POETRY OF BOLSHEVISM

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 21

POETRY OF BOLSHEVISM

(By "Ajax.")

SOVIETIZING GENIUS

MASS-PRODUXJTION TO ORDER

A few weeks ago'l was introduced for the; first time to the chapter on "The Keformation of the Byzantino Church" in "The Mind and Face of Bolshevism,." by Bene Fulop-Miller. But I found mo chapter dealing with "The Mechanizing of Poetry" of even greater'interest. This chapter, opens as follows: — '

The endeavour to mechauize and "de-soul" art perhaps appears at its crudest in revolutionary poetry and literature, in which- the radical innovators were not content with "liquidating Pushkin, Gogol1, Dostoevski, and Tolstoi" as one1 of their propagandist pamphlets puts it, but in which they attempted to eradicate entirely the old meaning and nature of the poetic, and to replace it by something completely new. But they were mainly concerned with removiug the ancient, erroneous idea that there was such a thing: as genius, intuition, vocation, or any "mystical. ]unk ot the kind.

From the behaviour of a dog which had acid dropped into iio mouth under varying conditions, the Russian physiologists arrived at the conclusion that every spiritual act is merely, the product of a sense .stimulus and can be exactly reproduced by a repetition of the conditions.

By this doctrine of "conditional reflexes," says our author, talent, genius, monomanias, flashes of insight, and intuitions were all explained in the same way on purely mechanical lines. ZaTis, a pupil of tho famous physiologist Parlor, attempted to prove in an exhaustive investigation that the figure of Don Quixote is x perfect example' of such conditioned reflexes; In ah analogous way tho adherents of this school then endeavoured to represent the wliole art of poetry, in all its forms, as ' mere data for the physiological law of conditioned reflexes."- ■ ■ . '

,To argue thus'is, as Herr FulopMiller says, to draw "absurd deductions" from- physiologically correct observations. " To prove that all thought is accompanied by some physical change in the brain is not to identify the'two processes, nor does it contribute in the slightest degree to the understanding of the mind of the poet or th© qualities of his poem. But these Bolshevik philosophers are satisfied that there'is no mystery about the operations of genius, that they are all subject to exact formulae which will enable the ''' artistic production of poems, plays, and other literary output of all kinds." You have only to put ybur rouble in the slot, get the right formula, and hey presto! you are delivered of a poem—a "Hamlet" or a "Paradise Lost," or whatever it is you want —which, nevertheless, will apparently be the product of your own brain, and not of the State factory. Yet a process which is strictly mechanical j,n its origin and methods will also be decidedly mechanical in its results if Shershen'evich and Marienhof, whom Mop-Miller calls "the real 'shock troops' of th© artistic revolution," are to be believed.

-true-model of a Bolshevik jioero appears to be not a work of art "or of nature, not a beautiful building or a tree or a flower, but a brick wall, or perhaps better still, a pile of bricks Without any mortar.

A poem, says Shershen.uvJch in "Twice Two are Five,"- is-not an organism, but a heaping lip of images, any one of which can be removed without loss, just as twenty new ones may bo introduced. Only if eacii unit is complete is the result a beautiful whole. lam •nrmly convinced that a book ought to be readable backwards, as successfully as the other way round, just as a picture of lakulov 05 Erdmann (revolutionary painters) may be hung upside down without any loss.

I know nothing of Erdmann or lakulov, but from my general knowledge of the company they keep I am not at all surprised to hear that their pictures look just as well if they are hung upside down. ', Nor would it surprise me to learn that these pictures look better still when they are hung with their faces to the wall.

The American painter who deluded the Hanging Committee of the National Academy into hanging his "Fossil Hunters" end-upwards and awarding him a 500-dollar prize for it in that attitude may be congratulated on an up-to-dateness in his art which was apparently not intended.

The error, says tho "New York HDrnld-Tri-bune," was not discovered until, in removing the picture for hanging in the winter exhibition, some one observed that "top" had been written at one end on the back, and "bottom" at tho other. These two ends had formed the sides of the picture as it had been* hanging. The members of the Hanging Committee and others who were present were stricken with mirth and consternation. They

. . . telephoned to Mr. Dickinson (the artist). He confirmed their suspicion that the end labelled "top" really was the top of the picture, and it was hung properly.

Whether after rehanging the picture the committee considered it unworthy of the 500-dollar prize is not recorded, but as this was only the second prize it is also possible that by that time they considered the picture to be worthy of the first. If all artists would imitate the candour and clearness of Artemus Ward when he exhibited the picture of a lion at his show they would save themselves and their critics much embarrassment.

Ladles and gentlemen, he said; I can con' ceal it no longer. This is a Hon.

He'knew it, if I am not mistaken; because the artist had told him so. The addition of "This Side Up—With Care" would save the hanging committee and the spectators from painful surprises. But a Bolshevik Hob, being constructed on -the principle of a book that can be read backwards, would probably bo equally like a. lion'in any. position.

'Here Fulop-Miller declares "the great achievement of revolutionary thought" to be

that: the connection between art and conditioned reflexeß, between Don Quixote aud the eicretiou of spittle in a dog, has been tleflnltei'y fixed, and that poetry has been defined as the mechanical combination of sounds and.tones according tf> a chemical formula. However much opinions may differ on whether Dpetry is better written by technical, physiological, or chemical methods, there is complete certainty that, poetry lias nothing wliat6ttr. to do with intuition, endowment, or talent, for these are bourgeois. and counterrevolutionary prejudices.

Butmerely to purify the theory of art from.these old-world superstitions was not enough; the practice demauded at least equal attention.

Art does not represent, but makes, new life. It 1b not a mirror in the hands of futile bourgeois,.-- but a hammer in the flst of tiie proletarian.--.

And. to do any good the proletarian must,, of course, work collectively. The genius who first grasped the great truth that-."a real proletarian work of art could only proceed from a. collectivity" was the poet Bogdanor, TJndei his inspiratioE* "special workshops were established in which several 'word workers'; combined to produce joint poetic-works;" •

H genius wis not abolished, as PulopMMler;, Suggests, it was' at' any: ra te fiovift&wj, . The mass.production _of poet.»y : ,Trii. g #i'g?.Hißed on strictly scier^-

title and class-consciousprinciples, of course, under the direct-control of the Government, and 'immortal verse was reeled on: by the yard hi a style and at a pace that put to'shame not a few of its.' other industrial undertakings. Fulop-Millcr, who has .a. very pleasant sense of humour for a Teuton, describes the process:— .

In many of. the almanacs of the now Itussian literature, works are actually io be found under tho authorship of a "liroup of.Twentythree."a "Group of Fourteen I'oets," or the "Poets' Circle of the Village of Itiasau." These poetic workshops proudly point to their massproduction, and are justified in doing so; for quantity is the criterion of tho collective, in coutrast to the antiquated, individualistic, and reactionary, valuation by quality. ".Many of these undertakings publish half-yearly balancesheets, in which their output is given; the

"Group of Twenty-three," for example, looks back with satisfaction to a six months' output of S" poems, 24 works of belles lettres, aud 10 Pays- - .. .. ..

■A total of 87 poems, 16 plays, and 34 volumes at miscellaneous prose in six months is surely -a.magnificent result for a team of twenty-three. Under the capitalistic system, Virgil, if I remember-rightly, considered twelve lines a day a satisfactory rate, and a still more hopelessly bourgeois contemporary actually spoko of delaying the completion of a book till the .fourth year. But for six consecutive months, with, let us hope. Sundays or some equivalent Anti-God days off, this Bolshevik s\-ndicate produced its immortal works at the rate of about one per head per month. And we may be sure that, unlike the antiquated and lifeless futilities of Virgil or Horace, of Shakespeare or Milton, it was all live stuff, all hot stuff, and all unmistakably Eetl stuff. ■ . .

None of the work of this meritorious "Group of Twenty-three" being available, I quote a sample from "The Highway," which appears to have become one of the great battle-hymns of. the Soviet Eepublic:— Who is there? Missed! This lime you shoot widel ■ Come on. to tho devil with youc fopperies, you masters 1 Down with you 1 We need no lickspittles, you masters! Wag your tails ever so pitifully! We strike you on the jaws, you masters! Down with you! Down! You thero whoso boues are rotting in fat, Lie down, bloodhound! Knacker, hold your tongue I You incarnate human filth. Fall dead in a ditch! Down with you I Dowu ! The road is open I And the highway shakes Beneath the tramp of proletarian feel. . . .

, Writing before the Sovictised method of literary production had been devised Dem'iau Bednyi, the author of this noble hymn, must be admitted to have done pretty well for a beginner. Trotjjky ■ describes his poetry as "a unique phenomenon, such as without doubt has never been seen before." And in one Eussian village—presumably his native village—Bednyi has been honoured with a festival and a feast day, like a. saint. It must be admitted that, the- poets of capitalism have been more often honoured with a pauper's grave than with.a place in the' saints' calendar.