We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Having mentioned the word “culture” in my title, I should clarify which definition I hold to. Actually, it is two. The first distinguishes civilization as cultivation of a milieu, of a way of life, from culture as cultivation of man’s inner life, of his soul. The second: culture is the sum total of our intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and aesthetical achievements. As we can see, these definitions converge at the root: that the main thing in culture is the development, enrichment, and refinement of the nonmaterial life.

Well, for more than a century already, the civilized world has been undergoing a process―unnoticed at first and for some time thereafter―of a loss of spiritual concentration and loftiness, a process of diffusion and perhaps even of irreplaceable loss of spiritual values. In the nineteenth century few described it. Then the entire twentieth century, so productive technically but so hasty psychologically, worked in various ways toward the lowering of culture. This destructive worldwide process, though relentless through the decades, has nonetheless caught us as if unawares. And there has arisen a widespread―though unfounded―illusion of cultural satiation, cultural fatigue: as if all possible culture has already been sampled by us, has been depleted, and no longer sustains us.

More than a few causes contributing to this decline of culture can be identified.

One of them is the perniciousness, for high culture, of utilitarian requirements, whether they flow from socialist-communist compulsion or from the market principle of sale and purchase. Recently Pope John Paul II suggested that, following in the footsteps of the two totalitarianisms with which we are well familiar, a Third Totalitarianism now draws near: the absolute power of money, along with the rapt veneration of that power by so many. The shallowing of culture has come to pass from both the breathless haste of this worldwide process and the financial motivations that propel it.

Another cause lies in the strikingly swift and broad growth of material well-being, brought about by technological advancements, that has sharply outpaced the human character’s readiness for it as well as its capacity for self-discipline: how to orient and maintain one’s soul―and therefore one’s receptivity to culture―above ever-inflowing prosperity. All-encompassing comfort has led the unprepared―and they are the majority―to a hardening of the soul. Thus, the flowering of civilization has brought boundless riches and comforts, the conquest of an entire World―yet, simultaneously, an impoverishment of souls. (Amongst the well-to-do classes of bygone centuries many could not withstand temptation and turned into cold, cruel rulers or else burned emptily through life; but how many examples, too, of those who did pass the test of well-being, at which point an elevated personality type would take shape, one that directed its pecuniary independence towards the preservation of culture or a philanthropic sustenance of its masters.)

A further cause (and far from the last) is the massification of culture (quite natural given the overall direction that civilization has taken): blanket literacy, education and knowledgeableness. These, in turn, exponentially broaden the universe of consumers, and also, in synthesis with the workings of the law of markets, threaten to pull―and do pull―education wide of the mark of true culture. This process inexorably leads to a decline of both the average level of culture and especially of its pinnacles: there emerges a nonchalant indifference toward them, the demand for them dwindles, and their very disappearance passes unnoticed.

Let us stipulate that the particular nature of mass culture is not the cause: in and of itself, popular culture can at times attain true pinnacles, as we see in the folklore of many nations; the root of the problem here lies in the vulgarizing, morally undiscriminating contrivances of its presentation.

In such an environment the most creative portion of culture diminishes. This holds as true for the philosophical-contemplative domain as it does for the pinnacles of theoretical science, removed as they are from utilitarian application, and also of course―even first and foremost―for all art. The artist loses the incentive to create in relation to the judgments of top experts and connoisseurs, and allows himself to become less exacting toward his own work―especially when plucking out hurried commissions intended for superficial consumption. Many art forms begin to recede, and rapidly, morphing into common craft, persistently perpetuating and re-perpetuating primitive patterns. First, tastes are cultivated (foisted) by those contrivances of presentation themselves, then “opinion polls” are conducted that unearth those same “tastes”―thus obtaining the desired justification for self-repetition and for the further debasement of quality. Everyone can see that television programming is at the forefront of such operations, and it has, in turn, guided the once-so-promising art of cinema toward perdition. (In Hollywood and beyond there exist “evaluation teams” for screenplays; using an elaborate points system, they assign grades and dispense definitive direction on how to alter the plot, characters, and other elements in order to improve the “box office appeal” of a film. Such vulgarizing methods seem to know no limits―today the same hubris prevails in reworking the classics. For example, Disney has rectified Victor Hugo’s blunder, and provided Esmeralda with a happy end and blissful marriage instead of a tragic demise. The tawdriness of distorted art―long since become pseudo-art―continues to expand triumphantly, restrained by nothing, maiming our auditory and ocular perceptions and befouling our souls.

How irreversible, how irreparable is this process of mass vulgarization? Judging by the sphere of literature (the sphere closest to me), the path toward reëstablishment of high quality is not yet closed off, not yet taken from us, even if it will require a significant concentration of abilities and efforts. In principle, and according to the very nature of art, according to its flexibility and multifacetedness―the elite and the popular can coexist in a single work of literature: in successful cases, indeed, that work may be multileveled, written in such a way that it is accessible and satisfactory concurrently for readers of diverse levels of understanding and perception; and if a person experiences an elevation of level over time, he reads the same book with a newer understanding. Failure in achieving this is hardly preordained; but the author has to rise above the day-to-day demands of the publishing market, above calculations of assured near-term success.

(excerpted from chapter 10)