A fact is still not the whole truth; it is merely the raw material from which the real truth of art must be smelted and extracted—the chicken must not be roasted with its feathers. This, however, is precisely what reverence for the fact results in—the accidental and inessential is mixed with the essential and typical. We must learn to pluck the fact of its inessential plumage; we must be able to extract meaning from the fact.
So spake Gorky as he explained how socialist realism did not merely depict reality but was to present the reality made present by the success of the Revolution, which was only invisible to those who were still lost in bourgeois illusions and confusions. There is so much more to say about this but the metaphor here is really all that counts.
Soviet Russia as a plucked chicken.
Thank you, Gorky.
No comments:
Post a Comment