important contribution to art because, they say, Solzhenitsyn has destroyed the morbid fetishes of the past. Here is a writer, they exclaim, who creates genuine heroes, while all ideals are no more than shadows, phantoms, illusions. But Solzhenilsyn’s character Malryona (Matryona’a Ihjuscliold) is an obvious pseudo-ideal.

p Malryona devoted herself lo the service of others giving away her possessions—and never asking for anything in relurn. She was a truly righteous person, one of those who form Ihe backbone of our villages and towns, and of our whole earth, in fact. (I am quoting Solzhenitsyn almosl verbally.) Bui those "righteous people”, the preachers of Christian obedience and open fanaticism, in fad, help all Ihe dark forces we inherited from the old world.

p Socialist realism depicts people who embody and uphold genuinely noble ideals in contrast to uninspired, prosaic or pseudo-idealistic characters.

p Aren’t we slowly but surely arriving at the conclusion thai there can be no art wilhoul idealisalion?

p Rodin once said: the sense and joy of my life is to find the best in man. This loo is a sermon of idealisation. And yet who will deny thai Rodin was a greal arlist? Idealisation is a medium of art because it satisfies man’s craving for beaut}’, expresses his ideas and aspirations by reflecting life. A scientific formula is neutral as regards man’s craving for bcauly, images are not. Science shows how things are and should be by comparing and contrasting them. Arl painls the image of man as he is, and at the same time as he could and should be.

p Prometheus, Faust and Gorky’s Danko are all ideal images, not only because they show man as he should be but also because every one of them characterises a definite historical stage in Ihe development of man’s creative possibililies. Promelheus lakes up the fight against “ necessity”, Faust sacrifices his life lo discover the measure of happiness; Danko wins Ihe fight against fate. All Ihese 256 images embody the idea of soeial man, showing Ihe atti tude he should adopt towards his fellow-men.

p Are such people necessary? Is an ideal hero necessary?

p The answer is obvious: a man is a real man only it lie lives for others. The ideal hero is real if human unity is real.

p It is senseless to eounlerpose the ideal to the real, but it is also very wrong to deny the existence of the ideal. The ideal and the real exist in their unity and opposition, (ioelhe’s Faust is ideal when he embraces "all the joy of mankind and all its grief”. Yet he is an egoist in matters of love.

p Alexander Dov/henko, the most “idealistic”’ Soviet film producer, also worked in this key proceeding from the dialectics of real life. His films and scripts: The Earth, Shchors, A Tale of Fiery Years and others are all a philosophical search for a person who does not "lower himself to nature" but "raises nature to his level”. It is from this position that Dovzhenko formulated his aesthetic credo: "Fear not exaggeration, fear lies.” To Dovzhenko lies were always a manifestation of egoism and lack of intelligence.

p Dovzhenko’s diaries contain the following entry:

p “A first lieutenant who had spent the whole war at the front returns from German}’. ’Tell me, what is the strongest conviction you have brought back from that horrible war’?’ I asked after a long conversation. ’The strongest?’ he thought for a while and then said: T have come to the conclusion that everything in life is much baser, much worse than what we read about in books, than we were and are being told.’"

p The lieutenant thought that in war everything was simple: "there’s a bang—your boots are pulled olf and you are buried in a hole—that’s all there is to it. No one thinks of anything,” etc., Dovzhenko replied: "You were spiritual!}’ and physically blind at war. You were a petty egoist and a coward. You were afraid to look human grief in the face. You passed it by without noticing it. That was because you are nothing but an empty shell.”

p The Living and the Dead is a film about the horrible first days of the war. Here too we see stern reality: here too everything is simple, there’s a bang—your boots arc pulled oil’ and you are buried in a hole (or are not buried 257 al all). Hut these actions are endowed with an elevated quality whenever Soviet soldiers understand that they share a common late with the people. Right up to their last tragic minutes Serpilin, Sintsov, the gun crew retreating from Brest, the remnants of the 17()th rifle division are never shown as standard-bearers of the world’s romantic spirit, but as ordinary people fulfilling a duty—yet, they are all ideal heroes. But some authors think that duly is not a relevant subject for art.

p In an article published in the Literalurnai/a Gazeta entitled "Flowering through . . . Impoverishment" A. Bocharov says that a description of the man of today, the builder of communism, as he should be, is always based on " previously formulated qualities”.

p He goes on to say that writers using such precepts are vulgarising art. Bocharov should know that every work of art is always based on "previously formulated qualities" which determine the author’s intention. The image of the hero exists in the ideal, i.e., in the writer’s mind, before it is materialised in the artistic medium—words, sculpture, melody, etc. The image, Balzac often repeated, is an idea that has become a literary image.

p What is Bocharov dissatisfied with? He resents the idea that authors look for a hero with an eye to the future, lie thinks that authors should not look for ideal heroes hut 1’or ordinary heroes in everyday life, where we see them in conflict with what is becoming obsolete, in development and daily work.

p Bocharov is not the only one who thinks that "man al work" of necessity becomes a hero and that we need no other heroes. Only one thing can be said in favour of this view: labour really does breed heroism, but this is not an automatic process. Every description of work is not necessarily a poetic description.

p Bocharov’s arguments are unconvincing because he mutinies against indisputable truths. Prometheus, Faust and Danko tower above those characters who do not rise above the level of ordinary consciousness.

p In the debate about the ideal hero it was noted that there was a dilference between the concepts "artistic idealisation" and "idealisation of the individual”. This is quite 258 true. We are against Ihe idealisation of individuals. Bui we cannot imagine art without idealisation.

p It is only logical that the ideal hero should have appeared in Soviet ethics and aesthetics. Our society is realising progressive ideals and reflects them in its moral code as the norm of heauly which everyone of us iniial strive l<> achieve. Interest in this problem therefore extends beyond the limits of art i>er sc and assumes a new social significance in every historical period.

But what about modernism? As far as modernism is concerned the problem of the positive hero really does not exist.

p Recently Fischer formulated his idea of the slate of affairs in Marxist-Leninist aesthetics as follows: "The time of the monologue in the communist world has ended. There 110 longer is a ‘monolith’ Marxist aesthetics, obligatory for all.”  [258•1  Fischer’s statement is just as categorical as it is wrong. There cannot be a monologue in science. However, since there is only one truth, true science is of necessity monolithic, i.e., it formulates objective truths, which are obligatory for all. But truth does no I come by itself. One has to look and fight for it. And the intensity and tactics of that fight differ. My criticism of some of our philosophers and art critics does not mean that there are "radical differences" between us. For example, I fully agree with Herman Nedoshivin who says that we must bring about "the utter defeat of revisionism and at the same time shatter a number of ’honest delusions’, which have become stuck in a number of hot but not too clear heads. . . .”  [258•2  This is very true. But at the same lime we cannot accept unreservedly the term "honest delusions" which make some people see realism as a vague and obscure conception. We also cannot agree with Ihe statement that twentieth century realism is genetic ally linked with modernism. It is wrong to see "aesthetic 259 principles" in modernist deformation, de heroisalion, de liumanisation, etc.

p We can sympathise with the desire of some authors to get rid of oiie-sidedness, dogmatism, etc., but the resultant “freedom” must not be replaced by an endless number of compromises, bringing Hie principle of freedom to naught.

p Lenin’s famous article "Heroes of ‘Reservation’ " ends with the words: "Without renouncing anything, without forgetting anything, without making any promises about selling aside differences, we are working together for the common cause.”  [259•1  "To cast the steel of the Marxist world outlook and of the superstructures corresponding to this world outlook"  [259•2 —such is this "common cause”. Lenin was decisively against an unscrupulous evaluation of the works of Lev Tolstoi by Bazarov, Potresov and others who were avoiding "the virulence of controversy" and were therefore inclined "to adorn the ‘slough’ with spurious flowers. ..” "This is the very kind of talk, the kind of tune, that suits the philistines, who turn their backs with supreme contempt on a controversy over principles that are defended consistently and in full."  [259•3 

p In the then prevailing situation Lenin worked out laclies which are 110 less important in our time, the lactic of struggling for the minds of vacillating people and against the ideas of bourgeois decadence. There can be no peaceful coexistence between bourgeois and communist ideology. That means that it is both necessary and possible to consolidate all the forces which do not wish to follow the path of aesthetic nihilism. In different countries this process proceeds in a different manner. But it unfolds everywhere. The transformation of the communist movement into the decisive force of world historical development cannot but strengthen the differentiation within the artisticworld, which must inevitably fall in with the views held by the world’s progressive forces.

p Soviet aesthetics have an important part to play in this process. This explains why the struggle against bourgeois modernism and its theories has recently become more intense.

260

p The twentieth century laces complex aesthetic problems. Enormous elTorls \íll be needed to solve every problem, especially so because the rate at which these problems are increasing is growing rapidly. However splendid this allout creative elforl is. it gives birth not only to truths but also to certain “dead”’ ideas. This dead-weight must be cast aside if progress is not to be impeded.

p One of these “still-born” illusions is the conviction that peaceful coexistence can be extended also lo the ideological field. This delusion has been refuted by life and even though nobody supports it openly and directly at present, it still persists and continues to lead a shadowy existence.

The ghost of Hamlet’s father urged him to pass from reflection to action; in like manner these shadows remind us of the need constantly "to cast the steel of the Marxist world outlook”.