Tzvetan Todorov

Avant-gardes & totalitarianism Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

The history of modernity is character- Those who did not wish to turn back ized by an immense transformation: the the clock but were still dissatis½ed with transition from a world structured by re- the present then sought a second way, ligion to a world organized exclusively in that of an absolute accessible to the au- terms of human beings and worldly val- tonomous individual. The search for this ues. This process of emancipation and second way itself took several forms; humanization, which has been going on the most influential of these identi½ed for several centuries, has taken two main the individual absolute with beauty and forms. First came the project of replac- favored what Friedrich Schiller would ing the divine absolute with a collective call the aesthetic education of man. human absolute, what revolutionaries This doctrine was Romanticism, adopt- in France called ‘the Nation.’ Initial en- ed ½rst in Germany and then through- thusiasm for this project began to wane, out Europe; it glori½ed the poet in place however, from the moment the Revolu- of the prophet and the work of art in tion engendered the Terror. The struggle place of prayer. “Beauty in its absolute for liberty had ended in the suppression essence is God,” declared a spokesman of liberty: was this not proof that the for the movement. project itself had been ill-conceived The fact that Romanticism reserved from the beginning? such a role for art and poetry, exempla- ry incarnations of the beautiful, did not mean that it neglected other human ac- Tzvetan Todorov is Directeur de Recherche hono- tivities: for Schiller and his successors, raire at the Centre National de la Recherche Sci- aesthetic education and political vision enti½que in Paris. He is the author of numerous went hand in hand. One of the best ex- publications, including “The Conquest of Amer- amples we have of the desire to improve ica” (1984), “On Human Diversity” (1993), the human condition by action in both “Facing the Extreme” (1996), “Imperfect Gar- spheres is that of the German composer den: The Legacy of Humanism” (2002), “Hope Richard Wagner. Influenced by the rev- and Memory” (2004), and “The New World olutionary ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, Disorder” (2005). Wagner took part in political agitation in Dresden in 1848–1849. Forced into exile © 2007 by the American Academy of Arts by the ensuing repression, he sought ref- & Sciences uge in Switzerland, where he produced

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan two texts setting forth his ideas about art rather the culmination of life. ‘Artistic Todorov and its relation to society: Art and Revolu- humanity’ was synonymous with ‘free on nonviolence tion and The Art Work of the Future, both human dignity.’ Craft was to become & violence written in 1849. art; the proletarian was to transform These texts make clear that Wagner himself into an artist; the industrial aspired to the absolute but did not seek slave was to metamorphose into a pro- it in traditional religion. Art seemed to ducer of beauty. The society of the fu- him the absolute’s best incarnation: it ture would no longer exist to serve art, was “living religion represented.”1 On as Wagner demanded for the present, this basis, he suggested, a two-way rela- because all life would have become artis- tionship between artistic activity and so- tic. Here art became the ideal model of cial life is established. If art was to flour- society. There would no longer be any ish, society must have the most favorable need to celebrate artists because every- conditions for it. Now, Wagner’s world, one would be an artist. To be more pre- as de½ned by the Germanic states of his cise, the community as a whole would day, was far from satisfying those condi- freely decide how it was to live, thus tions. Hence, that world had to be trans- adopting the attitude of the creator. “But formed; revolution was essential. Wag- who will be the artist of the future? The ner was interested in politics only to the poet? The actor? The musician? The extent that politics enabled art to flour- sculptor? Let us put it in a nutshell: the ish. For him, social revolution was not people.”2 Because this could be achieved an end in itself but a means to artistic only by a common effort, Wagner opted revolution, the foundation of a new edi- for the opposite of egoism, namely, com- ½ce of the arts. munism–whose Manifesto had been pub- Why bestow such honor on artists? lished the year before by Karl Marx and This is where the second part of the Frederick Engels. relationship between art and society The failure of the revolutions of 1848 comes in: “The supreme goal of man throughout Europe would sound the is the artistic goal,” Wagner declared, death knell of such dreams. Thereafter and “art is the highest activity of man,” began a second major period in the his- that which crowns his earthly existence. tory of the worldly absolute, from 1848 “Genuine art is the highest form of to World War I, during which the two freedom.” Wagner shared the dream paths, the collective and the individual, of the Saint-Simonians, who believed the political and the aesthetic, diverged. that machines would soon take over Baudelaire, though an enthusiastic com- man’s most arduous labors. Freed from mentator on Wagner, saw the hope that exhausting chores, all would turn their art might influence the world as an illu- attention to artistic creation in freedom sion. Meanwhile, Marx showed little and joy. concern for the aesthetic education of Art was not opposed to life, as another the individual. The two proudly ignored version of Romantic doctrine held, but each other, though neither dreamed of renouncing the absolute. Things changed again between the two 1 Richard Wagner, Œuvres en prose, vol. 3 (Par- world wars–the period to which I now is: Éditions d’Aujourd’hui, 1976), 91; English translation by William Ashton Ellis, Richard turn. Two trends can be discerned, but Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 1 (New York: Broude Bros., 1966). 2 Ibid., 19, 16, 243.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 each can be described as an actualiza- The new turn took the name ‘Con- Avant- tion of the Wagnerian project of a total structivism’ because its adherents es- gardes & totalitar- work of art, one that would be coexten- chewed artistic creation in favor of ianism sive with life itself and with the world constructing objects and artifacts in- as a whole. On one hand, avant-garde tended to become part of the environ- groups, such as the Futurists and Con- ment. Their ½rst group show was held structivists, differentiated themselves in 1921, but the ½rst manifestations of from the modernist movement in gener- the movement date from 1915, when al by attempting to expand the limits of Vladimir Tatlin presented his “Coun- the work of art so as to act on society at ter-Reliefs” at the same time that Kaz- large. On the other hand, extremist po- imir Malevich unveiled his “Black litical movements modeled their plans Square.” The “Counter-Reliefs” were for transforming society and humanity assembled from a variety of materials; on the creative activity of the artist. This and the artist’s goal was not to reveal to was true of Communism, Fascism, and the world the existence of a ‘work’ but Nazism. rather to bring out the intrinsic qualities Both avant-garde artists and political of the materials used in the construc- extremists saw violence as a legitimate tion. means of achieving their ends more rap- The difference between Construc- idly. They knew they were promoting tivism and earlier avant-garde move- revolution, which might well provoke ments was not political: all enthusias- resistance. That resistance had to be ov- tically supported the ongoing revolu- ercome–if necessary, by force. We see tion. It was rather in the relation be- signs of this rapprochement of the two tween the work of art and its social major forms of the worldly absolute– context. According to one Construc- the political and the artistic–in Russia, tivist theoretician, Boris Arvatov, even Italy, and Germany. The convergence when earlier artists took nothing from persisted until the end of World War II. life but its spiritual content or other es- sential elements, as in the case of Wassi- Avant-garde movements appeared in ly Kandinsky and Malevich, they still Russia around 1910 with the ½rst glim- “placed art above life and sought to ren- merings of abstraction in painting and der life in the form of art.” By contrast, Futurist experimentation in poetry. Ini- Constructivism “placed life above art” tially, however, the gulf between art and and gave primacy to function at the ex- society widened rather than narrowed. pense of form. “Not the creation of Painters were exhorted to forget the ma- forms of great ‘aesthetic’ value but utili- terial world and to obey no laws other tarian construction from basic materi- than the intrinsic laws of their art. Later, als,” he wrote. “Not autonomy of the however, people began to question this thing as such, but richness of content.”3 divorce of art from the visible world of In concrete terms, Constructivism objects and the intelligible world of the transformed all forms of expression. senses–and therefore to question as well the quest for the absolute in the 3 Boris Arvatov quoted in J.-Cl. Marcadé, work of art as opposed to society. Some L’avant-garde russe 1907–1927 (Paris: Flammar- of those who questioned this divorce ion, 1995), 19; “L’utopie objectalisée,” 1923, in were the same people who had advocat- G. Conio, Le constructivisme russe, vol. 2 (Lau- ed it earlier. sanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1986), 46.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan Instead of producing literary works, Here, too, reality was preferable to the Todorov writers were urged to focus on the utili- imagination–Rodchenko devoted him- on nonviolence tarian value of language. For example, self more and more to photography. Tat- & violence Vladimir Mayakovsky would eventually lin, meanwhile, went from “Counter- turn to the production of political slo- Reliefs” to architectural constructions, gans and advertising. In his autobiogra- such as his (proposed but never-built) phy, he de½ned his group’s position as tower intended as a “Monument to the being “against ½ction and aestheticism, Third International.” Architecture was for propaganda, for quali½ed journalism, the logical culmination of the Construc- and for opinion writing.” Indeed, the tivists’ plastic experiments: inspired by materials he had in mind were not only artistic principles, the architect shapes language but also real events evoked by the world by building real houses, life- language: rather than imaginative liter- sized cities, and landscapes. ature, Constructivists preferred what The performing arts followed the same they called ‘factual literature,’ drawn course. Arvatov spoke of the “fusion of from the world in which the writer lived. theater with life in socialist society” as Thus, literature no longer existed in a though it were self-evident. But what separate sphere; everyone could partici- form was this fusion to take? In his view, pate in its creation. “In the Commune, the goal was no longer to stage plays in everyone was a creator,” wrote another the traditional manner, even if the audi- Constructivist theoretician, Osip Brik,4 ence were expanded to a broad segment who was repeating, perhaps unwittingly, of the population. It was rather to give an idea of Novalis: “Every man should form to life itself, “to construct our way be an artist. Everything can become ½ne of life rationally.”7 This was the best way art.”5 for the theater to ful½ll its propaganda The same could be said of the visual function. In ½lm, Dziga Vertov’s theories arts: their goal was no longer to produce of montage similarly reflected Construc- paintings or sculptures but rather to tivist aims. Merely by ½lming what exist- transform the world through artistic ac- ed and then proceeding to an audacious tion. Alexander Rodchenko, the leader montage, Vertov created beautiful ½lms of the plastic Constructivists, was as without inventing anything: he simply fervently opposed to easel painting as reorganized the visible world. The ma- Mayakovsky was to ½ction. “Non-½gu- terial itself acted on the viewer, provid- rative painting has left the museum,” ed the ½lmmaker knew how to put it to- he declared in the course of a 1920 show gether in the right way. Thus, everything of his work. “Non-½gurative painting is in the world became potential material the street itself, the town square, the city, and for the artist. the entire world.”6 He chose to make post- The Constructivist theoretical project ers and to design wallpaper and fabrics. was pushed to its ultimate limit by yet another theoretician, Nikolai Chuzhak, 4 Quoted in Conio, Le constructivisme russe, 153; who explicitly proposed “the construc- Osip Brik, “L’artiste et la Commune,” in Conio, tion of life” as the movement’s goal. In Le constructivisme russe, vol. 1. articles published in the journal lef, edited by Mayakovsky, in 1923 and 1929, 5 Foi et Amour in Novalis, Œuvres, vol. 1, 341.

6 Quoted in Conio, Le constructivisme russe, vol. 7 Arvatov, “Utopie ou science?” in Conio, Le 1, 44. constructivisme russe, vol. 2, 65–66.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 he drew the consequences of this exten- intrinsic quality of existing materials, Avant- sion of artistic experimentation’s ben- which he assembled according to pre- gardes & totalitar- e½ts to all of life. As he saw it, two con- established rules. Instead of creating ianism ceptions of art were in contention. One works for disinterested contemplation, of these, the bourgeois conception, saw he placed them in service of society, sub- “art as a method for obtaining knowledge ject to “social command.” But his sub- of life.” The other, the proletarian con- mission was also a kind of victory, and ception, perceived “art as a method for his humility stemmed from a higher am- the construction of life.” The ½rst view bition: the artist now identi½ed with the limits art to representation and invites political actor who shapes society, the us to contemplate the world; the sec- people, and individuals, in accordance ond seeks to dominate and transform with a preconceived design. The Con- the material. In this we hear echoes of structivist project thus represented, at Marx’s celebrated formula concerning the same time, a death sentence for art the status of knowledge: “Until now and its apotheosis, since the artist no philosophers have only interpreted the longer worked solely with words or col- world; the point, however, is to change ors but rather with human beings: he it.”8 Now it was the frontier between the became an artist, engineer, and demi- artist and the political activist that was urge all rolled into one. being crossed. Art in the old-fashioned If the dream was to become reality, style might, at best, serve as a kind of however, politicians would have to agree preparation, a “timid apprenticeship in to share their power with artists. This the formidable creation of a new way of did not happen: none of these grandiose life now under way.” Chuzhak believed utopian conceptions was realized. By the that the moment had come to “declare end of the 1920s, the last vestiges of the war on artistic literature,” or belles-lettres, avant-garde in Russia were reduced to that is, on literature based on opposing silence. The leaders of the movement literature to life when in fact the two were either punished–victims of the ought to merge to the point of indistin- revolution they themselves had wanted guishability. It was high time, he argued, –or else turned into obedient propagan- to dispatch “belles-lettres to rot on the dists for the regime. rubbish heap of outmoded art.”9 The new art was simply to be one more At the end of World War I, Germany method of constructing life. experienced political upheaval similar At ½rst sight, art emerged the loser to Russia’s but with the opposite result: from its conflict with life. Instead of The revolution was crushed in bloody delving into his imagination, the art- repression. The uprising of the (commu- ist now borrowed his materials ready- nist) Spartacists in early 1919 ended in made. Instead of creating original arti- failure; its leaders, Karl Liebknecht and facts, he settled for demonstrating the Rosa Luxemburg, were executed; and the liberal Weimar Republic was estab- lished. Yet a transformation of the arts 8 Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in K. had begun even as the political revolu- Marx and F. Engels, Etudes philosophiques (Par- is: Editions Socials, 1947), 11. tion was being prepared: a “council (so- viet) for the arts” was established, and 9 Conio, Le constructivisme russe, vol. 2, 39, 23, the architect Walter Gropius became its 170, 178; Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach.” codirector. The council declared that

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan “art and the people must be one” and Thus, the work envisioned by the Todorov that “art will henceforth be not for the founders of the Bauhaus gradually drew on nonviolence pleasure of a few but for the welfare and closer to everyday life. The goal was not & violence life of the masses.”10 only to build homes for people but also Once again, this project was reminis- to transform their entire environment, cent of Wagner’s some seventy years from furniture and utensils to cities and earlier. Like Wagner, Gropius seemed to landscapes. Such a program required want to compensate for the failure of the knowledge of the ‘people’ for whom political revolution by launching a proj- the artist worked: Gropius introduced ect in the arts (whereas, in Russia, the courses in sociology and even biology at victory of the revolution had for a time the Bauhaus. By transforming the setting facilitated progress in the arts). And in which people lived, one could perfect again, like Wagner, Gropius dreamed the people themselves. By producing ob- of unifying the arts, though not in op- jects for everyday use, artists could influ- era but rather in architecture, which he ence individual and collective ways of envisioned as absorbing painting and life. sculpture. In this period the Russians and Ger- One week after the inauguration of the mans maintained constant contact. Weimar Republic in 1919, the Bauhaus Kandinsky began teaching at the Bau- was founded. This was a group of archi- haus in 1922. The arrival of the Hungar- tects led by Gropius and committed to ian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1923 the same principles as the council. Art introduced a signi½cant new influence, does not coincide with life, according to as he was steeped in the ideas of the the Bauhaus manifesto, but rather aims Constructivists. The goal, he declared to create a total work of art, an edi½ce in 1925, should not be to create a total “that will one day rise toward the sky, work of art à la Wagner but rather “to the crystalline symbol of a new faith.” synthesize all the moments of life, which This edi½ce would resemble a cathedral is itself a total work of art encompassing more than anything else: like the old everything else and annihilating all sepa- religion, the new faith would need a ration.”12 The aim was no longer to pro- temple. Both were incarnations of the duce art but to shape life. To build hous- absolute. But this project, with its reli- es and cities was to organize a vital pro- gious overtones, was not maintained for cess. Thus architect-artists would hence- long. Bauhaus theoreticians could not forth fashion a new mankind. ignore the fact that the religious absolute Once again, however, Constructivist had been brought down to earth. Mod- ambitions would run up against politi- ern man’s temple was no longer a cathe- cal power. The founders of the Bauhaus dral. “Man has become God–his house would not have been unhappy to carry is his church.”11 out the architectural plans of the Nazis, who came to power in 1933, but the Na- 10 In Anthologie du Bauhaus (Brussels: Didier Devillez, 1995), 51–54; quoted in E. Michaud, “L’oeuvre d’art totale et le totalitarisme,” in d’art totale, 47; Anthologie du Bauhaus, 110; Mi- L’oeuvre d’art totale (Paris: Gallimard, 2003), chaud, L’oeuvre d’art totale, 53. 43, whose analysis I am following here. 12 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Peinture, photographie, 11 Bauhaus 1919–1969, Musée National d’Art ½lm (Nîmes: J. Chambon, 1993), 78; Michaud, Moderne, 1969, 13; quoted in Michaud, L’oeuvre L’oeuvre d’art totale, 54.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 zis chose to implement their own ‘total duce the metaphor to its literal meaning. Avant- work of art.’ The political revolution did Once political religions supplanted tra- gardes & totalitar- not need the support of revolutionary ditional beliefs, the transformation of ianism art. the individual and that of the state could In fact, there was a deep reason why be promoted in parallel. The new man the role of demiurge was not accorded and the new society both became works to artists: political leaders reserved it of art to be produced by the leader of the for themselves. The identi½cation of nation. the political leader with the artist, each working with different material but in Mussolini was quick to seize on the a similar spirit, reflected a long tradition parallel between political action and cre- but had yet to be transformed into a ative work. In November 1917, he wrote program of action. Plato compared the in Popolo d’Italia that “the Italian people statesman to the painter, whose gestures is now a deposit of precious mineral. A mimicked those of the divine creator. work of art is still possible. It requires a “[N]o city could ever be blessed unless government. A man. A man who com- its lineaments were traced by artists who bines the delicate touch of an artist with used the heavenly model . . . . They will the iron ½st of a warrior.” In 1922 he de- take the city and the characters of men, scribed himself as the “sculptor of the as they might a table, and ½rst wipe it Italian nation” and declared that “poli- clean.” Elsewhere he compares the leg- tics works with the most dif½cult and islator to the poet: “We are ourselves obdurate of materials, man.” The politi- authors of a tragedy, . . . the ½nest and cian, like the artist, must create the per- best we know how to make. In fact, our fect work out of the most refractory ma- whole polity has been constructed as a terial: marble in the one case, man in dramatization of a noble and perfect life the other. To anyone who would listen, . . . . [W]e also are poets in the ½nest of Mussolini explained that his goal was all dramas.”13 The German Romantics, to create new Italians, to transform the inspired by Platonic concepts of beau- Italian soul, to shape the masses, to mold ty, rediscovered this comparison of the an entire people. “The whole problem,” statesman with the artist–an artist who as he put it some years later to Emil Lud- works with an entire country as his raw wig, “is to dominate the masses as an material. artist does,”14 to turn a shapeless raw In any case, whether in Plato, in material into a masterpiece. To achieve French revolutionary discourse, or in this goal, he may use physical means Romantic doctrine, the idea of applying (Mussolini embraced various eugenicist artistic creation to social life remained ideas that were in the air) or spiritual just an idea rather than becoming a con- ones: the Great War had been a formida- crete project. The situation did not really ble educator, without which the new fas- change until the advent of the modern cist man would have been inconceivable. totalitarian state, in which the supreme leader wields the means necessary to re- 14 Quoted in L’homme nouveau dans l’Europe fasciste (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 7; quoted in E. 13 Republic, 500e–501a; Laws, 817b. Quoted Michaud, Un art de l’éternité (Paris: Gallimard, from The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith 1996), 17; Emil Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussoli- Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: ni (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1932); quoted in Pantheon Bollingen Series, 1963). L’homme nouveau, 284.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan In peacetime, mass organizations, espe- exercise their influence over all aspects Todorov on cially youth groups, would play an essen- of society. Both bore the hallmarks of nonviolence tial role and help transform the whole political religions. The Futurists recog- & violence country into a vast laboratory of human nized themselves in Mussolini and were experimentation. pleased that he reserved an important Mussolini’s project had one distinctive role for cultural action in the fabrication feature: il Duce was not content simply of the new man. In this respect, Filippo to be the artisan of Italy’s renewal but Tommaso Marinetti, the Italian Futurist, portrayed himself as its most consum- resembled Mayakovsky, the Russian Fu- mate product. He was both artist and turist: both sought to place their talent work of art. In seeking to fashion a new at the service of the revolution. man, he took his inspiration from his Fascism relied on artistic action to own image. In the beginning he sculpted transform society, to make it a spectacle his own image, as if he were a statue; worthy of admiration. Foreign observers the child of modest background trans- noted the aesthetic aspects of Fascist formed himself by a conscious effort of political action. The French writer Rob- the will, so as to appear to his compatri- ert Brasillach wrote that Fascism was “a ots as a perfect man, an example for oth- kind of poetry, the distinctive poetry of ers. Mussolini never missed an opportu- the twentieth century (along with Com- nity to demonstrate that he was capable munism, to be sure).”16 Particular atten- of doing the work of both peasant and tion was devoted to anything susceptible worker. He also liked to demonstrate his of being turned into a spectacle for the mastery of sports, such as swimming masses–holidays, parades, and indeed and skiing, as well as his ability to write architecture, which was regarded as the philosophy and literature. An editorial in supreme art because it encompassed all Critica fascista flatly stated, “For now the individuals and was available for all to regime’s only great artist is its founder, admire. But the aestheticization of the Mussolini. All the speeches he has given political never became an end in itself; and all the political articles and essays it always remained subordinate to the he has written suf½ce to show that he political objective. What became sacred is our greatest contemporary writer of under Fascism was not the beautiful but prose.”15 This was more than just flat- the state. tery. Once again, the association of art It has to be said that, in the eyes of il with politics was not fortuitous. Duce himself, his project ended in fail- Mussolini found both inspiration and ure: he did not succeed in transforming support in the contemporary avant- the Italians into new men or valiant Fas- garde, especially the Futurists. The ideo- cists, and he therefore believed that Italy logical proximity of the artistic and the would lose the war. He formulated even political movements is obvious. To be- this failure in artistic terms, however: gin, both were fond of the military meta- the problem lay in the material, too soft phor ‘avant-garde,’ the forerunner her- for its intended purpose. “What I lacked alding the coming of the revolution and was good material,” he told Galeazzo a new day. Both believed in the regener- Ciano a few months before his death. ative virtues of violence. Both sought to “Michelangelo himself needed marble

15 February 15, 1927; quoted in L’homme nou- 16 “Lettre à un soldat de la classe 60,” in Ecrit à veau, 82. Fresne (Paris: Plon, 1967), 140.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 to make statues. If he had had only clay, Art and Revolution.”19 Hitler himself Avant- he would have been a potter and nothing claimed to have seen Tristan and Isolde gardes & 17 totalitar- more.” thirty or forty times. ianism The special place accorded to Wag- With Hitler, the relation between po- ner’s youthful opera Rienzi suggests a litical action and artistic activity was no possible explanation for Hitler’s atti- less powerful, but it took a somewhat tude, particularly since his devotion to different form. As is well known, der that work persisted throughout his life. Führer reserved a special place for Wag- Years later, the overture to Rienzi was ner, whose very name stands, in Ger- regularly played at Nazi Party conven- man-speaking countries, for the idea of tions. When Hitler visited the compos- the artist–not as one ½gure among oth- er’s daughter-in-law, Winifred Wag- ers in society but as the very model of ner, in 1939, he spoke to her of the im- what society ought to be. Hermann pact this opera had had on him. Kubi- Rauschning, in his book Hitler Told Me, zek, who witnessed the conversation, reports, “Hitler refused to admit that he reports what Hitler said about hearing had precursors. He made only one ex- the work for the ½rst time: “It was at ception to this rule: Richard Wagner.” that moment that it all began.” Hitler This acknowledgment of Wagner was said much the same thing to his other not an isolated act. On May 5, 1924, friend (and favorite architect), Albert while in prison following an abortive Speer: “While still a young man, listen- attempt to seize power, Hitler wrote to ing to this inspired music at the Linz Wagner’s son Siegfried to say that he opera, I had the vision of a German found in Siegfried’s father “the spiritu- Reich, which I would unify and make al sword with which we are ½ghting to- great.”20 day.”18 Later he established a special re- One might therefore assume that Hit- lationship with the inhabitants of Bay- ler’s attraction to this opera was deter- reuth. mined, above all, by its subject: how a What accounts for this dubious priv- powerful orator can capture the atten- ilege accorded to Wagner? Hitler had tion of a people and what dangers he been fascinated by Wagner’s music from ought to anticipate. But this explana- his youth in Austria. Rienzi, in particular, tion does not go far enough, as we can plunged him into a state of stupor and see from Hitler’s familiarity with Wag- ecstasy. But his worship of Wagner did ner’s other musical works as well as with not end there. His best friend from this his writings. Hitler, who in his youth period, August Kubizek, reports that dreamed of becoming a painter, could “Adolf sometimes recited by heart . . . not have been unaware of Wagner’s the text of a letter or note of Wagner’s general notions about the relationship or read to me out loud from his writing, such as the The Art Work of the Future or 19 August Kubizek, Adolf Hitler. Mein Jugendfre- und (Graz: L. Stocker, 1953), 101; quoted in B. 17 Galeazzo Ciano, Diario 1939–1943 (Milan: Hamann, La Vienne d’Hitler (Paris: Editions des Rizzoli, 1963), 445; quoted in E. Gentile, Qu’est- Syrtes, 2001), 88. ce que la fascisme? (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 393. 20 Kubizek, Adolf Hitler, 343; quoted in Ha- 18 Hermann Rauschning, Hitler m’a dit (Par- mann, La Vienne d’Hitler, 77; Albert Speer, Jour- is: Coopération, 1939), 255; Musique en jeu 23 nal de Spandau (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1975), (1976): 60. 108; quoted in Michaud, Un art de l’éternité, 86.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan between art and society. What attract- published a front-page article entitled Todorov ed him was precisely the continuity be- “Art as the Basis of Creative Political on nonviolence tween the two, the possibility that each Power,” which stated, “There exists an & violence might support the other. Though Wag- intimate and indissoluble connection ner gave up on revolution in the streets between the Führer’s artistic works and to devote himself to the creation of a his great political work . . . . His artistic total work of art, his opera, the goal re- endeavors . . . were the prerequisite for mained the same: to act on his people, his creative idea of the totality.”21 It was to make his country great and prosper- because he had been an artist that Hitler ous. Similarly, Hitler, having experi- knew how to lead his people. It is worth enced not revolution but war, gave up noting, moreover, that a good half of the the practice of painting and committed members of Hitler’s ½rst government himself to producing an even more ‘to- had previously been involved in the arts. tal’ work of art: the new German people. In 1937, Goebbels concluded: “All of Hit- Unlike Mussolini, however, he did not ler’s work is proof of his artistic spirit: put himself forward as an example of a his state is truly an edi½ce of classical successful ‘work.’ In his case, the gap composition. The artistic creation of his between the guide and the masses was political work establishes his preemi- unbreachable. Hitler was an artist, not nence among German artists, a position a work of art. he has earned by his character and na- The resemblance of the two postures, ture.”22 Wagner’s dream seemed to be that of the artist and that of the states- coming true at last. man, can be found in the work of oth- Why is the artistic model so attrac- er Nazi theoreticians. In 1929, Joseph tive to politicians? We know that since Goebbels, who thought of himself as a the Romantic crisis, artists, especially writer and therefore an artist, wrote a poets, have sought to occupy the place novel entitled Michael, in which he bor- of priests, of being guides and educators rowed Mussolini’s simile: the people of the people. In the eyes of Nazi leaders, were like the sculptor’s stone, material artists also enjoyed this advantage over to be shaped. Two years later he insisted: the servants of the old religions: they “For us the mass is but shapeless materi- were not obedient to an independent al. Only the hand of the artist can bring Book or law but were free to de½ne their forth a people from the mass and a na- own goals and their own ways of achiev- tion from the people.” After coming to ing them. This is the privilege of genius, power, he wrote an open letter to orches- the model of every artist: it spurns all tra conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler in rules so as to be totally free to create. By April 1933: “We who are giving shape to the end of the nineteenth century, liber- modern German politics think of our- ation from the weight of tradition had selves as artists entrusted with the lofty responsibility of taking the brute mass 21 Combat pour Berlin, ed. Saint-Just (Paris, and shaping it into a solid and complete 1966, original 1931), 38; quoted in Michaud, image of the people.” No work of art Un art de l’éternité, 20, 62. could be more total or more ambitious. And the best preparation for the role 22 Quoted by Franz Dröge and Michael Müller, Die Macht der Schönheit, Avangarde of statesman was none other than prac- und Faschismis oder die Geburt der Massenkul- tice in the arts. In April 1936, the Nazi tur (Hamburg: Europäische Verlangsanstalt, party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter 1995), 57.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 become the rallying cry of avant-garde stone or wood a perfect form, if not to Avant- movements in the arts. Cubists, Futur- shape clay or plaster in accordance with gardes & totalitar- ists, Dadaists, and abstract painters out- an idea of perfection? ianism spokenly asserted their right to shape Thus, what mattered was not so much the world according to their will. art as such, although Hitler invariably Thus, for Hitler it was no longer emphasized its exemplary role; it was enough simply to aestheticize politics, rather art in the service of life. Hermann to stage triumphal marches and funeral von Keyserling, a Nazi fellow-traveler, processions, to combine dazzling light- said as much in the title of a speech he ing with stirring music. He had to fuse gave in 1936: “Life is an Art.” Germanic politics and aesthetics, subordinating all myths and legends of the sort that Wag- institutions and actions to the ultimate ner had exploited were invaluable, but objective of producing a Volk, a new peo- it was, above all, the everyday life of the ple–new in both a spiritual and a physi- German people that would bene½t from cal sense. The artist had become demi- an infusion of myth and legend. Every urge. “Anyone who fails to see that Na- individual would behave as an artist, tional Socialism is a religion doesn’t at the appropriate level. Work must be- know anything about it,” Hitler said to come creative; utilitarian activities must Rauschning. “It is more than a religion: respect norms of beauty. it is the will to create a new man.”23 He conceived of this as a deliberate effort, Hitler seized power in Germany after like that of an artist in his studio or an gaining a foothold in the 1932 elections. inventor in a laboratory, on the scale of At almost the same time, Stalin, having an entire nation. defeated his rivals within the Commu- The two principal means of carrying nist Party, consolidated his absolute out this vast project were propaganda power and began to devote some of his and eugenics. The propaganda effort attention to the situation of the arts in could well pro½t from the example of the Soviet Union. Previously, various artists, while the eugenics effort would schools had competed for the right to be depend on scienti½c progress. Both art seen as the foremost representative of and science were to be enlisted in sup- the Communist Revolution. Stalin put port of the Nazi program. Eugenics an end to this squabbling by replacing a meant eliminating defective individuals range of arts organizations with a single and inferior races as well as selecting the centralized ‘union’ per profession: a best individuals and controlling their re- Writers’ Union, a Painters’ Union, and production. No longer was science con- so on. tent to interpret the world; now, in keep- At the same time the slogan ‘socialist ing with Marx’s dictum, it aimed to realism’ was imposed as the de½ning change it, to bring it closer to the desired goal of Soviet art. At ½rst sight a danger ideal–an ideal that science claimed to of incompatibility between the two have deduced rigorously from empirical terms seems to exist, since ‘realism’ ap- observation. In this it resembled art: pears to involve the relation of represen- what was the work of the sculptor if not tation to reality and therefore to belong to bring forth from a shapeless mass of to the category of truth, whereas ‘social- ist’ refers to an ideal and therefore in- 23 Dröge and Müller, Die Macht der Schönheit, volves the power of a work to promote 273. the good. What if truth and goodness,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan ‘is’ and ‘ought,’ proved not to be so placed by the engineer, and the methods Todorov harmonious? What if realism did not of the humble craftsman were to give on nonviolence lead to the defense of socialism? Sta- way to scienti½c knowledge of reality & violence lin, who liked to discuss such questions and of the masses whose soul it was the with writers, believed such incompati- writer’s task to shape. bility to be inconceivable. “If a writer However, unlike the Constructivists, honestly reflects the truth of life, he who toyed with the same image, Stalin will inevitably come to Marxism,” he denied all initiative to the specialists insisted.24 of the spirit. The Party was in charge Andrei Zhdanov, a Party theoretician, of construction, the master builder; provided the explanation of this inevi- the writer-engineer had only to follow table solidarity, in a speech to the First orders. The need to observe reality and Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. So- describe it faithfully was not even men- cialism was the Soviet future, he said, tioned. The role of the writer, like that and the seed of that future already exist- of the Marxist philosopher, was not to ed in the present. Writers who realisti- interpret the world but to change it. The cally reported what they saw around works of the 1930s that adhered most them must therefore include the social- closely to this program were narratives ist future. “Soviet literature must learn of individual or collective education. By to show our heroes, must learn to project describing the promise of the present, itself into our future. That future is no the writer helped bring the future into mere utopian ideal, because the ground- being. As the Romantics had hoped, life work for it is already being laid today as imitated art. Thus, Nikolai Ostrovsky’s a result of conscious planned effort.”25 How the Steel Was Tempered was the story But was that future so certain that it of a man whose Bolshevik faith enabled could be described as present? Yes, be- him to overcome paralysis and blind- cause progress is no accident: the future ness, while Anton Makarenko’s Peda- will unfold according to both the laws of gogical Poem told of the transformation history and the will of the Party (as set of a group of young vagabonds. Litera- forth in its of½cial plans). Hence, it is ture therefore ceased to search for an perfectly predictable. absolute of its own and subordinated Zhdanov also reminded the Congress itself to the propaganda needs of the that during a 1932 meeting with writers Party, which stood alone in possession Stalin had bestowed a new de½nition on of a worldly absolute. them: they were “engineers of the hu- Much the same can be said of the oth- man soul.” In the Russian tradition, it er arts, which were denied any autono- was commonplace for the great writer mous objective. Looking for an appro- to be awarded the role of teacher of the priate form, artists turned, as in Nazi nation. Now the teacher was to be re- Germany, to the pompous bourgeois styles of the nineteenth century rath- 24 Report by S. I. Sechukov, Neistovye revniteli er than to the revolutionary art of the (Moscow: Moskovskij rabochij•∨, 1970), 339; twentieth, which was deemed less ef- quoted in V. Strada, “Le réalisme socialiste,” in xx fective. In practice, however, even such Histoire de la littérature russe. Le e siècle, vol. 3 zealous propagandists as Mayakovsky, (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 20. Vsevolod Meyerhold, and Sergei Eisen- 25 Pervyj vsesojuznyj s’ezd sovetskikh pisatelej stein tangled with the Party, with the re- (Moscow, 1934), 5. sult that the ½rst committed suicide, the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 second was shot, and the third knuckled tion a fourth. The state security organs, Avant- under and toed the party line. known successively as the Cheka, gpu, gardes & totalitar- When Stalin called Soviet writers nkvd, and kgb, had every imaginable ianism “engineers of the human soul,” he was means of coercion at their disposal. flattering them. In reality, they were Might they not turn out to be better mere technicians. The true creator of “engineers of the human soul” than new souls, the blacksmith who ham- writers? Indeed, Maxim Gorky, the lead- mered out a new nation, was of course ing Soviet writer, described their agents Stalin himself, backed by his closest in just those terms: “The gpu is not on- collaborators. The only true artist was ly the keen sword of the dictatorship of the dictator–an artist close to God– the proletariat but also a school for the since his work was the entire nation, reeducation of tens of thousands of peo- with millions of people as his raw mate- ple who are hostile to us.” After a visit rial. Paradoxically, we ½nd con½rmation to the White Sea-Baltic Canal, a gigan- of this idea in a text written by the great- tic project built by the labor of zeks from est Soviet poet of the period, Boris Pas- Soviet prison camps, he described it as ternak. In a poem signi½cantly entitled a “miracle of reeducation,”27 a success- “The Artist” and published in a Mos- ful transformation of human beings cow newspaper on January 1, 1936, Pas- through labor, conveniently forgetting ternak drew a contrast between the soli- the fact that the canal bed was littered tary poet, who stays home and contem- with the corpses of prisoners. Under to- plates his soul, and the man in the Krem- talitarianism, in Russia as in Germany, lin, Stalin, who was bringing to life the “work makes free.” most audacious of dreams and who daily The physical transformation of the hu- performed “a fugue in two voices,” com- man race was not as important a part of bining “two extreme principles that the Communist project as it was of the know everything there is to know about Nazi project, but it did play a role. Evi- each other,” poetry and power. He did dence of this can be seen in Leon Trot- not act as an individual would act be- sky’s Literature and Revolution, published cause he was “a genius of action,” “an in Moscow in 1924. In the conclusion of act of global dimension.”26 What the that work, Trotsky tried to imagine the traditional poet accomplished in his socialist society of the future. The fron- imagination, Stalin would accomplish tier between art and industry would be on the scale of world history: altering abolished–everyone would be an artist the destiny of mankind. –and so would the boundary between From this standpoint, art in the nar- art and nature. Indeed, the man of the row sense was merely one of the means future would not be content simply to available to the artist-dictator. To be reshape society; he would also trans- sure, it was a particularly effective form nature to suit his desires. “The cur- means, as Communist theoreticians rent location of mountains, rivers, ½eld noted and Nazi propagandists agreed. and meadows, steppes, forests, and Education was another means of action, coasts cannot be regarded as de½nitive.” social pressure exerted through the fam- The human demiurge was truly the ily a third, and manipulation of informa- 27 Belomorsko-Baltijskij kanal imeni Stalina (Mos- 26 O. Ivinskaya, Mes années avec Pasternak (Par- cow, 1934), 397; quoted in M. Heller, “Maxime is: Fayard, 1978). Gorki,” in Histoire de la littérature russe, 78–82.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan equal of God: he would create a world It should be said, however, that the Todorov to suit his own convenience. It was in dictator was alone in identifying his on nonviolence this context that Trotsky envisioned the work with artistic creation. The subju- & violence transformation of the human element of gated masses, whether in Stalin’s Rus- the universe. This task would be entrust- sia, Hitler’s Germany, or Mussolini’s ed, as we have seen, to educators, both of Italy, failed to perceive the fusion of pol- individuals and of society as a whole. It itics and art and were unaware that their would also be shared by the organizers lives were being shaped in accordance of communal life. “At the initiative of with a canon of beauty. The absolute in society, the family will be relieved of the the name of which the state subjugated tedious chore of feeding and raising chil- them, and which they were supposed to dren.” Life in communist society could worship, wore a very different visage; it then advance not blindly but in a fully appeared as a collective, not an individ- planned and controlled way. ual, ideal. In Fascist Italy, this new god But that was not all. Trotsky envi- was called the nation or the state; in Na- sioned an even more radical way of zi Germany, it was the people; in Soviet obtaining the humanity he wanted: Russia, Communism. In all three places, eugenics. Why should one shrink from the high priests of the cult organized changing the human race through selec- themselves as a political party. The aver- tion and organic action, or what would age citizen of these states was not at lib- today be called genetic manipulation? erty to shape his own life as a work of Scienti½c arti½cial selection would sup- art, according to his own conception of plement natural selection: “Should the beauty. He was obliged to conform to the human race, which no longer grovels common ideal. Where the dictator saw before God, the Czar, or Capital, capitu- the fusion of two modern approaches to late to the obscure laws of heredity and the absolute, the political and the artis- blind sexual selection? When man be- tic, the people saw only the imposition comes free, he will seek to achieve a bet- of a political absolute: the revolution, ter equilibrium in the functioning of his the party, the guide. The role of beauty organs and a more harmonious develop- was quite minor. ment of his tissues.” After a successful physical transformation, human beings How are we to interpret this parallel “will achieve a higher level and create between the ideas and forces that in- a superior biological and social type, a spired both avant-garde artists and total- superman if you will.”28 itarian dictators in the period between Trotsky would later be deprived of the two world wars? Following Walter power by Stalin and never have the op- Benjamin, it has often been noted that portunity to put his ideas into practice, extremist political movements had a though the Nazis did. In pursuit of the tendency to combine aesthetic and po- goal of creating a new man and a new so- litical considerations in two different ciety, Stalin made do with more familiar ways: “Fascism naturally tends to aes- levers of power, among them the party, theticize politics . . . . The response of the police, educators, writers, and art- communism is to politicize art.”29 ists. 29 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the 28 Leon Trotsky, Littérature et révolution (Paris: Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illumina- Julliard, 1964), 213, 215, 217. tions (New York: Schocken, 1986).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 What we see here, however, is a prox- salvation, whether of all mankind or of a Avant- gardes & imity that cannot be reduced to an in- particular people. Political and aesthetic totalitar- strumentalization of one project by the Manichaeanism may ½nd themselves at ianism other. Rather, it shows us how to under- odds in certain circumstances, yet they stand both as stemming from the same share similar worldviews. Proponents of matrix. What dictators and avant-garde totalitarian doctrine may have been con- artists have in common is their radical- temptuous of Romantic thinkers, just as ism, their fundamentalism. Both are Romantic thinkers may have spurned prepared to start ex nihilo, to take no political engagement of any kind, yet account of what already exists, in order both were caught up in the same histor- to construct a work based solely on their ical movement. Karl Popper, who was own criteria. What differentiates them, aware of the similarity between politi- by contrast, is the scale on which they cal extremism and aesthetic extremism, work: that of an entire country, includ- ended his analysis of the origins of total- ing its people, in one case; that of a itarianism with these words: “The en- book, a canvas, a stage, a house, a street, chanting dream of a marvelous world is or, at most, a neighborhood in the other. nothing more than a romantic vision.”30 What they have in common is their to- We now know the damage the dream talizing ambition, which recognizes no of total revolution can do when the ideal sacred boundary: the artist does not re- that inspires it is political in nature. The spect existing aesthetic canons; the dic- utopian visions that proposed a radiant tator is ready to overturn all prior social future in the place of present mediocri- norms. Faithful to the Promethean proj- ty turned into the totalitarian systems ect that permeates all modernity, both of the twentieth century, a remedy far artist and dictator propose to fabricate worse than the disease they purported an entirely new art, new men, new peo- to cure. Today we spurn the peddlers ples. Nothing is given; everything is the of political dreams, the utopians who product of the will. Their ambition is promised imminent happiness for all, in½nite, yet it de½nes an enclosed space, because we have learned that such because it recognizes nothing outside of promises served to hide the sinister ma- it. Artists and dictators, intoxicated by neuvers of Lenin and Stalin, Mussolini pride, are united by the belief that they and Hitler. We sometimes think of Ro- are masters of the entire process of con- mantic images of artistic perfection as struction–whether it be of works of art the antithesis of those political dreams. or of societies. In reality, that is far from the truth. The This comparison of Romantic and rev- two were not simply associated or com- olutionary projects also suggests a more petitive; they grew out of the same con- profound relation between the two, go- ception of the world, the same convic- ing back to their origins in the nine- tion of possessing a recipe for the per- teenth century. Consciously or uncon- fect creation, one that would not need to sciously, Romantic thinkers embraced take any account of earlier ways of living a Manichaean vision of the world: for or creating. Both posited a radical oppo- them, artists and poets constituted the sition between low and high, present elite of mankind, and art played the role and future, evil and good, and sought to reserved for gnosis in ancient religious doctrine. The same can be said of utopi- 30 Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies an thinkers, who dreamed of collective (London: Routledge, 1945).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.51 by guest on 02 October 2021 Tzvetan eliminate the ½rst term of each pair once Todorov and for all. But if the ideal ceases to be a on nonviolence horizon and turns into a rule of everyday & violence life, disaster follows: the reign of terror. History teaches us that the Romantic dream–though in½nitely less lethal than its inverted double, political utopianism –is doomed to disappointment nonethe- less.

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