The Cost of Art During Revolution - Essay Example

The Cost of Art: Revolution versus Art Construction [ID Identity is local and regional, rooted in the imagination and in works of culture; unity is national in reference, international in perspective and rooted in a political feeling. -Northrop Frye, The Bush Garden Ever since Marxs declaration of the risks of false consciousness, artists of left and socialist bents have been trying to reconcile the creation of art, an exercise that often requires alliance with the bourgeois as patrons and time spent away from revolutionary activity, with their revolutionary ideals. This tension led Brown and Gupta to summarize the way that many socialist artists felt thusly: “You cannot be a loyal servant of both poetry and the revolution”. Similarly, Heartfield and Grosz declared, “[w]hat is the worker to do with the spirit of poets and philosophers who, in the face of everything that constricts his life breath, feel no duty to take up battle against the exploiters? Yes, what is the worker to do with art?” (Kaes et al, 1984). Yet there is an obvious counter position: Art can be used strategically to advance the goals of the revolution, and as V declares in V for Vendetta, a revolution without dancing is one not worth fighting for. Sunset Song and Poetry of the Thirties provide fertile ground for understanding both of these positions and relations to the problems of revolution and art. False consciousness must be properly understood before one proceeds with art analysis. Little explains thusly: “People also have subjective characteristics: thoughts, mental frameworks, and identities. These mental constructs give the person a cognitive framework in terms of which the person understands his or her role in the world and the forces that govern his or her life. Ones mental constructs may correspond more or less well to the social reality they seek to represent. In a class society, there is an inherent conflict of material interests between privileged and subordinate groups. Marx asserts that social mechanisms emerge in class society that systematically create distortions, errors, and blind spots in the consciousness of the underclass. If these consciousness-shaping mechanisms did not exist, then the underclass, always a majority, would quickly overthrow the system of their domination. So the institutions that shape the person’s thoughts, ideas, and frameworks develop in such a way as to generate false consciousness and ideology”. Art is one of these sources of false consciousness. The risk artists face in their work, then, is that even if their ideas are revolutionary, their work may have reactionary implications. If their work lionizes the worker too much, it can take the risk of falsely communicating the difficulty of the workers struggle; similarly but conversely, if their work shows the oppression of the worker too distantly, too harshly or in too complex of a fashion, the artist can contribute to a lack of hope and a feeling of alienation rather than to social criticism. Sunset Song is a masterpiece of social criticism and exposition of social problems. It concerns a generational shift away from farming to modern education and life, the changing face of Scotland, the reactions of socialists (represented by Strachan) and pacifists (Long Rob) to the upcoming war, and numerous other social concerns. It does so symbolically, as through the recurring motif of the death of the agrarian symbol of the horse, and literally through dialogue and analysis. Chris has a yearning to escape the country that she loves best illustrates her generations struggle in pre-modern Scotland. Her parents were farmers, and her parents’ parents are, as well. However, Chris got the opportunity of education, and thus a chance to get away from rural, non-intellectual life. Indeed, the story depicts how an individual is caught between the poetry of her past and the revolution that leads her to the future. Is this representation of a dying Scotland reactionary lumpen propaganda? Isnt the change to a non-agrarian lifestyle unambiguously good, the spread of education positive, a sign of the improvement towards the industrial communist state? This is what a Heartfield might say looking at this book, dismissing it as sentimental pablum. However, a different perspective might be that understanding the past is essential to defending the future. The shift from agrarian Scotland to a modern Scotland is one into the belly of exploitation, not out of it. In order for us to understand the “poetry” that we seek to establish, it is important to see it in the context of the novel itself. Gibbon in Sunset Song has vividly created an identity in relation to the landscapes of the rural Scotland. In the Prelude and Prologue, the story is set in the home towns of the author himself, in Kinraddie and in the Mearns. The setting is that of a small rural community, before the claws of modernization and industrialization that looms over the rest of Europe has reached Scotland. During the course of the story, the landscapes and the setting do not remain unaltered. War, industrialization and mechanization were the major forces of turmoil. It was apparent in Sunset Song that war changed the face of their small, old town. Kinraddie, once remote and away from the disturbances of the cities and where life has remained simple for a long time has now become “…desolate, with its crash of trees and its missing faces.” After the war, mass industrialization begins in Scotland, and this has caused far bigger changes in the town. Chris loves the land but also loves the city, the education, the changes industrialism poses. Chris is an intelligent young woman and, being the only educated member of her family, she is more conscious of the distinction between their own background and the outside worlds increasing changes that threatens to leave them, and by extension Scotland, in the dust. And it is evident that this consciousness if the source of her inner conflict and her continued in effort in search for self identity. In the following excerpt from the novel, we draw the idea that she herself hates the dirt and the sore of the life in the farm, despite that, she cannot rip herself from her family and the land that she had grown to love: So that Chris was and her reading and schooling, two Chrisses there were that fought for her heart and tormented her. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day and the next you’d waken with the pewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you’d cry fro that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish and skies. You saw their faces in the fire-light, fathers and mother’s and the neighbours’, before the lamps lit it, tired and kind, faces dear and closed to you, you wanted the words they’d known and used, forgotten in far-off youngness of their lives, Scots words to tell to your heart, how they wrung it and held it, the toil of their days and unendingly their fight. And the next minute that passed from you, you were English, back to the English words so sharp and clean and true – for a while, for a while, till they slid so smooth from your throat you knew they could never say anything that was worth the saying at all. (Gibbons, 1932, page 32) In a sense, the proletariat is somewhere between the merchant bourgeois, with their modernization and education, and the lumpen, with their hard work and communal values. The conflict Chris feels internally is the conflict of historical stages that leads to the revolution. Capitalism has led to modernizing influences that causes Chris to feel wonderfully advanced, informed and fulfilled... but also has alienated her from herself, her culture, the land, her own work. This thesis, the traditional, hard-working agrarian life, and antithesis, modern industrialism, is resolved by revolutionary thought, by embracing the good parts of modern life (industrial efficiency, modern education, enrichment of the mind and body, the avoiding of onerous labor, the breaking up of stultifying tradition) without having to embrace the bad (ecological destruction, loss of family and the tearing apart of traditional forms, etc.) In this sense, studying poetry makes one a student of the revolution. Many of those aware of the classic communist doctrine may have come across, the concept of “class consciousness’ similar to the bourgeois developing inside Chris. Her education has created such an ideal, painting an analogy to the continuing revolutionary spirit of communism, more appropriately known as socialism but can be labeled simply nowadays, as class struggle. What has become obvious therefore, as the story further unfolds, in the intricacy of concurrently demonstrating Chris’ political conviction and ideologies and at the same time her desire for financial stability. Another demonstration of the potential of being a servant both of revolution and poetry is the vocabulary and the language used in the book itself. The book is written in the third person point-of-view t is a hybrid of the Scot tongue and that of the English. Out from Gibbon’s genius, the Scottish rhythm used in the book perfectly blends with the English tongue, magnificently creating a tone of listening to the traditional Scottish folklore. The combination underscores the contradiction that leads to revolutionary thought. Gibbons is making an effort by the author to inspire revolution and at the same time staying within the bounds of national identity; and there is no better way of doing it that to confront the preconceptions and assumptions teeming up in the Scottish society during the era of industrialization. Sunset Song is Gibbon’s effort to put familiarity between the socialist adaptation of the people and the friction and resistance to the claws of industrialization. The dignity of work and the land is emphasized. At the other side of the gamut, in the context of the socialist philosophy, the distinction she has between her different selves as a metaphor for class struggle is also a metaphor for sexual struggle, for the shape that gender relations will take in the modern era. This substructure-superstructure analysis further puts the lie to the notion that revolution and poetry are inherently at loggerheads. Similarly, many pieces in Skeltons Poetry of the Thirties emphasize class struggle, revolution and the fears and anxieties of the failures of the Spanish Revolution to beat back the reactionary fascists (1964). W.H. Auden in A Communist to Others remarks, The worst employer’s double-dealin g/ Is better than their mental healing /That would assist us. /The world, they tell us, has no flaws /There is no need to change the laws /We’re only not content because / Jealous of sisters. Auden is identifying the way that false consciousness operates. He is arguing that, while the exploitation that these employers put workers through regarding wages, hours and benefits is bad enough, the psychic attack and faux-sympathy is worse. Auden is giving a succinct, populist way of understanding false consciousness. There is no contradiction between poetry and revolution here. Meanwhile, Foxall offers criticism of the Communist vision, not as an antagonist but as a comrade: There will be no festivities when / We lay down these tools / For we are the massed grooves / Of grease smooth systems. / The Communist measures the future, / The Elect fear the past / But we are those ribless polyps / That nature insures / Against thought by routines, / Against triumph by tolerance / Against life by the sense of /Mechanical footbeats / Against poverty by Cant, / Extinction by syphilis / And the glory of the crucifixion/ By the price of timber. Foxall reminds us that mechanically measuring the future is just as problematic as the reactionaires measuring the past. We must resist thought by routines, triumph by tolerance, “mechanical footbeats”. This is a common, filial anarchist critique of Communism: Focusing on the machinery of liberation can lead to a machine-like focus, a desire for order and unity that is repellent to the free spirit envisioned by socialism. And this focus can lead to the revolutions violence destroying its own liberatory potential: “One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves” (Chomsky, 2008). The analysis of Sunset Song and Poetry of the Thirties indicates that, far from it being the case that being a servant of poetry precludes one being a servant of revolution, the two are intertwined and mutually necessary. Those concerned otherwise often betray their desire for unity and conformity, not revolution. They want revolution on their terms and are convinced, as all sectarians are, that their way is the only way. Poetry, then, is key to the revolution, because it humbles and awes, and reminds us that the world is so complex that to be certain about the shape of the world we want is arrogant and domineering, not just. Works Cited Chomsky, N. (2008). Essential Chomsky. The New Press: New York. Frye, N. (1995). The Bush Garden: Essays on Canadian immigration. House of Anansi: Canada. Gibbon, L. G. (1932). Sunset Song. Jarrolds Publishing: United Kingdom. Kaes, A., Jay, M., Dimendberg, E. (1995). The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. University of California Press: California. Little, D. “False consciousness”. Understanding Society. University of Michigan. Retrieved from: http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~delittle/iess%20false%20consciousness%20V2.htm . Accessed 12/22/2010. Skelton, R. (1964). Poetry of the Thirties. Penguin Press: New York. Read More