John F Kennedy on the Arts on Measure of a Society
In January of 1961, as John F. Kennedy's inauguration approached, his would-be Secretary of the Interior suggested that the poet Robert Frost participate in the ceremony as the offset inaugural poet. Fourscore-6-year-old Frost telegrammed Kennedy with his signature elegance of wit: "If you can comport at your age the award of existence made president of the Usa, I ought to be able at my age to conduct the accolade of taking some part in your inauguration." He proceeded to evangelize a beautiful ode to the dream of including the arts in government, which touched Kennedy deeply.
Frost died exactly two years later, in January of 1963. That fall, Amherst College invited the President to speak at an event honoring the dear poet. On Oct 26, Kennedy took the podium at Amherst and delivered a spectacular speech mirroring dorsum to Frost that deep dedication to the arts and celebrating the role of the creative person in society. Perhaps more than any other public address, it affirmed JFK as that rare species of politician who is equally a poet and prophet of the human spirit.
The speech was somewhen included in the altogether superb Farewell, Godspeed: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time (public library) — a compendium of breathtaking adieus to cultural icons similar Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emily Dickinson, Keith Haring, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Schulz, and Virginia Woolf, delivered by those who knew them best.
This original recording of the voice communication, while short in length, is endlessly ennobling in substance. Highlights below — delight enjoy:
Strength takes many forms, and the almost obvious forms are non e'er the most significant. The men who create ability brand an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just equally indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they make up one's mind whether we utilise ability or power uses united states of america.
[…]
Robert Frost coupled poesy and power, for he saw poesy as the ways of saving ability from itself. When power leads men towards airs, poesy reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of human being's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diverseness of his existence. When power corrupts, poesy cleanses. For art establishes the bones man truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
The creative person, however true-blue to his personal vision of reality, becomes the concluding champion of the private mind and sensibility against an intrusive guild and an officious state… In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role…
If sometimes our keen artists have been the most disquisitional of our social club, it is because their sensitivity and their business organisation for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him enlightened that our Nation falls brusque of its highest potential. I see little of more than importance to the futurity of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
If art is to attend the roots of our civilization, social club must prepare the creative person free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. Nosotros must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a course of truth… In gratuitous society fine art is not a weapon and it does not vest to the spheres of polemic and credo. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. Only democratic society — in information technology, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips autumn where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of fine art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to wait frontwards to with hope."
Just as notable every bit the speech itself — for reasons both poetical and political — are the parts Kennedy edited out in his ain hand, including this heartbreaking-in-hindsight passage from the 2d page:
We take great comfort in our nuclear stockpiles, our gross national product, our scientific and technological accomplishment, our industrial might — and, up to a betoken, we are right to practice so. But physical power by itself solves no problems and secures no victories. What counts is the fashion power is used — whether with swagger and antipathy, or with prudence, subject field and magnanimity. What counts is the purpose for which power is used — whether for aggrandizement or for liberation. "Information technology is excellent," Shakespeare said, "to have a giant's strength; but information technology is tyrannous to use it like a giant."
Three weeks later, one of history's ugliest and most arrogant misuses of brute power took place every bit JFK was assassinated, prompting Leonard Bernstein to pen his timelessly moving address on the only true antidote to violence. Only the message at the middle of Kennedy's speech continued to resonate even every bit his vocalisation was silenced by brutality. Less than 2 years afterwards, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, creating the National Endowment for the Arts — the very dream that Frost had dreamt up at JFK's inauguration.
Complement with two more titans of poetry on the role of the creative person in civilisation: E.E. Cummings on the agony and salvation of the artist and James Baldwin on the artist'south responsibleness to society.
The JFK speech communication appears as the opening track on composer Mohammed Fairouz'due south spectacular album Follow Poet — titled later a line from Westward.H. Auden'southward cute elegy for W.B. Yeats — and can exist heard in Fairouz'southward wholly fantastic On Being chat with Krista Tippett:
Source: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/01/jfk-amherst-speech/
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