New Left, Local Control, and Fascism

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the first quarter of a century, but has not yet been ceptual elision, very similar to the harmonic elision in
produced. What has been produced are various musical late Beethoven. Both had moved toward abstraction
ideologies, all of which rest on pluralist notions of through a concern with the paradox of objective versus
reality, as pluralist even as claiming that every compo- subjective time.
sition has its own theory.
Having talked about some of the positive aspects of
A new conception of Self and Freedom was required modernity we now sadly have to turn to the trash, since
in the late nineteenth century, and Rimbaud provided it the trash is far more popular than any discoveries
by creating a crisis in the prevailing consciousness of talked about so far. Almost all music produced since
the limits of human power. It was the Faustian theme WWII has been one form or another of ideology, a
made specific to the period of the commune. The notion highly particularist world-outlook that interpreted reaof
extended being overflowed in the lyrical brilliance of lity from a limited perspective. If the academic serial
this extraordinary poet. Understanding in an intuitive composers have given us a caricature of mind by
way the material interdependency of human existence employing the conceptual banalities that set theory
he could write, "It is wrong to say I think. One should provides, jazz has given us a caricature of passion., of
say: I am thought .... For, I is another. If brass wakes up Feuerbach's notion of sensuous being. Jazz represents
a trumpet, it isn't to blame. To me this is evident: I give a false consciousness of the problem of how to become
a stroke to the bow: the symphony begins to stir in the human. It is the worst sort of sentimental romanticism,
depths or comes bursting onto the stage." The same an inundation of feeling severed from any self-conthought
had been expressed similarly by Feuerbach in scious reflection of what part those feelings play in a
the "Preface" to the Essence of Christianity, in which whole being which in music can only be thought out
he says, "I have many things outside myself, which I through a rigorous grappling with formal problems
cannot convey either in my pocket or my head, but solved creatively. Oh so human, this alienated senwhich
nevertheless I look upon as belonging to me." suality, so redeeming that religious feeling of Coltrane,
Rimbaud, however, was not merely content to be a the pathos of the inarticulate, the heat of the inchoate.
"natural philosopher in the domain of mind," but was As though we didn't have enough of this alienated
searching for a way to translate poetic being into action, being under capitalist society. Great art has never been
his own poetic being into the poetic being of all men. merely a compensation for a deprivation of some one
Like Shelley, for whom poetry was a "sword of light- aspect of whole being, but has contained within it the
ning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard seeds of whole being, This is what is meant by a
that would contain it," Rimbaud wanted poetry to be classical art, as Hegel clearly lays the basis for in his
used at all times as a powerful way of creating change. Phenomenology. And yet we have the Coltrane
For this a new man was required, a Prometheus mystique. This we are supposed to accept as lyricism,
unbound. The poet's identity as a thief of fire, Rimbaud when we have ample evidence of what lyricism can be
extended to all men, writing that the "Poet will define in its classical composition as provided for us in the
the amount of unknown arising in his time in the work of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven and
universal soul; he will give more than the formula of his Brahms, and in a unique way by Rimbaud who was able
thought, more than the annotation of his march toward to contain lyricism within the most scathing satire? We
Progress! Enormity become norm, absorbed by every are supposed to forget this historical perspective and
one, he will truly be the multiplier of progress! This sink ourselves in the moans of jazz. The first task of the
future, as you see, will be materialistic. As a matter of artist today who is modern in a positive sense, is to
fact it will still be Greek poetry in a way. This eternal destroy this sickly romanticism for which Marx himself,
art will hav.e its functions since poets are citizens, along with every other important modern thinker had
Poetry will no longer rhythm action: it will go ahead." only contempt, and to move towards a new classicism
Thus with Rimbaud, poetry became a science in the which at this point only Marxism can provide the basis
Marxian sense; its task was to lead man towards a for. Hegelian dialectics has already been completely
conscious mastery over his existence, assimilated by Beethoven; the modern artist has to
thoroughly assimilate the meaning of dialectics as the
Rimbaud's impatience for progress led him to an method of Marxian anthropology. For as Marxists we
increasing level of abstraction of language, an abstrac- demand progress in art, not nostalgia, not sentimental
tion which grew out of an impatience to experience drivel.
more within a shorter period of time, an impatience not
to be satisfied until he had experienced a simultaneity The best critique of the fetish of improvisation in'
of being. It was a consciousness appropriate to a jazz and some Rock today is Shelley's description of
revolutionary period in which centuries are suddenly creativity as the skimming off of ideas at boiling point
speeded up. His formal iconoclasm was absolutely in order to reflect on them and discard the trash. The
necessary to this search for heightened being, the way improvization takes place in Rock and jazz as a
awareness of his own richness outside himself in the substitution for this whole creative process displays
simultaneity of the multiple being of species existence, certain signs of the most undesirable exhibitionism.
This is clear in his last prose poems in which the Instead of struggling with conceptions over a period of
acceleration of experience is conveyed through per- years, as all great artists have done, only making public