How long will it be before praising a work of art for its aesthetic excellence alone is considered a revolutionary act? Nearly every literary prize now takes into consideration the race and politics of authors when naming shortlists and winners. When they don’t, they get into trouble. More and more, what matters when it comes to literature today is the “utility” of a work—defined, of course, in a very narrow way—not its excellence, as if the utility of a work of art isn’t found precisely in its excellence.  This is how Wallace Stegner put it in “One Way to Spell Man”: “It would be idiotic to defend the arts for pseudoscientific or pragmatic reasons, for any ‘usefullness’ as ‘communication’ or ‘therapy’ or anything else that they may incidentally have. They are indispensable precisely because they are expressions of truth, a way of understanding, at the deepest level, the world of man.”

The poet Elizabeth Alexander should read more Stegner. It was announced last week that the Mellon Foundation, of which Alexander is president, would only support projects that advance social justice:

“An increased focus on just communities comes at a moment in which a national spotlight is shining on widespread—and longstanding—social and racial injustice. The new mission notes that the Foundation’s focus will be on building ‘just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking where ideas and imagination can thrive’ and animated by a belief that ‘the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity.’”

Alexander said in an interview that there wouldn’t be “a penny that is going out the door that is not contributing to a more fair, more just, more beautiful society.” How they are going to decide which projects contribute in this way is unclear. When asked if the focus on social justice is politicizing the largest supporter of arts and humanities in America, Alexander said that social justice “isn’t political any more than social injustice is political.” So, when Mellon gave The Justice Collaboratory at Yale (you see how supporting “underrepresented” artists works) a $5.25 million grant for its Million Book Project, it wasn’t making a political statement regarding the “cruel and unjust reality of the American penal system” or the “systemic inequities in our conception and application of the law” (my emphasis). It was just supporting an organization committed to truth. Alexander told Len Gutkin at The Chronicle of Higher Education: “It is mischaracterizing it to say that there is something inherently political about trying to create a more fair and just society. And that there is not something equally political about denying resources or denying the humanity or denying the possibility of so many people.” I am sure she really believes this, which in itself could be taken as proof that the arts don’t expand one’s capacity for seeing other points of view or “critical thinking.”

The Mellon Foundation’s move towards social justice isn’t surprising, but it is political, whatever Alexander may say, in its narrow conception of “the world of man,” as Stegner put it, and its decision to support works for their utility alone is based on the misconception that art’s primary function is to “change” people. People may change after reading certain works, and, as Seneca said, the arts may “prepare the soul for the reception of virtue,” but they cannot make people virtuous—and even that preparatory work is of secondary value.

In other news: A group of writers published an open letter in Harper’s condemning our cancel culture and calling for more openness to the “free exchange of information and ideas.” It was immediately condemned as “fatuous, self-important drivel.”

The man who sacked Rome: “Alaric the Goth wanted to be part of the empire. Instead he helped bring it down.”

The last years of Michelangelo: “If Michelangelo’s first biographers described his achievements as nothing short of divine, the man himself was beset throughout his life with mortal worries. They only increased with age.”

John Bowers reviews a new book on the Jewish holdings in Oxford’s Bodleian: “The Bodleian is one of the pre-eminent holders of Hebrew and Jewish manuscripts in the world yet this is the first time a book has bought these treasures together. The 1886 catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts, which is used to this day, has 2602 entries and many more have been added since. The books, which derive from all corners of the Earth, tell a story of oppression but also of great joy and creativity. Many of the books bear the marks of examination and expurgation required by Italian ecclesiastical authorities. This was usually carried out by Jewish censors or revisers who converted to Christianity. Jewish owners of books had to submit them regularly to authorities several times in the Middle Ages. The book is divided into eleven chapters each by a different author, all of whom expert in their fields.”

A final collection of early Terry Pratchett stories will be published in September: “The tales in The Time-travelling Caveman, many of them never released in book form before, range from a steam-powered rocket’s flight to Mars to a Welsh shepherd’s discovery of the resting place of King Arthur.”

Photo: Le Puy-en-Velay

Receive Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.