The Good Life
Terry Eagleton, writing in the Guardian, laments the end of political engagement in British writing:
For almost the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life. One might make an honourable exception of Harold Pinter, who has wisely decided that being a champagne socialist is better than being no socialist at all; but his most explicitly political work is also his most artistically dreary.Oh well. Alas, etc. But that bit about Pinter reminds me of Ian McEwan’s “Saturday” where the central character, an affluent surgeon who came up the hard way, buys himself a fancy Mercedes. He’s not sure how his poet daughter will react, but she seems quite okay with it - because according to her Pinter has a Mercedes too, so it must be all right.
“Taking sides was no longer seen as inimical to art, but as a vital part of its purpose”
Political thought and literature disguised in each others attire are at best lack serious meaning and at worst a dangerous cocktail!
Serious forms of art -literature or painting- get degenerated if, on a continual basis, the subject matters that were dealt with are accorded centre-stage by critics with recognition and rewards than the way they were presented. It happens in cinema as awarding Oscars for those that toe establishment’s line of thought and/or politically correct movies and in Literature too, allegedly as the knighting of Salman Rushdie
Strangely, literature and painting are the only art forms that are allowed this luxury of dabbling with serious subject matters with little or no known formal training in those disciplines.
History tells us that society didn’t permit that luxury of looking for literary/artistic beauty in serious political scientists’ writings. They were judged like any other scientific works based on empirical supports rather than for their artistic/literary beauty and so were political scientists and statesmen with the possible exception to some extent Sir Winston Churchill who was decorated with a Nobel for Literature rather than political thought that helped achieving world peace.
I personally believe that Communism was never really practised in any major form of government-whatever that was practised was essentially authoritarianism in the guise of Communism; be it Lenin’s, or Stalin’s or Mao’s!
Comment by Naveen — July 23, 2007 @ 9:17 am