Adrienne Rich...Jean Paul Sartre...And the Money Game...

Poet Adrienne Rich Refuses to Accept National Medal for the Arts

Adrienne Rich, one of the most distinguished poets living and working in the United States, refused the 1997 National Medal for the Arts to protest the growing concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands.

Rich informed the Clinton administration of her decision in a July 3 letter to Jane Alexander, the chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts, which administers the awards. The National Medal for the Arts is usually awarded annually to 12 people.

Adrienne Rich said no and stood by her convictions… The glitter of money and power did not sway her to trample her art and her vision of society…

Read her letter below...

“Dear Jane Alexander,

“I just spoke with a young man from your office, who informed me that I had been chosen to be one of twelve recipients of the National Medal for the Arts at a ceremony at the White House in the fall. I told him at once that I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration. I want to clarify to you what I meant by my refusal.

“Anyone familiar with my work from the early Sixties on knows that I believe in art’s social presence—as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright. In my lifetime I have seen the space for the arts opened by movements for social justice, the power of art to break despair. Over the past two decades I have witnessed the increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country.

“There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored. I know you have been engaged in a serious and disheartening struggle to save government funding for the arts, against those whose fear and suspicion of art is nakedly repressive. In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist. I could not participate in a ritual which would feel so hypocritical to me.

"Sincerely,
Adrienne Rich"

Also a sample of what she thinks...

What she said in an interview after she 

rejected the "White House honour"...

I suppose that I would pick "What Kind of Times Are These," which is a sequence of short poems. And this sequence has that title coming from a poem by Bertolt Brecht, the great German playwright and poet, a revolutionary playwright and poet, I should add, who wrote a poem in which he said, "What kind of times are these, when it seems almost a crime to talk about trees, because it means keeping silent about so many evil deeds." And so, I called the whole sequence "What Kind of Times Are These." And in it, I was just playing with the sense of what it was like—what it is like to be alive in this country in the 1990s—the encroaching power of the capitalist economy, the denial of any kind of counterbalancing past, the wiping out of history, and also the need to find happiness and pleasure in the midst of such dark times, and how that can carry you through to be aware, as open-eyed as you can of what is going on in your time, and at the same time, as Rosa Luxemburg advised, to seize every beautiful cloud and every joyful moment. And so, this little sequence of poems came out of that kind of musing.

...And now read couple of her poems...and THINK...

"What Kind of Times Are These"

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leaf mold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

"In Those Years"

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through rages of fog
where we stood, saying I

Jean-Paul Sartre Becomes the First Person to Reject the Nobel Prize…    

In a statement to the Swedish press, Sartre offered a defiant explanation similar in vein and concept to Adrienne Rich’s letter of conviction, in which she became the ONLY person to decline the National Medal of arts….

Sartre wrote:

I was not aware at the time that the Nobel Prize is awarded without consulting the opinion of the recipient, and I believed there was time to prevent this from happening. But I now understand that when the Swedish Academy has made a decision it cannot subsequently revoke it.

My reasons for refusing the prize concern neither the Swedish Academy nor the Nobel Prize in itself, as I explained in my letter to the Academy. In it, I alluded to two kinds of reasons: personal and objective.

The personal reasons are these: my refusal is not an impulsive gesture, I have always declined official honors. In 1945, after the war, when I was offered the Legion of Honor, I refused it, although I was sympathetic to the government. Similarly, I have never sought to enter the Collège de France, as several of my friends suggested.

This attitude is based on my conception of the writer’s enterprise. A writer who adopts political, social, or literary positions must act only with the means that are his own — that is, the written word. All the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure I do not consider desirable. If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prizewinner.

Later he explained more with an interview with the BBC…

 Because I was politically involved, the bourgeois establishment wanted to cover up my “past errors.” Now, there’s an admission!  And so they gave me the Nobel Prize. They “pardoned” me and said I deserved it. It was monstrous!

And Sartre added...

I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish academy just decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize — I’ve already gotten the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding a thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it — those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors.

***

Money is Power... Money is our aim... Money is our dream...and we yearn for it...and we kill for it...and we go to war for it...

Kids play with money...kids smile while playing with money... We become joyful watching them play...watching them smile...! 

We measure success with money... We ask; "what's your worth?" and we report; "He's net worth is....so many millions...so many billions..."

Our culture is contaminated by money...Our perception is polluted by money... Our holidays are invaded by money... 

Have you seen holy people garbed in money robes...?

We exploit kids...and turn them into slave labour... We exploit women and turn them into objects...to be raped and beaten and paid less and prostituted...

The Church and the State...worship money...

The Church and state ... go to war for money...

The church and state ... exploit humans...kill humans for money...

The Church excommunicates for money... 

The State has the gas chambers...the hanging trees... and bombs and        ammunition... and tanks and planes...

Each of us is expendable... each of us are "collateral damage"...             each of us are pawns in the grand scheme of GREED...

They make us gossip for money... bully each other for money...             swear at each other for money...punch each other for money...

Big Brothers without borders... From West to east and from North to South...

They teach us to attend school for money...

They teach us to submit to their power ... to dream the impossible        dream... and be the  "yes person" and seek their patronage...their      protection...

They brainwash us that one bunch of Big Brothers are better than the other bunch... That the Chinese Brothers are better than the Russian Brothers... That the Canadian Brothers are more charitable than the others...That Canadian Brothers go to war only to protect peace... What an oxymoron...War for peace...! They tell us that the West protects the entire GLOBE from collapse...that the West is the GUARDIAN of democracy... that they export democracy to far away lands... in the Middle East and in Africa...

Money has corrupted our senses and we have been reduced to mere puppets salivating with adoration...FOR MONEY...

Because,

MONEY MAKES THE WORLD ROTATE AROUND ...

But,

Money is POWER... and power corrupts both Church and State...

***

But,

Hong Kong Students are saying NO...

The Kurds in the Middle east are saying NO...

And,

May be you are saying NO...but I do not know...

But,

There are volunteers who are risking their lives and helping West Africa fight Ebola... 

And all Big Brothers...Are the same...

Do not let the adjectives to confuse you...

All of them are citizens of Money-istan...

Still Ukraine is bleeding caught between the Russia's and West's Big Brothers...

Still the Middle is in a bloody mess...

Educate yourself...and learn how to say no...

Jean Paul Sartre said No... to the Nobel team...

Adrienne Rich said No... to powerful Washington D.C.

And now it's your turn ... it's time for action...