The Dying of Western Culture

---

See the Lev Navrozov Archive By Lev Navrozov SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.

In the 1920s Oswald Spengler, a mathematician by education, a musician by vocation, and the last of the great German philosophers, became world-famous after publishing his book, the title of which was translated into English as ÒThe Decline of the West,Ó but should have been translated more adequately as ÒThe Dying of Western Culture.Ó

Spengler invoked the great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries: the Italian Scarlatti, who created Òthe true sonata form,Ó the Germans Bach, Gluck, Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, the Hungarian Liszt. . . . ÒWhere are such great composers in the 20th century?Ó was the inevitable question.

American university professors of music have been answering that in contrast to Scarlatti, Schoenberg, a contemporary of Spengler, created not merely a new Òsonata form,Ó but invented a new music, called Òatonal.Ó

I use the word ÒinventedÓ deliberately. In general, it began to be said at the beginning of the 20th century in Europe and in Russia that music, art, culture should be not created, but invented as a safety razor is invented by an engineer.

Yet there was one difficulty.

I have been listening for about 30 years to Òthe classical station of the New York Times.Ó The very phrase Òclassical musicÓ was impossible in this sense in the 18th or 19th century in Europe and in Russia. Imagine Beethoven's concert announced as a concert of classical music. There was no Òclassical musicÓ as the opposite of Òpop music,Ó the word ÒpopÓ having appeared in English in this sense only in 1880. There was music. Period. True, Beethoven wrote a piece for a child, Elisa. But it was as much music as his ÒEroica.Ó

The New York Times station broadcasts Òclassical music.Ó A tiny minority of Americans listen to Òclassical music,Ó and the rest to Òpop music.Ó When by accident I turn the knob of my radio set just a hair's breadth right or left, I plunge into the quagmire of hundreds or thousands of ÒpopÓ radio stations, screaming, banging, thumping, and roaring like primitive tribes or like Neanderthals of the Stone Age. The bulk of programming of the classical station of the New York Times has consisted in these 30 years mostly of composers that Spengler invoked as great about a century ago. The station thus endorses Spengler's view about the dying of Western music since the early 20th century.

As for Schoenberg, I called the station and asked the programming director why they have not broadcast a single piece of Schoenberg's Ònew musicÓ rather than a couple of his early compositions, which was still Òthe old music,Ó emulating Brahms, for example.

ÒSir,Ó answered the director of programming, ÒWe are a commercial station, and when we began broadcasting Schoenberg's new music, all listeners switched their radio sets off our station. We cannot afford it.Ó

Thank God, they are commercial. If they subsisted on grants they could play Schoenberg's new music that only university professors of music would listen to because they receive university salaries for teaching and writing books about how great Schoenberg is, but a century was not enough for the non-academic lovers of music to enjoy his Òinventions.Ó

The trouble was explained by Ernst Radlov, a Russian art critic, at the beginning of the 20th century. He wrote that in science and technology, inventions and innovations have a definite scientific and/or technical purpose Ñ for example, to make safety razors shave more safely and/or better. ÒModern artÓ (striving to be Òclassical,Ó and not ÒpopÓ) consists more and more of inventions and innovations to no creative purposeÑÒthe works of artÓ became safety razors that do not shave at all, whether safely or not.

One way of death of art is the replacement of creative genius with sterile ÒinnovationsÓ and Òinventions.Ó

In the early 20th century a Pole named Kazimir Malevich exhibited at art shows in Petersburg and Moscow his Òworks of artÓ: a square canvas painted all black (ÒThe Black SquareÓ) and a square canvas painted all white (ÒThe White SquareÓ). ÒThe Black SquareÓ was thrown in Russia after 1922 as garbage (by Malevich himself), but ÒThe White SquareÓ is treasured in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as the first work of modern Ògraphic arts,Ó which later filled all art shows, galleries, and museums of the West.

Ironically, Malevich himself decided after 1922 that his ÒSquaresÓ were garbage and he should become a ÒSoviet painterÓ in the spirit of Òsocialist realism.Ó But since he had no ability in painting, he Òdid not make it,Ó and hence died in 1935 in poverty and total obscurity, which has been represented in the West as the tragic end of an artist of genius, Òthe founder of modern art,Ó hunted down by the ignorant mediocrities to death. Actually, everything ÒinventedÓ in the West in art in the 20th century on the inspiration of ÒThe White SquareÓ belongs where Malevich threw out ÒThe Black SquareÓ as garbage.

When Johann Sebastian Bach composed and played his music, there was, outside the church, folk music which was no less valuable than what Bach composed, but there was no ÒpopÓ music, that is, screaming, banging, thumping, and roaring, heard outside the classical station of the New York Times. Those unable to compose and play music like Bach or create folk music, were to listen, and not to scream, bang, thump, and roar by way of their own (or ÒpopÓ) music. In the 20th century this silence began to seem counter to Òfreedom and democracy.Ó Why are the many obliged to listen to the few and have no human right to make what THEY regard as music? Let us scream, bang, thump, and roar! We are many, they are few! Where is freedom and democracy?

ÒPop cultureÓ has become the culture of Òthe vast majority of AmericansÓ and threatens to swallow the music of the classical station of the New York Times because Òpop musicÓ requires no education, no spiritual effort, no understanding, while Òclassical musicÓ was at first incomprehensible to me, for example.

Yes, I was in mid-teenage when I bought at a Moscow flea market two gramophone records. I played them Ñ and heard nothing except a meaningless noise. The matter might have ended then and there, and for the rest of my life I would be listening to Òpop music.Ó But I was a son of a writer (he had been killed in the war), and I remembered that his brilliant friends listened to that incomprehensible music and despised Òpop culture.Ó So I did not conclude that this music was incomprehensible gibberish Ñ I concluded that I was defective, unworthy of my father and his friends, an ignoramus.

I read the labels of the records. Liszt's ÒHungarian RhapsodyÓ and Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. I knew the names Ñ I listened again. In that Rhapsody I now heard the rhythm of carts riding through the boundless Hungarian steppes. . . . It was beautiful! I listened again and again until every note became meaningful, like the words of a foreign tongue you know as to the language born.

My survey of culture would be incomplete without a glimpse into literature. Let us ignore ÒpopÓ (or pulp) novels, along with Òpop movies.Ó In the late 1970s and the early 1980s I reviewed for ÒThe Chronicles of Culture,Ó ÒThe Yale Literary Magazine,Ó and ÒSt. John's ReviewÓ such novels as the New York Times and the Washington Post approved as Òclassical,Ó that is, of the same value as the great literature of old.

Here is just one case. Published and staged in 1939 was Irwin Shaw's ÒThe Gentle People,Ó which was still Òclassical literature,Ó that is, literature. But for my review I received Irwin Shaw's ÒThe Top of the Hill,Ó pubished in 1979, forty years later.

I could not believe that the two books had been written by the same person. The Irwin Shaw of 1939 did not imitate Ibsen or Gorky or Chekhov Ñ he was an AMERICAN writer of genius. The Irwin Shaw of 1979 is not a writer: he is one of millions of amateurs who clutter publishing houses in all countries with their witless, smug, and stupid hackwork. ÒThe Top of the HillÓ is below the worst Soviet propaganda hackwork in Stalin's Russia.

No doubt that such an amazing degradation of literature as evinced by the same person cannot but affect the general mental level, including perhaps even the level of science and technology. Einstein had developed the theory of relativity by 1905, but he was rooted in the ÒclassicalÓ culture, was a musician (like Spengler), and said that the writer Dostoyevsky Ògave me more than anyone else, more than Gauss.Ó

In response to my review, Irwin Shaw called the editor of ÒThe Chronicles of CultureÓ and made a row. He knew that what I said was true and publicly unanswerable. The publisher of Updike similarly attacked the editor of ÒSt. John's Review.Ó Finally, ÒThe Chronicles of Culture,Ó ÒSt. John's Review,Ó and ÒThe Yale Literary MagazineÓ were taken away from their editors who published my reviews. Our goal was to stop and perhaps reverse the regression of culture. But, of course, the best way to ensure further culture degradation it is to take away the magazines from all editors who let their reviewers criticize the current state of Western culture.