"America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter, or musician. To be a rabbit is better still."
"A wonderful world we might have made of this new continent if we had really run out on our fellow-men in Europe, Asia and Africa. A brave, new world it might have become, had we had the courage to turn our back on the old, to build afresh, to eradicate the poisons which had accumulated through centuries of bitter rivalry, jealousy and strife.
A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricatural. Our world is a world of things. It is made up of comforts and luxuries, or else the desire of them. What we dread most, in facing the impending débâcle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. There is nothing brave, chivalrous, heroic or magnanimous about our attitude. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky."
"We are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say that we are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudice and hatred….Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all our striving has long been forgotten."
"I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of Great Americans – the poets and the seers. Some other breed of men has won out. The world which is in the making fills me with dread. … It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress – but a false progress, a progress that stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in the world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker is a fool, the artist the escapist, the man of vision a criminal."
"We are not only as ignorant, as superstitious, as vicious in our conduct as the 'ignorant, bloodthirsty savages' whom we dispossessed and annihilated upon arriving here ― we are worse than they by far. We have degenerated; we have degraded the life which we sought to establish on this continent. The most productive nation in the world, yet unable to properly feed, clothe and shelter over a third of its population. Vast areas of valuable soil turning to waste land because of neglect, indifference, greed and vandalism. Torn some eighty years ago by the bloodiest civil war in history of man and yet to this day unable to convince the defeated section of our country of the righteousness of our cause nor able, as liberators and emancipators of the slaves, to give them true freedom and equality, but instead enslaving and degrading our own white brothers. Yes, the industrial North defeated the aristocratic South ― the fruits of that victory are now apparent. Wherever there is industry there is ugliness, misery, oppression, gloom and despair. The banks which grew rich by piously teaching us to save, in order to swindle us with our own money, now beg us not to bring our savings to them, threatening to wipe out even that ridiculous interest rate they now offer should we disregard their advice. Three-quarters of the world's gold lies buried in Kentucky. Inventions which would throw millions more our of work, since by the queer irony of our system every potential boon to the human race is converted into an evil, lie idle on the shelves of the patent office or are bought up and destroyed by the powers that control our destiny. The land, thinly populated and producing in wasteful, haphazard way enormous surpluses of every kind, is deemed by its owners, a mere handful of men, unable to accommodate not only the starving millions of Europe but our own starving hordes."
"When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently."
"When the beautiful French Quarter is no more, when every link with the past is destroyed, there will be the clean, sterile office buildings, the hideous monuments and public buildings, the oil wells, the smokestacks, the airports, the jails, the lunatic asylums, the charity hospitals, the bread-lines, the grey shacks of the coloured people, the bright tin lizzies, the stream-lined trains, the tinned food products, the drug stores, the neon-lit shop windows to inspire the artist to paint. Or, what is more likely, persuade him to commit suicide. [...] When a noted dentist has the audacity to say that for the working man teeth ― one's own teeth ― are an economic luxury, what are we coming to? Soon the physicians and surgeons will be saying: 'Why try to preserve life when there is nothing to live for?' Soon, out of sheer human kindness, they will be banding together to form a euthanasia society to do away with all those who are unfit for the terrors of modern life. The battlefield, together with the industrial field, will provide them with all the patients they can handle. The artist, like the Indian, may become the ward of the government; he may be allowed to putter around in desultory fashion simply because, as with the Indian, we have not the heart to kill him outright. Or perhaps only after he has performed 'useful service' to society will he be permitted to practise his art. It seems to me we are coming to some such impasse. Only the work of dead men seems to have any appeal for us, or any value. The wealthy can always be induced to support another museum; the academies can always be counted upon to provide us with watch-dogs and hyenas; the critics can always be bought who will kill what is fresh and vital; the educators can always be rallied who will misinform the young as to the meaning of art; the vandals can always be instigated to destroy what is powerful and disturbing. The poor can think of nothing but food and rent problems; the rich can amuse themselves by collecting safe investments furnished them by the ghouls who traffic in the sweat and blood of artists; the middle classes pay admission to gape and criticize, vain about their half-baked knowledge of art and too timid to champion the men whom in their hearts they fear, knowing that the real enemy is not the man above, whom they must toady to, but the rebel who exposed in word or paint the rottenness of the edifice which they, spineless middle class, are obliged to support. The only artists at present who are being handsomely rewarded for their toil are the mountebanks; these include not only the imported variety but the native sons who are skilled in raising a cloud of dust when real issues are at stake."
"But the American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute out of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack out of him. It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world ― it's the American way of looking at things. Nothing comes to fruition here except utilitarian projects. You can ride for thousands of miles and be utterly unaware of the existence of the world of art. You will learn all about beer, condensed milk, rubber goods, canned food, inflated mattresses, etc., but you will never see or hear anything concerning the masterpieces of art. To me it seems nothing less than miraculous that the young men of America ever hear of such names as Picasso, Céline, Giono and such like. He has to fight like the devil to see their work, and how can he, when he comes face to face with the work of the European masters, how can he know or understand what produced it? What relation has it to him? If he is a sensitive being, by the time he comes in contact with the mature work of the Europeans, he is already half-crazed. Most of the young men of talent whom I have met in this country give one the impression of being somewhat demented. Why shouldn't they? They are living amidst spiritual gorillas, living with food and drink maniacs, success-mongers, gadget innovators, publicity hounds. God, if I were a young man today, if I were faced with a world such as we have created, I would blow my brains out. Or perhaps, like Socrates, I would walk into the market place and spill my seed on the ground. I would certainly never think to write a book or paint a picture or compose a piece of music. For whom? Who besides a handful of desperate souls can recognize a work of art? What can you do with yourself if your life is dedicated to beauty? Do you want to face the prospects of spending the rest of your life in a strait-jacket?
Go West, young man! they used to say. Today we have to say: Shoot yourself, young man, there is no hope for you."
[À propos d'un "Sunday comic sheet" s'étant retrouvé dans le Grand Canyon:]
"There it lay, carelessly tossed aside by an indifferent reader, the least wind ready to lift it aloft and blow it to extinction. Behind this gaudy-coloured sheet, requiring for its creation the energies of countless men, the varied resources of Nature, the feeble desires of over-fed children, lay the whole story of the culmination of our Western civilization. Between the funny sheet, a battleship, a dynamo, a radio broadcasting station it is hard for me to make any distinction of value. They are all on the same place, all manifestations of restless, uncontrolled energy, of impermanency, of death and dissolution. […] No exaltation, no fervour, no zeal ― except to increase business, facilitate transportation, enlarge the domain of ruthless exploitation. The result? A swiftly decaying people, almost a third of them pauperized, the more intelligent and affluent ones practising race-suicide, the under-dogs becoming more and more unruly, more criminal-minded, more degenerate and degraded in every way. A handful of reckless ambitious politicians trying to convince the mob that this is the last refuge of civilization, God save the mark!"
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