years. And their responsibility is to prepare the people who are now forming those mobs, to prepare those people for that day. You know, to minimize the damage to them , even.
Now, the majority rule in the South is not a majority rule at all; it’s a mob rule. And what these mobs feel is a moral vacuum, which is created by the lack of a leader. And it seems to me this is the way the world is. And I’m not talking about dictatorships. I mean that—
Statesmen.
Statesmen, and people who are sitting in government are supposed to know more about government than people who are driving trucks and digging potatoes and trying to raise their children. That’s what you’re in the office for.
Someone, then, with a sense of history, perhaps.
Yes, which is precisely what we don’t have here.
Sense of history.
Yes, if you don’t know what’s happened behind you, you have no idea what’s happening around you. That’s a law.
Earlier, Jim, you mentioned that for a national policy to be straightened out, the private policies, the private lives, the individual lives, must be.
That’s right.
And you spoke, too, of your job as a writer ; you’ve got to write. And in this chapter with Bergman, “The Northern Protestant,” there’s a beautiful comment here: “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they’re to survive, are forced at last to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up. All of it, the literal and the fanciful.” Of whom you speak, of Bergman. But all art is a kind of confession, as you apparently do in all your writings.
I think it has to be a kind of confession. I don’t mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. But I mean the effort seems to me is to—If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms in which you’re connected to other lives, and they can discover, too, the terms in which they’re connected to other people.
It’s happened to every one of us, I’m sure, that one has read something which you thought only happened to you and you discover that it happened a hundred years ago to Dostoyevsky. And this is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person who always thinks that he’s alone. This is why it’s important.
Art would not be important if life were not more important. And life is important. And life is . . . Mainly, most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to him from one moment to the next or how he will bear it. And this is irreducible, and it’s true for everybody.
Now, it is true that the nature of society has to be to create,
among its citizens, an illusion of safety. But it’s also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion, and artists are here to disturb the peace.
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
Yes. They have to disturb the peace; otherwise, chaos.
Life is risk.
It is indeed; it is. It always is. It always is. And people have to know this. Some way they have to know it in order to get through their risks.
So the safety itself is wholly illusory.
Yes. There’s no such a thing as safety on this planet. No one knows that much. No one ever will—let alone about the world, but about himself. That’s why of course it’s unsafe. And people in some way have to know this. And this is what the whole sense of tragedy is really all about. And people think, I think, that a sense of tragedy is a kind of embroidery, or something irrelevant which you can take or leave. But in fact, it’s a necessity. That’s what the blues are all about. That’s what spirituals are about. It is the ability to look on things as they are and survive your losses. Or even not survive them, but to know that they’re coming. Because knowing they’re coming is the only possible insurance you have, some faint insurance, that you will
Now, the majority rule in the South is not a majority rule at all; it’s a mob rule. And what these mobs feel is a moral vacuum, which is created by the lack of a leader. And it seems to me this is the way the world is. And I’m not talking about dictatorships. I mean that—
Statesmen.
Statesmen, and people who are sitting in government are supposed to know more about government than people who are driving trucks and digging potatoes and trying to raise their children. That’s what you’re in the office for.
Someone, then, with a sense of history, perhaps.
Yes, which is precisely what we don’t have here.
Sense of history.
Yes, if you don’t know what’s happened behind you, you have no idea what’s happening around you. That’s a law.
Earlier, Jim, you mentioned that for a national policy to be straightened out, the private policies, the private lives, the individual lives, must be.
That’s right.
And you spoke, too, of your job as a writer ; you’ve got to write. And in this chapter with Bergman, “The Northern Protestant,” there’s a beautiful comment here: “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they’re to survive, are forced at last to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up. All of it, the literal and the fanciful.” Of whom you speak, of Bergman. But all art is a kind of confession, as you apparently do in all your writings.
I think it has to be a kind of confession. I don’t mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. But I mean the effort seems to me is to—If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms in which you’re connected to other lives, and they can discover, too, the terms in which they’re connected to other people.
It’s happened to every one of us, I’m sure, that one has read something which you thought only happened to you and you discover that it happened a hundred years ago to Dostoyevsky. And this is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person who always thinks that he’s alone. This is why it’s important.
Art would not be important if life were not more important. And life is important. And life is . . . Mainly, most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to him from one moment to the next or how he will bear it. And this is irreducible, and it’s true for everybody.
Now, it is true that the nature of society has to be to create,
among its citizens, an illusion of safety. But it’s also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion, and artists are here to disturb the peace.
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
Yes. They have to disturb the peace; otherwise, chaos.
Life is risk.
It is indeed; it is. It always is. It always is. And people have to know this. Some way they have to know it in order to get through their risks.
So the safety itself is wholly illusory.
Yes. There’s no such a thing as safety on this planet. No one knows that much. No one ever will—let alone about the world, but about himself. That’s why of course it’s unsafe. And people in some way have to know this. And this is what the whole sense of tragedy is really all about. And people think, I think, that a sense of tragedy is a kind of embroidery, or something irrelevant which you can take or leave. But in fact, it’s a necessity. That’s what the blues are all about. That’s what spirituals are about. It is the ability to look on things as they are and survive your losses. Or even not survive them, but to know that they’re coming. Because knowing they’re coming is the only possible insurance you have, some faint insurance, that you will
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