And in the literature, this other dimension is represented not by the religious, spiritual, moral heroes (who often sustain the established order) but rather by such disruptive characters as the artist, the prostitute, the adulteress, the great criminal and outcast, the warrior, the rebel-poet, the devil, the fool – those who don't earn a living, at least not in an orderly and normal way.
To be sure, these characters have not disappeared from the literature of advanced industrial society but they survive essentially transformed. The vamp, the national hero, the beatnik, the neurotic housewife, the gangster, the star, the charismatic tycoon perform a function very different from and even contrary to that of their cultural predecessors.
They are no longer images of another way of life but rather freaks or types
of the same life serving as an affirmation rather than negation of the established order.
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The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most
contradictory works and truths peacefully Coexist in indifference.
Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction – the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive
force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which Was repressed and repelled in reality. Their truth was in the illusion evoked, in the insistence on creating a world in which the terror of life was called up and suspended – mastered by recognition. This is the miracle of the chef-d'oeuvre; it is the tragedy, sustained to the last, and the end of tragedy – its impossible solution. To live one's love and hatred, to live that which one is means defeat, resignation, and death. The crimes of society, the hell that man has made
or man become unconquerable cosmic forces.
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