create dangerously by Albert kamu an oriental wise man always used to ask the Divinity in his prayers to be so kind as to spare him from Living in an interesting era as we are not wise the Divinity has not spared us and we are living in an interesting era in any case our era forces us to take an interest in it the writers of today know this if they speak up they are criticized and attacked if they become modest and keep silent they are viciously blamed for their silence in the midst of such D the writer cannot hope to remain aloof in order to pursue the reflections and images that are dear to him until the present moment remaining aloof has always been possible in history when someone did not approve he could always keep silent or talk of something else today everything has changed and Even Silence has dangerous implications the moment that abstaining from choice is itself looked upon as a choice and punished or praised as such the artist is willy-nilly impressed into service impressed seems to me a more accurate term in this connection than committed instead of signing up indeed for voluntary service the artist does his compulsory service every artist today is embarked on the Contemporary slave galley he has to resign himself to this even if he considers that the galley reeks of its past that the slave drivers are really too numerous and in addition that the steering is badly handled we are on the high seas the artist like everyone else must Bend to his ore without dying if possible in other words go on living and creating to tell the truth it is not easy and I can understand why artists regret their former Comfort the change is somewhat cruel indeed history's Amphitheater has always contained the Martyr and the lion the former relied on Eternal consolations and the latter on Raw historical meat but until now the artist was on the sidelines he used to sing purposely for his own sake or at best to encourage the Martyr and make the lion forget his appetite but now the artist is in the amphitheater of necessity his voice is not quite the same it is not nearly so firm it is easy to sell all that art can lose from such a con constant obligation ease to begin with and that Divine Liberty so apparent in the work of mosart it is easier to understand why our works of art have a drawn set look and why they collapsed so suddenly it is obvious why we have more journalists than creative writers more Boy Scouts of painting than szenes and why sentimental Tales of or detective novels have taken the place of War and Peace or the Charter House of Parma of course one can always meet that state of things with a humanistic lamentation and become what stepan trofimovich and the possessed insists upon being a living reproach one can also have like him attacks of patriotic Melancholy but such Melancholy in no way changes reality it is better in my opinion to give the era its due since it demands this so vigorously and calmly admit that the period of the R Master of the artist with a chamelia in his button hole of the armchair genius is over to create today is to create dangerously any publication is an act and that act exposes one to the passions of an age That Forgives nothing hence the question is not to find out if this is or is not prejudicial to Art the question for all those who cannot live without art and what it signifies is merely to find out how among the police forces of so many ideologies how many churches what Solitude the strange Liberty of creation is possible it is not enough to say in this regard that art is threatened by the powers of the state if that were true the problem would be simple the artist fights or capitulates the the problem is more complex more serious too as soon as it becomes apparent that the battle is waged within the artist himself the hatred for art of which our society provides such fine examples is so effective today only because it is kept Alive by artists themselves the doubt felt by the artists who preceded us concerned their own Talent the doubt felt by artists of today concerns the necessity of their art hence their very existence rine in 19 57 would have would make excuses for writing berinice when he might have been fighting to defend the Edict of NES that questioning of art by the artists has many reasons and only the loftiest need to be considered among the best explanations is the feeling the contemporary artist has of lying or of indulging in useless words if he pays no attention to history's woes what characterizes our time indeed is the way the masses and their wretched condition have burst upon contemporary sensibilities we know now that they exist whereas we once had a tendency to forget them and if we are more aware it is not because our aristocracy artistic or otherwise has become better no have no fear it is because the masses have become stronger and keep people from Forgetting them there are still other reasons and some of them less noble for the surrender of the artist but whatever those reasons may be they all work toward the same end to discourage free creation by undermining its basic principle The Creator's faith in himself quote a man's obedience to his own genius Emerson said magnificently is Faith in its purest form and another American writer of the 19th century added so long as a man is faithful to himself everything is in his favor government Society the very sun moon and stars such amazing optimism seems dead today in most cases the artist is ashamed of himself and his privileges if he has any he must first of all answer the question he has put to himself is art a deceptive luxury one the first straightforward reply that can be made is this on occasion art may be a deceptive luxury on the poop deck of slave gys it is possible at any place and time as we know to sing of the constellations while the convicts bend over the ores and exhaust themselves in the hold it is always possible to record the social conversation that takes place on the benches of the amphitheater while the lion is crunching the victim and it is very hard to make any objections to the art that has known such success in the past but things have changed somewhat and a number of convicts and martyrs has increased amazingly over the surface of the globe in the face of so much suffering if art insists on being a luxury it will also be a lie of what could art speak indeed if it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants art will be a meaningless Recreation if it blindly rejects that Society if the artist makes up his mind to take refuge in his dream art will Express nothing but a negation in this way we shall have the production of entertainers or of formal garans and in both cases this leads to an art cut off from living reality for about a century we have been living in a society that is not even the Society of money gold can arouse carnal passions but that of the abstract symbols of money the Society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs when a ruling class measures its fortunes not by the acre of land or the Ingot of gold but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its Universe a society founded on signs is in its Essence an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial there is no reason for being surprised that such a society chose as its religion and moral code of formal principles and that it inscribes the words Liberty and equality on its prisons as well as on its temples of Finance however words cannot be prostituted with impunity the most misrepresented value today is certainly the value of Liberty good Minds I have always thought that there are two kinds of intelligence intelligent intelligence and stupid intelligence teach that it is but an obstacle on the path of true progress but such solemn stupidities were uttered because for a hundred years a society of merchants made an inclusive and unilateral use of Liberty looking upon it as a right rather than a duty and did not fear to use an ideal Liberty as often as it could to justify a very real oppression as a result is there anything surprising in the fact that such a society asked Art to be not an instrument of Liberation but an inconsequential exercise and a mere entertainment consequentially a fashionable society in which all troubles were money troubles and all worries were sentimental worries was satisfied for decades with its society novelists and with the most futle art in the world the one about which Oscar wild thinking of himself before he knew prison said that the greatest of all vices was superficiality in this way the manufacturers of art I did not say the artists of middle class Europe before and after 1900 accepted a responsibility because responsibility presupposed a painful break with with their society those who really broke with it are named rmod Nichi strinberg and we know the price that they paid from that period we get the theory of Art For Art's Sake which is merely a voicing of that irresponsibility art for Arts sake the entertainment of a solitary artist is indeed the artificial art of a factitious and self-absorbed Society The Logical result of such a theory is the art of little clicks or the purely formal art fed on a expectations and abstractions and ending in the destruction of all reality in this way a few Works charm a few individuals while many course inventions corrupt many others finally art takes shape outside of society and cuts itself off from its living Roots gradually the artist even if he is celebrated is alone or at least is known to his Nation only through the intermediary of the popular press or the radio which still provide a convenient and simplified idea of him the more art specializes in fact the more necessary popularization becomes in this way millions of people will have the feeling of knowing this or that great artist over our time because they have learned from the newspapers that he raises canaries or that he never stays married more than 6 months the greatest Renown today consists in being admired or hated without having been read any artist who goes in for being famous in our society must know that it is not he who will be famous but someone else under his name someone who will eventually Escape him and perhaps someday will kill the true artist in him consequentially there is nothing surprising in the fact that almost everything worthwhile created in amantle Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries and literature for instance was raised up against the Society of its time it may be said that until almost the time of the French Revolution current literature was in the main a literature of consent from the moment when middle class Society a result of that Revolution became stabilized a literature of Revolt developed instead official values were negated in France for example either by the bearers of revolutionary values from the romantics to rambod or by the maintainers of aristocratic values of whom vigy and balic are good examples in both cases the masses and the aristocracy the two sources of all civilization took their stand against the artificial Society of their time but this negation maintained so long that it is now rigid has become artificial too and leads to another sort of sterility the theme of the exceptional poet born into a mertile society vig's Chatterton is the finest example has hardened into a presumption that one can be a great artist only against the Society of one's time whatever it may be legitimate in in the beginning when asserting that a true artist could not compromise with the world of money the principle becomes false with the subsidiary belief that an artist could assert himself only by being against everything in general consequentially many of our artists long to be exceptional feel guilty if they are not and wish for simultaneous Applause and hisses naturally Society tired or indifferent at present applauds and hisses only at random consequentially the intellectual of today is always bracing himself stiffly to add to his height but as a result of rejecting everything even the tradition of his art the contemporary artist gets the illusion that he is creating his own Rule and eventually takes himself for God at the same time he thinks he can create his reality himself but cut off from his Society he will create nothing but formal or abstract Works thrilling as experiences but devoid of the fecundity we associate with truth art which is called upon to unite in short there will be as much difference between the Contemporary subtleties or abstractions and the work of a toll story or a molier as between an anticipatory draft on invisible wheat and the rich soil of the furrow itself