[lit-ideas] Re: Which is the least political of the arts?/Whether to run or fly
- From: "Edward Gleason" <egleason@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:52:27 -0500
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>>> Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> 12/22/2010 6:28 AM >>>
--- On Wed, 22/12/10, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was struck by something I read earlier in A. J. P. Taylor's The Habsburg
Monarchy, 1809-1918:
Referring to the alliance of the Habsburgs and the "Counter-Revolution," Taylor
writes, "The alliance of the dynasty and the Jesuits saved the Habsburgs and
defeated Protestantism in central Europe; it also gave to 'Austrian' culture
the peculiar stamp which it preserved to the end. Austrian Baroque
civilisation, like the buildings which it created, was grandiose, full of
superficial life, yet sterile within: it was theatre, not reality. It lacked
integrity and individual character; at its heart was a despairing frivolity.
'Hopeless, but not serious' was the guiding principle which the age of Baroque
stamped upon the Habsburg world. Deep feeling found an outlet only in music,
the least political of the arts; even here the creative spirit strove to break
its bonds, and the air of Vienna was more congenial to Johann Strauss than to
Mozart or to Beethoven. The Habsburgs learnt from the Jesuits patience,
subtlety, and showmanship; they could not
learn from them sincerity and creativeness."
Some might say this is self-description masquerading as analysis: that is, 'if
you spot it, you got it'. Would anyone be surprised to find some writing of
Wittgenstein's or Popper's, both Viennese, which described the backwaters of
Oxbridge "as full of superficial life, yet sterile within: it was theatre, not
reality. It lacked integrity and individual character; at its heart was a
despairing frivolity."? Or that their self-styled 'analytical' approach
requires some patience and subtlety but very little in the way of "sincerity
and creativeness"?
Taylor's implicit view of the relation between art and politics is perhaps
equally sterile and superficial. In the narrow sense of 'politics' as a
party-programme etc., it is surely questionable whether the proper function of
art is to serve politics or even much reflect it. Insofar as art seeks to
illuminate 'the human condition', or some such, it is profoundly political - as
all dictators and Plato know, which is why artistic expression must be
controlled and suppressed in such regimes. That includes the music.
A counter-argument to Taylor's is that it is precisely because music takes its
form and content from above the petty day-to-day machinations of the political
arena that it is the most political of the arts - in a similar way, perhaps,
that it is the most political of positions to decry politics as a necessary
evil and not a be-all and end-all.
Of course, there are more urgent reasons for dictators to suppress newspapers
than music recitals: because newspapers contain propositional/factual claims
that may undermine the official line in a way a string quartet does not; as a
photograph may also constitute a factual claim [e.g. here are government
soldiers shooting unarmed protesters] it may also fall to be suppressed more
urgently than the string quartet. But this is hardly the only or deepest
measure of the political importance of a cultural item: we may say that while
news reports of the assassination of the Archduke or photographs from Vietnam
had a direct and immense political impact, this impact is of very little
longstanding historical importance compared to works of art on our lives and
our attitudes.
Donal
London
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