The power of political art : the 1930s literary left reconsidered

356 Pages·2000·17.733 MB·English

by  Robert Shulman

The Power of Political Art
The 1930s Literary Left
Robert Shulman
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/powerofpolitical0000shul
THE POWER OF POLITICAL ART

THE POWER OF
POLETEEA L ART
THE 1930S LITERARY LEFT RECONSIDERED
ROBERT SHULMAN
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS CHAPEL HILL AND LONDON
Parts of this study have appeared in © 2000 The University of North Carolina Press
““T Was Marching’: The Radical Re- All rights reserved
portage of Meridel Le Sueur,’ NST1
Designed by April Leidig-Higgins
(1988): 221-31; “Political Art and
Set in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Ethnicity: The Radical Discourse of
Manufactured in the United States of America
Meridel Le Sueur,” in The Future of
American Modernism: Ethnic Writing The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
between the Wars, edited by William permanence and durability of the Committee on
Boelhower (Amsterdam: Free Uni- Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
versity Press, 1990), pp. 217-42; and Council on Library Resources.
“Subverting and Reconstructing the
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dream: The Radical Voices of Le
Shulman, Robert, 1930— The power of political art:
Sueur, Herbst, and Wright,” in Defer-
the 1930s literary left reconsidered / Robert Shulman.
ring a Dream: Literary Sub-Versions of
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
the American Columbiad, edited by
ISBN 0-8078-2540-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
Gert Buelens and Ernst Rudin (Basel:
ISBN 0-8078-4853-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)
Birkhauser, 1994), pp. 24-36.
1. American literature—2oth century—History and
criticism. 2. Communism and literature—United
States—History—2oth century. 3. Politics and
literature—United States—History—2oth cen-
tury. 4. Authors, American—2oth century—
Political and social views. 5. Communism— United
States—History—2oth century. 6. Right and left
(Political science) in literature. 7. Power (Social
sciences) in literature. 8. Radicalism in literature.
9. Nineteen thirties. 1. Title.
PS228.C6 S58 2000 810.9'358—de21 99-055916
04.0023 0,1 00) 5 43) 27.
To the usual suspects—
Sandy, David, Natasha, Smadar, and Talia

Rereading Native Son is an experience of renewing the dialectical awareness
of history and society, but is not in itselfa n aesthetic experience.
Harold Bloom, introduction to Richard Wright’s Native Son
It is clear from this history that aesthetic, with its specialized references to art,
to visual appearance, and to a category of what is “fine” or “beautiful,” is a key
formation in a group of meanings which at once emphasized and isolated sub-
jective sense-activity as the basis of art and beauty as distinct, for example,
from social or cultural interpretations. It is an element in the divided modern
consciousness of art and society.
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society
We must come back to where we started, to the critic’s primary function. He must
judge the work ofa rt as work of art. But knowing form and content to be insepa-
rable, he will recognize his duty to both. Judgment of art is unavoidably both an
aesthetic and a social act, and the critic’s sense of social responsibility gives him
a deeper thirst for meaning.
F. O. Matthiessen, “The Responsibilities of the Critic,” 1949
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