The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 4, 1925, Page 9

Saree en neem see: “NT AMMONART” is a scientific ex- pedition into hitherto unex- plored regions, _It attempts to. prove that all art, and especially literature, is propaganda. In Sinclair’s words, “. . . from the dawn of human his- tory, the path to honor and success in the arts has been thru the service and glorification of the ruling classes; entertaining them, making them pleasant to-themselves, and teaching their subjects and slaves to stand in awe of them.” For a believer in this materialistic conception of history the mere statement of the case in these terms enjoins belief. More narrowly stated the purpose of the book is; first; to show how ar- tists have made their living, from whom, and what they had to do for it, briefly. the economics of art; second- ly, to kill some_of the “art lies” now prevalent, such as art for art’s sake, art for the few only, art as unmoral, as, entertainment, as, non-propagan- Mist, and art as tradition, chained to _the methods and themes of the “mas- ters.” Sinclair more than proves his contentions, and covers the high peaks in the world’s literature, art, and music in the process. Curiously enuf, he does not touch upon any liv- ing artists, perhaps due to lack of space, perhaps because he believes with Shaw that concerning the living one should speak no evil. Yet there- in he w6uld not be himself. However. Trotsky (Literature and Revolu- tion”) has handled contemporary cur- rents in literature beautifully, and altho his writers are Russian, still their schools and theories exist every- where. Kliuev, Yessenin, Pilnyak, and Biely are simply the Andersons, Lowells, Barbusses, Conan Doyles of Western Europe and America. A clever device which Sinclair uses again and again is that of starting - with a quotation from one of his books, and shading off into quotations from. Juvenal, Balzac, Moliere, etc., - to show that “great” writers said just as “terrible” and as true things of the ruling class as he did. For the sake of those comrades who still be- lieve that literature is sacred and the one thing immune from materialistc dialectics, I may quote one or two bits from Sinclair. “The great poems, Shakespeare’s |- included, are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the com- mon people, the life-blood of democ- racy. The models of our literature, as we get it from other lands, ultra- marine, have had their birth in courts, and basked and grown in castle sun- shine; all smell of prince’s favors.” So thinks Sinclair, beg pardon, Whit- man, of writers and the ruling class. “And the artists producing art will not be, as now, merely a few people selected from a small section of the nation, members of the upper classes or their hangers-on, but will consist of all. those gifted members of the whole people who prove capable of, and are inclined towards artistic ac- tivity.” So thinks Upton Tolstoy of the art of the future. And when Sin- clair berates the world’s greatest painters, such as Raphael: “What is esthetics? The art of praising or be- littling works of art. What works of art must be praised? Those that glor- ify the upper classes. Therefore Raphael and Michaelangelo are the most famous artists, for they glorified the religious falsehoods of the upper classes. Shakespeare magnified kings, and Goethe magnified himself, the writer of the upper classes. But how about other works or art? There must not be others.” So does a writer of the working class regard artists. And Strindberg knew his fellow craftsmen. A few other of Sinclair's arguments might be quoted from Brandes, Shaw, Heine, Chatterton, Thompson, Nietz- sche, Spencer, Johnson, Ruskin. (See the section on The Poet in his “Cry for Justice.” One more quotation for those Com- munists who ave devout disciples of Marx and Lenin till it comes to art ‘and literature. For them I have a word. “In a society which maintains itself by the power of money, and where the mass of the workers lack —_——oooOeeEeEeEee—————e—OO ee — _—_—OOV3V3ana—_-"_ the necessities of life, there is no real liberty. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, my writer friend? Again, are you free in rela- tion to your bourgeois public, which demands from you pornography and prostitution as a supplement to ‘sacred dramatic art’? . . The free- dom of the bourgeois writer, or artist, or actress, is a mask of independence concealing a real dependence on the money of parasites and souteneurs” (those who “keep” them). . . We socialists tear aside this hypocrisy and unmask their false standards, not to arrive at a literature ‘above class’ (that will be possible only in a socialist society, in a society without classes), but to oppose to this so- called free literature, which is really allied with the bourgeoisie, a litera- ture bound openly to the proletariat.” So wrote Lenin in 1905, and those who see the truth in it, must likewise be- lieve the thesis which Sinclair ‘sets forth to prove, Sinclair begins with the art of the caveman, and ends with Anatole France. His hypothetical placing. of the savage artist makes an interesting addition to Bogdanoff’s theory of prim- itive tribal Communism. His treat- The Irish Famine District “Mammonart” by Upton Sinclair - (A Review) By A. G. BOSSE. is one of the class struggling for con-Jers” was dramatized by the Young trol, urging on to action, stressing substance rather than form. In- stances of this type are, to name but afew of the dozens mentioned, Eu- ripides, Juvenal, Moliere, Beethoven, Schiller, Milton, Burns, Heine, Michael- angelo, Shelly, Dante, Voltaire, Hugo, Isben, Tolstoy, Swift, Verhaeren, Crane, London, Whitman.. Many, like Wagner, who helped build barricades in the streets of Dresden, sold out, and. their art declined. Wordsworth, Southey, Corneille, Coleridge are some examples of the same thing. A few, like Byron, turned from leisure-class refinements to revolution. Some ad- mired rebels, but dared not revolt: Mark Twain is the most pitiful ex- ample of this, and O. Henry is an- other. Others actually fought in revo- lutions, and turned their art to the cause of revolution; Milton, Dante, Michaelangelo, Byron, Hugo. Shelley was a revolutidnist, ideologically, and Keats, potentially. It is tragic to see how idle, vain daughters of the rul- ing class ruined the lives of Bee- thoven, Heine (who was driven to syphillis), Ngitzsche, Keats, and in- numerable others. The mass of facts, interestingly in- Both Fuel and Food Is Needed Here. ment of biblical literature is original, and he carefully points out the dual propaganda of the bible, in some books the worship of kings and priests, and in others, the advocacy of their overthrow. He contrasts allegorically ancient and modern times, and is very fair in his treatment of the difficult (for a socialist partyite) subject of Russia: “If he is shocked by stories he has read about the Cheka and its torturing of prisoners, I invite him to consult Lea’s ‘History of the Spanish Inquisition’. . . it is safe to assert that for every human life sacrificed by the Soviet revolution in Russia, a hundred thousand lives have been tak- en in the name of the gentle and low- ly Jesus.” One finds the book extremely inter- esting from the point of view of sta- tistics and generalizations. Uncon- sciously almost one tends to classify and group the artists treated. A rough draft which I drew up is as follows: Artists of beauty and those of power is one classification Sinclair mentions. By the first he means the art pro- duced for a ruling class firmly estab- lished, wishing to be entertained, and desirous of restful, flattering, serene art, well matured, and well manured, teclinically perfect. Such art is pro- duced by leisure-class artists or poor hangers-on who sell themselves. Ex- amples of these are, (to choose but a few, tho he deals in detail with at least thirty), Sophocles, Aristophanes, Virgil, Gothe, Shakespeare, Raphael, Boceacio, Racine, Balzac, James, Twain, Conrad. The artist of power terpreted, with which Sinclair but- tresses his arguments, makes the book fascinating. It is worth looking into the relation between Wordsworth as the seducer and deserter of a young French girl, and as a paragon of piety and an arch-enemy of French immor- ality and revolution; or the connec- tion between Bernhardt as the mis- tress of Edward VII and as the “great” actress of the bourgeoisie; or between the catholic “expurgation” of the Dec ameron and the church as the pure arm of feudal and bourgeois reaction; or between Shelley’s advocacy of free love and revolution, and the literar- fans’ sabotage of his really vital work; or between Raphael's mistresses and his madonnas. It might also profit us to compare the poetry of Dryden with the propaganda of Byron. The former soothes a pockmarked patron: “Each little dimple has a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did com- mit.” Byron urges on to revolt an op- pressed race: “Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?” The last quotation is disqualified as poetry by the academicians because, perhaps, it sounds ~too much like Marx's battlecry. When the reaction- ary artists have become mere names in mouldy tomes, the rebels will still inspire and vitalize. Only a few weeks ago, Heine’s “Silesian Weavy- Workers at Madison Square Garden. In any pioneer work there are bound to occur some things that displease. In “Mammonart,” I found a few. Sin- elair’s social(ist)-patriotism crops out on page 83. His concessions to the bourgeois liberal (Mrs. Ogi), become irritating, his apologies annoying. His choice of Bierce, Meredith, Davis, Ward, Thackeray, rather than of a da Vinci, Tschaikovsky, Chaucer, Butler, Gorki, or others is a bit puzzling, un- less one explains it on the supposi- tion that they were particularly vul- nerable. However, I realize the un- fairness of criticizing “absentee” sub- jects, and of complaining because an author did not write his book as I wanted him to. I shall leave it to the liberals to condemn “Mammonart” be cause he speaks of Wagner as still living, or because he defines propa- ganda from the Standard dictionary rather than from Webster. The most- interesting thing about “Mammonart” will be the squeels in the reactionary and liberal press. And the hardest slams will be at the last chapter, “A Text-book for Russia” because there he appeals for action, not merely for passive agreement. He has found the same fault with art that Marx found with philosophy: “Philoséphers ‘Have only interpreted the world differently, but the point is to change it.” But the greatest menace in the book is the promise of another, dealing with con- temporary art, and the guardians of the status quo will move heaven and earth to ward it off by “killing” this one. Chicago By SIMON FELSHIN This is a world city If you go by statistics. But look at its drabness. Bits of light in places, No relief from the flatness, aon ahtor f Here is the rooming house district. Plenty of women to be had At all prices— Chicago has an extra big quota. Cheap cabarats open ail night, And plenty of booze. Pawnshops and Greek restaurants. The races of the world are here, And the prostitutes are impartial. Rivers carry lake boats through the city. Seagulls come from the Lakes. Ships go to the Lakes. The bridges collapse before the ships. Then they are resurrected, And the process begins over again. Here is a factory district, Through the smoke Look massive blocks. Trains cut through them, And under the bridges. That monster is a grain elevator, That other holds coal— Strange shapes. There is strength here, And even symmetry. But look at the dinginess around Where the poor live. Rubbish in the alleys, And swarms of rats at night. How can they tolerate That stench from the Stockyards Spreading over the city? It is a drab city With hardly a relief. Bits of light in places, And darkness all around. This is no world city, Unless you go by statistics. Memorial Service For Sun Yat-Sen CANTON, China, April 3.—The me- morial services held here for Dr. Sun Yat-Sen were attended by immense crowds. Give your shopmate this copy of the DAILY WORKER—but be sure to see him the next day to get his subscription.