"If we
start with the presupposition that art constitutes a distinctive way of seeking
the truth — truth in the broadest sense of the word, that is, chiefly the truth
of the artist’s inner experience — then there is only one art, whose sole
criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage
and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth, or perhaps the urgency and
profundity of this truth. … The prospect of public recognition and lucrative
commissions in our country, today more than at other times and in other places,
is incompatible with that stubborn, uncompromising effort to reach out for some
personal truth without which, it seems, there can be no real art. The more an
artist compromises to oblige power and gain advantages, the less good art can
we expect from him; the more freely and independently, by contrast, he does his
own thing — whether with the expression of a ‘rebellious bohemian’ or without it — the
better his chances of creating something good — though it remains only a chance:
what is uncompromising need not automatically be good. … Every meaningful
cultural act — wherever it takes place — is unquestionably good in and of itself,
simply because it exists and because it offers something to someone. Yet can
this value ‘in itself’ really be separated from ‘the common good’? Is not one
an integral part of the other from the start? Does not the bare fact that a
work of art has meant something to someone — even if only for a moment, perhaps
to a single person — already somehow change, however minutely, the overall
condition for the better? … Can we separate the awakening human soul from what
it always, already is — an awakening human community?”
—from “Six Asides About Culture,” found in Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965-1990 by Václav Havel
See also: "Harold Bloom on Reading As Listening"
