Artists, Thinkers, Morality, and Politics

Artists, Thinkers, Morality, and Politics

I have been surprised at the somewhat mild reactions of those who burden themselves with a task of passing severe unfavorable judgments on the decisions of various aging Vietnamese expatriate singers and musicians who opted for a return to their homeland in order to practice their craft before a much larger---hence more lucrative---and still adoring audience, to the recent death of Pham Duy, a titan among Vietnamese musicians, who, along with Duy Quang, his son and a singer, caused a storm of controversy and a flood of ill-tempered and self-righteous ink from self-appointed moralists and self-regarded sage political commentators when these two artists chose to come back to Vietnam.

I am of an opinion that artists have a right to practice their craft (it's hard to make money off art) wherever they feel like it as long as they don't prostitute themselves into servicing any ulterior political aims such as glorifying the repressive regime in power. Certainly, Pham Duy and Duy Quang, and Khanh Ly for that matter, did not do that. Those who have attacked them are small-minded, self-righteous little ignorant monsters and intellectual nitwits who cannot think in a proper manner. In addition, very probably the attackers don't possess an ounce of artistic sensibilities or an iota of original thinking in them.

Artists and thinkers should be primarily measured by the extent they have contributed to the aesthetics and richness of thoughts of the human race, not by their alleged transgressions of the morals and politics of the day unless the transgressions are of heinous and revolting nature.

Heidegger was pro-Nazi, but that didn't diminish his stature as a premier thinker. According to Wikipedia:

"Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) has been considered by many to be one of the titans of twentieth century philosophy. His international reputation was assured with the publication in 1927 of Being and Time, a book that was characterized by the young Jurgen Habermas as 'the most significant philosophical event since Hegel's Phänomenologie ...' The success of Being and Time was immediate and its influence pervasive. Many currents of contemporary thought over the past 70 years have been inspired by and in some cases directly derived from the work of Heidegger. Among these we can mention existentialism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, eco-feminism, and various trends in psychology, theology and literature. His writings have influenced thinkers as diverse as Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Paul Tillich and countless others. Heidegger's distinguished career as professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg was marred by a singular event in his life. After Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 Heidegger the world-renowned philosopher became Heidegger the Nazi, holding membership card number 312589..."

Sartre was a notorious womanizer. He was drawn to teenagers. Sartre even slept with his adopted daughter. Camus was no better, but his wife, Francine, unlike Sartre's long-term companion, Simone de Beauvoir, didn't reciprocate the infidelity. Both Sartre and Camus were Nobel Prize winners

Picasso was also a legendary womanizer and cruel to his mistresses. Picasso needed no introduction.

From this side of the Atlantic, we had Erza Pound, to whom T.S. Eliot dedicated his monumental poem, The Waste Land, which began with the immortal lines:

" April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain..."

and who was a supporter of Italian Fascism, but his name will be likely to live on in American Literature while his politics would be regarded as an errant episode of an unbalanced, but brilliant mind. Here was how his friend Ernest Hemingway remembered him, "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He writes articles about them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide." I would be honored to have a man such as Erza Pound to be my friend.

And finally, we had J.D. Salinger, about whom I did a preliminary thesis in my salad days, sexually involved with an 18-year-old Joyce Maynard when he was 53 years of age for ten months. Salinger's attraction to young girls was probably foretold in his classic story, "For Esmé- with Love and Squalor". Salinger was an important minor writer. His first novel, "Catcher in the Rye" and his collection of short stories, "Nine Stories" have brought solace, comfort, and pleasure to teenagers and adults alike.

My point in writing this short piece was to stress that artists and thinkers are human, and as humans, they are not perfect. In addition, they were not born to please their detractors. They were born to actualize their potential. Their primary obligation is to themselves and to the arts and the thoughts that concern them. The famous and talented ones certainly did actualize their potential. Some of them might have committed acts that conventional and humdrum minds deem morally and politically offensive, but on balance their existence on this planet was still much more meaningful and beneficial to the human race than that of their self-righteous detractors who usually are absolutely nobodies, but love to make noises so they could feel better about themselves.

Wissai
January 31, 2013