Hits Crimson Gieseking Stand

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your frigidly Olympian approach to L'affaire Gieseking plus your naive conclusion that free societies have correctly decided that an "artist's" work and politics may be divorced surprises me, (a recent ed-man), very much.

While Gieseking played and prospered in Nazi Germany, millions were being burned and gassed. Many of these were undoubtedly "artists" of great talent who believed that "artistic license" does not remove a man's responsibility for his own principles and actions. Gieseking chose to play for the Fatherland; had his side triumphed, he undoubtedly would have played Carnegie Hall more than once. Should we welcome him now because we won? Are contemporary German artists that indispensable to our artistic lives?

You state that the "logical absurdity" of this entire business would be for us to ban the work of Wagner and Pound and "all the other artists who also rejected free society." Gentlemen, you are talking nonsense. No one cares about Wagner; he has been dead a few years; he has not been invited to symphony Hall; whether or not he was disgusting 100 years ago cannot possible matter to us. His music lives, has a beauty and entity of its own as it comes to us through the medium of contemporary performers.

Found too "chose the wrong side." But is Pound the man a welcome guest among us? Not if his trial for treason and subsequent history means anything. But his poetry, well, that is something else again, quite above, beyond, and irrelevant of the man we came to know. How can you draw an analogy? Once created, the work of art does not depend upon its character; in fact, most creators' lives were so imperfect as to spoil our taste for their work were we to dwell upon them.

But the musician, the actor, the interpreter of other's work--he is important only because he is a personality, only because we can see him, hear him, associate with him. In short, he is a responsible member of the world community along with the rest of us, because his sole contribution to art and culture rests entirely upon his physical presence. Here we can draw the line; here we can say that as an individual "you have failed, therefore you may not perform before us--others will do just as well."

And they will. There can be no substitute for a creator, a Wagner, a Strauss--but we have Rubenstein, and Horowitz and Casadesus and scores of others. We can do without Herr Gieseking and all the others who prosperred in the slaughter house. Donald M. Blinken '47