On Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:18:48 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
> Wasn't the question _quality_, not influence.
>
> Pound, Eliot, Yeats, fascists or reactionaries, all great poets.
> Philip Larkin, right wing racist jerk, same. Kipling, great
> storyteller. Balzac, great novelist. One of Marx's unfinished
> projects was a literary study of Balzac. Conrad (monarchist
> reactionary, Carlist gunrunner), great master of the English
> language. Celine (Nazi collaborator), great writer. Daughter watched
> Birth of a Nation with me, fascinated horror. She said, I know I
> could never admit this outside the house, but this is one of the
> greatest movies I've ever seen. Riefenstahl, pure Nazi propaganda
> and high cinematic art. Etc. And one can add: Heidegger, Nazi, great
> philosopher; Schmitt, Nazi ideologue, great political thinker.
>
> On the flip side there are mountain ranges full of of PC dreck. I
> will take one page of Balzac or Conrad tforeverything that Mike Gold
> every wrote, and he wasn't the worst by far.
>
>
I would agree with all that. There are certainly writers and artists whose work I admire, even though I may find their political views to be pretty dodgy. On the other hand, there certainly have been great artists who had also had decent politics, or at least their politics were not quite so objectionable as those of Pound, Eliot, or Yeats. Shelley was not a half-bad poet, and his politics were quite progressive. G.B. Shaw wrote some pretty good plays, and Pablo Picasso could really do something with paint.
There is certainly no law that says good artists must also have good progressive politics, and goddess knows there are plenty of untalented people with good political views, but sometimes you do get people who combine great artistic talent with a strong progressive politics.
>
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