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Vicissitudes in the Theory of Socialist Realism

A little lesson in history not to be ignored

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Stefan Morawski
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There are only three distinct temporal relationships between art and theory: either the development of new events precedes theory, or both develop side by side, or theory anticipates the appearance of the new artistic current. This temporal relationship is, to some degree, fundamental in the relationship between both phenomena. If one is dealing with the first case, theories of art serve only to redress a balance. The art-theory introduces nothing in any way new; it serves only to explain an artistic process which has already flowered. At most, largely thanks to critical studies, it helps the public understand the new works unexpectedly arising in the field of art, and plays the role of popularizing these new works, in the best sense of the word.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 9 , Issue 36 , December 1961 , pp. 110 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Footnotes

*

This study is a somewhat modified part of my preliminary study published in Myst Filozoficzna (Philosophic Thought), No. 3, 1957, entitled “Against the Prophets of Catastrophe.”

References

1 See N. Pevsner, Academies of Art. Past and Present, Cambridge, 1940.

2 S. Ossowski has observed this phenomenon: Socjologia sztuki, Warsaw, 1936, p. 31.

3 This idea possesses multiple meanings. Given its varied history and given the fact that it may be applied to various areas of art, a special study would be required here. See my article "Is It a Question of Facts or Words," published in Studia Filozoficzne, No. 4/7, 1958. At the International Congress on Esthetics (Athens, 1960), I presented a paper on Réalisme comme catégorie artistique; I tried in this paper to define "realism" with more precision.

4 The problem of collectivity and of employment is also found in non-socialist literature, but these problems have no cardinal meaning for the hero and his attitude, for they begin to count really only in a socialist regime; then, the position that one takes vis-à-vis these problems becomes the social and moral criteria by which every individual is judged.

5 J. S. Smirnov, Iz istorii stroïtielstva sotsialisticheskoï kultury piervyi pieriod sovietskoï vlasti, Moscow, 1952; P. I. Liebiediev, Sovietskoïe iskusstvo v pieriod innostronnoï voïennoï intiervientsii i grajdanskoï voïny, Moscow, 1949.

6 See Statii ob iskusstvie, Moscow-Leningrad, 1941.

7 On Literature, Warsaw, 1951, pp. 26, 39 and 54.

8 Speech on Literature and Art, Warsaw, 1954, pp. 8, 9.

9 That is to say, show man as he is—Euripides—of as he should be-Sophocles—according to Aristotle's definitions in his Poetics.

10 See Stalin's early letters to Bill Bielotserkiewski (1929), to Bezimienski and Gorki (1930).

11 Duties of the Artist and Writer, Warsaw, 1956, p. 28.

12 Ibid., Warsaw, 1956, p. 32.

13 The pretension of politicians which consists in wanting to advise and guide artists dates from very far back. Diogenes Laertius tells us in his Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum that Solon had already reproached the first Greek tragic author, Thespis, of having distorted the historical truth and, therefore, harmed society. Plato, we know, had banned poets from his ideal "republic" in the name of a sovereign ideal because they were capable of distracting citizens from serious matters, inciting them to superficial sensual pleasures. The Church fathers defended artists against the temptation of Satan in the name of ecclesi astical and laic powers.