Culture and Morality

THE JOURNAL CICLON CONSIDERS IT AN INELUCTABLE DUTY TO PASS JUDGMENT on all cultural politics, whether of the State or private, which have to do with the situation of the artist in Cuban society. At a moment in which the life of the artist is becoming more precarious, not to say unsustainable, it is necessary to indicate the dangers which threaten his survival. Already around 1920, Jacques Maritain warned: "The modern world, which had promised the artist everything, hardly leaves him the means of subsistence. Founded upon the two natural principles of the fecundity of money and the end of the utilitarian dream. . . imposing its smoking machinery and its accelerated matter upon man, the modern world is molding human activity in a properly inhuman form, in a properly diabolical direction. The man of speculative spirit can only hold firm if he does without security and comfort; jobs, success, or glory will award the versatility of the buffoon; more than ever. . . the hero and the saint will pay for their pride with poverty and solitude." These words of a philosopher—whom we could hardly call an iconoclast or revolutionary—denounce a situation recognized by all the intellectuals of the world. What is grave is that in these moments not only society pursues and hems in the artist; also the State and the official organs direct anti-intellectual vendettas. The English writer Cecil Collins writes: "modern society has managed to make imagination into poetry, Art, and Religion, the three magical representatives of life, a heresy, and the living symbol of this heresy is the Idiot . . . the Saint, the artist, the poet, and the Idiot are the same person.

In our country, where culture has always had something improvised and superficial about it, the artist has lived at the margins of society. Scorned and without the least stimulus on the part of the State and its official organs, it is the true pariah of the nation. To publish a book, to sell a painting or a sculpture under these adverse circumstances would be almost impossible. One reason is that in Cuba almost no one reads and fewer read native works. It is sad to admit.

When the Cuban state has tried to convert itself into the Protector of Arts, its cultural politics have been tainted by demagoguery and wrongheadedness. Thus, recently, a brand-new National Institute of Culture was instituted, where the old "leaders" of the national culture were immediately gathered. We would think that in its bosom we were going to find the country's preeminent intellectuals. But unfortunately, we only find an association of journalists—from the political croniqueur to the writer of the encomiastic glosses of the Institute. Not a single representative of the new literary promotion, not a single artist of renown entered the new sanctuary of culture. The government was looking for a climate of absolute conformity to the orthodox ideas that its director embodies. They rejected flat out whatever minority figure might be polemical or combative on account of the newness of his ideas. They preferred to count on the mediocre and banal writer who has nothing to say and does not dare object to anything. When one could imagine, for example, the selection of a Cintio Vitier or a José Antonio Portuondo for the office of Literary Assessor, the person chosen was a journalist who years ago had renounced the risks and rigors of literary creation. The section charged with promoting sculpture came up with a good academic that follows from the sidelines all the new and creative development in that art. And so on down the line. Of course, those who know about such things understood perfectly well that it was all a façade. They would give out a couple of stipends to keep up appearances. They would send circulating libraries to the country—populated with illiterate people. They would...