“Is something wrong with America’s socalled creative artists? Why don’t our poets and painters and composers and so forth glorify the war effort? Are they Good Americans or are they not?”
First: are they Good Americans. . . .
when I was a boy, Good Americans were—believe it or don’t—adoring the Japanese and loathing the Russians; now, Good Americans are adoring the Russians and loathing the Japanese. Furthermore (in case you were born yesterday) yesterday Good Americans were adoring the Finns; today Good Americans are either loathing the Finns or completely forgetting that Finland exists. Not even the fact that twice during my lifetime Good Americans have succeeded in disliking the Germans can convince me that any human being (such as an artist) is a Good American.
Second: why don’t they glorify. . . .
when you confuse art with propaganda, you confuse an act of God with something which can be turned on and off like the hot water faucet. If “God” means nothing to you (or less than nothing) I’ll cheerfully substitute one of your own favourite words, “freedom.” You confuse freedom—the only freedom—with absolute tyranny. Let me, incidentally, opine that absolute tyranny is what most of you are really after; that your socalled ideal isn’t America at all and never was America at all: that you’ll never be satisfied until what Father Abraham called “a new nation, conceived in liberty” becomes just another subhuman superstate (like the “great freedom-loving democracy” of Comrade Stalin) where an artist—or any other human being—either does as he’s told or turns into fertilizer.
Third: is something wrong. . . .
all over a socalled world, hundreds of millions of servile and insolent inhuman unbeings are busily rolling and unrolling in the enlightenment of propaganda. So what? There are still a few erect human beings in the socalled world. Proudly and humbly, I say to these human beings:
“O my fellow citizens, many an honest man believes a lie. Though you are as honest as the day, fear and hate the liar. Fear and hate him when he should be feared and hated: now. Fear and hate him where he should be feared and hated: in yourselves.
“Do not hate and fear the artist in yourselves, my fellow citizens. Honour him and love him. Love him truly—do not try to possess him. Trust him as nobly as you trust tomorrow.
“Only the artist in yourselves is more truthful than the night.”
From Harper’s Magazine, April 1945; also The War Poets (New York: The John Day Company, 1945).