A Spectator's Notebook
I SUPPOSE THAT there are a good many of us who are prepared to reach for our guns when we hear the word 'culture.' There is something especially chilling about official literary or artistic manifestations, and it is a temptation to dismiss the endeavours of the patient folk who sit on platforms and draw up agendas with the words 'Magnificent, but not, art' (or literature, as the case may be). Yet any attempt to bring the writers of different nations into closer contact is worthy of support, and the meeting of the International PEN congress at' Bedford College provides an opportunity to make amends. Representatives from over forty countries are to be present, and the big names include Bertolt. Brecht and Ignazio Silone —to take two examples of international figures at opposite poles one from the other. The subject to be discussed is 'The Author and the Public,' and the exchanges between those from behind and in front of the Iron Curtain should make interesting reading. I should like, for instance, 'to hear an East German delegate explaining just why it is that you cannot buy Death in Venice in his country or, to be fair, an English playwright on what the Lord Chamberlain means to him. I have no doubt that Herr Brecht or Charles Morgan could cope very adequately with either of these topics, and it would be a pity if they were not explored with the gloves off. Nowadays governments have far too many excuses (public order, decency and so forth) to prevent the free exchange of information and art, and it is the job or organiiations like PEN to put as much pressure on them as possible. Perhaps this congress will vindicate itself from the reproach once made to it by George Orwell of not caring for freedom. The most important relation between author and public is, after all, that of communication; and in their communications with one another on this vital subject the authors will do well not to be muffled and muzzy, not to err on the side of polite- ness. It is this, after all, which makes a good many of us reach for our guns when we hear the word 'culture.'
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