The Relentless Cult of Novelty :( Solzhenitsyn Sunday)

For several decades now, writes Nobel prize for literature winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, world literature, music, painting and sculpture have exhibited a stubborn tendency to grow not higher but to the side, not toward the highest achievements of craftsmanship and of the human spirit but toward their disintegration into a frantic and insidious "novelty." There is a long-accepted truth about art that “style is the man” (“le style est l'homme”). This means that every work of a skilled musician, artist or writer is shaped by an absolutely unique combination of personality traits, creative abilities and individual, as well as national, experience. And since such a combination can never be repeated, art (but I shall speak primarily of literature) possesses infinite variety across the ages and among different peoples. The divine plan is such that there is no limit to the appearance of ever new and dazzling creative talent, none of whom, however, negate in any way the works of their outstanding predecessors, even though they may be 500 or 2,000 years removed. The unending quest for what is new and fresh is never closed to us, but this does not deprive our grateful memory of all that came before. . ...

This aggressive impulse might be interpreted as a mere product of personal ambition, were it not for the fact that in Russia (and I apologize to those gathered here for speaking mostly of Russia, but in our time it is impossible to bypass the harsh and extensive experience of my country), in Russia this impulse and its manifestations preceded and foretold the most physically destructive revolution of the 20th century.

"Before erupting on the streets of Petrograd, this cataclysmic revolution erupted on the pages of the artistic and literary journals of the capital's bohemian circles. It is there that we first heard scathing imprecations against the entire Russian and European way of life, the calls to sweep away all religions or ethical codes, to tear down, overthrow, and trample all existing traditional culture, along with the self-extolment of the desperate innovators themselves, innovators who never did succeed in producing anything of worth. Some of these appeals literally called for the destruction of the Racines, the Murillos and the Raphaels, “so that bullets would bounce off museum walls.” As for the classics of Russian literature, they were to be “thrown overboard from the ship of modernity.” Cultural history would have to begin anew. The cry was “Forward, forward!” — its authors already calling themselves “futurists,” as though they had now stepped over and beyond the present, and were bestowing upon us what was undoubtedly the genuine art of the Future."

“Forward, forward!”: Obamas Presidential Re-election motto. Certainly not chosen out of ignorance.

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