at is not orthodox
will reach the printing press. It is so easy to make the excuse of
lack of paper and the urgent need for manifestoes. Thus there may
well come to be a repetition of the attitude of the mediaeval Church to
the sagas and legends of the people, except that, in this case, it is
the folk tales which will be preserved, and the more sensitive and
civilized products banned. The only poet who seems to be much spoken
of at present in Russia is one who writes rough popular songs. There
are revolutionary odes, but one may hazard a guess that they resemble
our patriotic war poetry.

I said that this state of affairs may in the long run be bad for art,
but the contrary may equally well prove to be the truth. It is of
course discouraging and paralysing to the old-style artist, and it is
death to the old individual art which depended on subtlety and oddity
of temperament, and arose very largely from the complicated psychology
of the idle. There it stands, this old art, the purest monument to the
nullity of the art-for-art's-sake doctrine, like a rich exotic plant
of exquisite beauty, still apparently in its glory, till one perceives
that the roots are cut, and that leaf by leaf it is gradually fading
away.

But, unlike the Puritans in this respect, the Bolsheviks have not
sought to dig up the roots, and there are signs that the paralysis is
merely temporary. Moreover, individual art is not the only form, and
in particular the plastic arts have shown that they can live by mass
action, and flourish under an intolerant faith. Communist artists of
the future may erect public buildings surpassing in beauty the
mediaeval churches, they may paint frescoes, organize pageants, make
Homeric songs about their heroes. Communist art will begin, and is
beginning now, in the propaganda pictures, and stories such as those
designed for peasants and children. There is, for instance, a kind of
Rake's Progress or "How she became a Communist," in which the Entente
leaders make a sorry and grotesque appearance. Lenin and Trotsky
already figure in woodcuts as Moses and Aaron, deliverers of their
people, while the mother and child who illustrate the statistics of
the maternity exhibition have the grace and beauty of mediaeval
madonnas. Russia is only now emerging from the middle ages, and the
Church tradition in painting is passing with incredible smoothness
into the service of Communist doctrine. These pictures have, too, an
oriental fl