Art and society

Essay by: Ernesto Sabato
Translated from the original: Edlira Hoxholli and Bashkim Shehu

It is fatal for art to be related in some way to society, because art is made starting from man, while man (even if he is a genius) is not isolated: he lives, thinks and feels in relation to his circumstances.

But this "in some way" implies a certain type of life infinitely more complex and elaborate than the famous "reflection". According to this doctrine, which claims to be realistic but is ultimately fantastical, art is a reflection of the society in which it appears. These doctrinaires, who call themselves Marxists, apparently did not consider that, if this theory were correct, Marxism itself could not be explained either: derived from the bourgeois intellectual Karl Marx, who, as even his collaborator, the industrialist Engels, lived in a typical bourgeois society, both heirs (consciously and proudly) of a great culture also bourgeois, how could they invent or discover the theory of the proletarian revolution?

Such a caricature, it seems, cannot be taken seriously. And yet it is considered valid, it is used for analysis, to give recommendations, to formulate accusations every day. Lenin himself told Gorky, in relation to Tolstoy, that "music was never described so deeply until this story appeared". A lesson that, however, seems not to have served even Gorky himself, who invented the famous socialist realism.

No doubt there is some connection between the artist and his circumstances, and it goes without saying that Proust could not be formed in an Eskimo tribe. Sometimes this connection is simple, such as that between the appearance of the bourgeois class and the flourishing of proportion and perspective in painting. Yes, most of the times the relationship is much more complex and, above all, contradictory, because the artist is generally a contradictory, antagonistic being, and because to a considerable extent precisely this dislike of the reality in which he has to live makes him create a other reality in his art; reality which corresponds to the first as little as the dream to the vagina and for similar reasons. Man is not a passive object and, therefore, cannot be limited to reflecting the world: he is a dialectical being and (as is proved in the case of dreams) not only does not reflect it, he confronts it and opposes it. And this general attribute of man appears with great hysterical sharpness in the artist, a generally anarchic and antisocial individual, a dreamer and a misfit.

How else to explain so many contradictions? Right in the salons of the 18th century, people who belonged to that very thin and decadent society, admired and respected writers, create books that prepare the destruction of this society. Not even coherently, with a single and defined physiognomy, but in movements as contradictory to each other as Rousseau's naturalism and the scientific rationalism of the encyclopedists.

Then the Revolution happens, and the art that should officially represent it is David's reactionary and neoclassical painting, an art that will end ridiculously with his famous fireman's helmets. Superficial art, like any conformist and official art. While great and true artists, as always, will have a refractory and heretical creativity. Literature, especially literature, is in some way the opposite of society: in theocratic ages it is often anti-clerical, as the fabliaux in the Middle Ages show; and, conversely, there never arose a literature as deeply religious as that of the secular ages. Recall the quality of Catholic literature in Third Republic France or today's Protestant England.

Matthew Arnold has already pointed out that in the periods of conventionalism and dry rationalism, the need for passion, for fiery and high feelings, is at an end. and vice versa. While Erich Kahler [Erich Kahler] shows that in the history of humanity, every time a principle is taken to its final consequences, it turns against itself.

On the other hand, society functions as something much more complicated than a stratification of classes with an economic character. All admitting that at any given moment the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat exist, the problem of art is infinitely complicated as a result of these factors:

Vertical groups. While proponents of mirroring consider only horizontal classes, these groups have great weight in the production, typology, and tonality of art. These divisions, which pervade society from top to bottom, whether as divisions of age, religion, sex or temperament, have a decisive effect on the fine creations of the human soul, which reacts not only depending on economic problems, but also on characteristic concerns for age or sex, problems of the relevant religion or morals, etc. Lalo and other sociologists have noted that children, for example, are generally good custodians of art. Ginjoli and the marionettes are the continuation of the characters of the old Italian comedy; fables and tales are remnants of ancient myths; their games are very old and universal (the Tibetan child plays with the same pebbles and with the same rules as the Argentine chunak who played "intenti" in my childhood); ancient instruments such as the slingshot, sling or arrow continue to maintain their prestige alongside the machine gun; in the musical field, archaic instruments have been preserved, such as the drum or the rakja.

Elders, villagers and religious groups are also conservative, although for other reasons; this is why our priests continue to dress like they did in the Middle Ages and the vast majority of our churches continue to be built in the Romanesque or Gothic style.

Whereas teenagers, young adults and a certain type of adult (the neurotic, the angry, the misfit, the restless, the poor) are revolutionaries.

In addition to conservative and revolutionary groups, there are also propagators: religious people, merchants, colonizing states, artistic sects, nomadic races such as Jews. Thus, in the case of the Gothic style, its spread was the work of Cistercian bishops and students of the University of Paris. Likewise, the Mohammedans transformed the architecture of India by introducing the minaret and the bulbous dome. How can these objects or artistic modalities be explained starting only from the economic reality of a country? In general, the influence of religion on art is much more powerful than that of any other social factor: the prohibition to represent the divinity deprived the Muslims of the possibility of a plastic like that of the Catholics, while on the other hand it encouraged arabesque and architecture; for similar reasons, in the Netherlands, the painter threw himself into the landscape and portraiture of the bourgeois; and, in all probability, in my opinion, the Lutheran prohibition of figures, freeing the artist from a great deal of the cares of expression, has been the cause, or one of the causes, of the marked development of music since the Reformation.

Another complication that has nothing to do with classes is that of cultural transfusions, whether through invasions or wars, trade or emigration, or, finally, through the arrival of a prestigious religion in a new territory. Countless creations, some of them of extraordinary importance and power, result from such transfusions: Negro music in America, with its synthesis of Lutheran chorales, of Scottish or Irish carols, and of the old African tradition, constitutes the most significant example. . In some cases, indigenous culture is mortally wounded, as seen in communities savagely invaded by the shameful European colonization, with its bazaar items and mass-produced fabrics in the metropolis. But in general, hybridization takes place and, just as Europeans enter Africa, Africans also enter Europe, and black art penetrates sharply into the culture of the conquerors.

In addition to the influences coming from vertical groups, in addition to the factors of the temperament of each individual, which we can encounter in every class of society, there is also an internal force in art that has nothing to do with society: the action of fatigue and whimsy. Like clothing fashions, many of the innovations in art come from psychic exhaustion, from boredom, from the pleasure of simply challenging the previous generation or powerful enemies within the art sphere itself, simply from the desire for change. And, for reasons close to those that make a child feel more connected to his grandfather than to his father (thanks to these two successive types of filth): Proust does not derive from Balzac, but from Saint-Simon.

Finally, "artistic time" does not coincide with astronomical time, nor with social time, nor with psychological time, except in very exceptional cases: the Pindaric ode arose as a result of national games, but disappeared even as these games continued to exist. Moreover, the time is not the same in the different arts, even if they arose synchronically and from a common impulse: the Greek temple (either because of the conservative spirit of the religions, or because of material and physical causes) did not change in almost a thousand years; and, therefore, the trace of the great cycles in architecture can be more easily followed than in painting or literature, where the struggle of generations or schools is more visible and active.

So it is absurd to look for clear parallels between art and the social organization of his time. Even if we assume that economic or class conditions affect the artist, this influence is often in the opposite direction and, apart from that, the traditions, works or modalities of a rival, or conquering, or paradigmatic culture exert a simultaneous influence on the soul, the temperament of its creators, its age, its personal crises, its religion or its philosophy, its fatigue or its enthusiasm, its sectarian miseries.