This document summarizes the typical literary development of a writer from early idealism to greater social awareness and responsibility. It begins by discussing how writers initially focus on beauty, style and abstraction, but through experience of world events and societal problems, their work takes on greater depth and addresses issues of justice, truth and social reform. The document uses the example of Teodoro Kalaw to illustrate this shift from a young "columnist" focused on aesthetics to a more mature writer addressing politics and society. It warns that indifference or cynicism are dangers for writers, but sensitivity coupled with strong principles can guide them to use their skills and platform to positively influence society.

1. LITERATURE AND SOCIETY
Salvador P. Lopez
The word has soul as well as body. Writers who consider themselves keepers of the word may not ignore
the fact that it has a physical body and possesses qualities of sound and color, fancy and imagination. But
the word is more than sound and color; it is a living thing of blood and fire, capable of infinite beauty and
power. It is not an inanimate thing of dead consonants and vowels but a living force—the most potent
instrument known to man.
Whoever uses speech merely to evoke beauty of sound or beauty of imagination is not exploiting the gift
of speech for all that is worth; he is exploiting it only in those qualities that are inherent in the word but
external to the mind and soul of man. When a writer uses words purely for their music or purely as an
instrument of fancy, he may claim that he is a devotee of pure art, since he insists on using words only in
their strictly primitive qualities. In point of fact he is really a decadent aesthete who stubbornly confuses
literature with painting and refuses to place words in the employ of man and his civilization.
There is hardly any writer of importance who does not, sooner or later, come to a point where his readers
will ask of him:
"Why do you no longer write as you used to do?" or "The lightness and the laughter have gone out of your
writing; you now write almost exclusively on politics, as if life offered nothing besides human folly and the
social struggle. Why do you no longer write of pleasant and beautiful things?"
For the young writer is almost certain to start his career by writing mushy poetry and sophomoric
philosophy, permitting his fancy to revel hedonistically among lovely phrases culled from books and
sayings come down from the ancients—remnants of fascinating courses in literature and philosophy taken
in college. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the years pass, there comes over his writing a change not
only in subject matter but in general temper and attitude.
Daily exposed to the headlines of the newspapers, his Olympian superiority-indifference yields slowly to
the persistent hammering of the facts of his own experience and of contemporary history. Upon his
sophomoric certainties is cast the shadow of terrible happenings—whole nations in the grip of terror,
starved, maimed, or killed through no fault of their own, pawns in the bloody game of men lustful for wealth
and power, crushed under the heels of the dictators. An amorphous idealism or, on the otherhand, a
precocious cynicism is no longer adequate to meet the vast problems which daily present themselves before
his eyes.
Did he use to write on poetry and philosophy, expatiate on the beauty of life and the splendor of human
brotherhood? If so, he soon begins to realize that he was merely echoing what he had read in books, for the
book of life conveys a different message altogether. In his heart is no longer merely the singing exultation
over art and nature and living; in his heart is a deep compassion for the sufferings of the oppressed and
anger at their oppressors.
Not that he has become blind to the beauty of nature and the works of man; it is only that he has begun to
relate his ideas and every important thing that happens to some definite principles of beauty and justice and
truth. His eyes have pierced through the veil of deception with which so much of the face of life that is ugly
is covered. He has begun to pursue truth instead of phrases.
He is no longer a florist, scissors in hand, gathering lovely blossoms; he has become a tiller of the soil,
spade in hand, digging into the roots of things and planting seeds.

2. This is the usual course of a writer's literary development. There is no more dramatic illustration of this
process than the case of the late Director Teodoro Kalaw of the National Library who, like so many of the
outstanding leaders of the older generation, started his career as a newspaperman. His autobiography
contains a candid confession which shows the inevitable change that occurs in the attitude and temper of
the senstive writer as he grows older in experience and wisdom.
Kalaw, it seems, was something of a "columnist” in the early days of his employment on the staff of that
famous newspaper of the transition, El Renacimiento. He writes:
I must have written my first news items very badly because Guerrero made innumerable corrections on
them. ... My literary reading had not predisposed me to prosaic journalism, which I considered as ephemeral
as a windblown leaf. but to writing as an art, as an expression of the beautiful. I soon became what today is
known as a columnist; but my column was literary, and I made no attempt to comment on political and
moral matters as is usual today. M. column, written daily, contained short rambling paragraphs on
philosophú literature, love, dreams, illusions, and other such abstractions. To me, in those youthful days,
the all-important consideration was style—the discovery of the beautiful word for the beautiful thought.
Nor was he unmindful of the adulation of the ladies, for he admits with a disarming frankness: "In common
with the rest of the journalists in the office, my secret desire was to have the young ladies avidly peruse my
column, and in truth, the column was all the rage among our society girls, who considered my writings
piquant and intriguing."
Yet it was not long before Columnist Kalaw outgrew his Flaubertian preoccupation over the discovery of
the beautiful word for the beautiful thought.” Soon enough he was drawn out of his Ivory Tower of "pure
literature” into the social and political currents swirling about him. He says: "Sociological themes greatly
inspired me to more writings. We were then passing a period of real historical transition. Everything was
being subjected to change—customs, laws, language, social practices."
Kalaw, the romantic idealist and aesthete, had become aware that society had a claim on his attention, and
he was not unwilling to oblige. He began writing seriously on political and social questions, criticizing what
he believed to be the evils brought about by the American regime, bemoaning the degeneration of the
"Filipino Soul," attacking the abuses of the Constabulary.
When, several years later, he became editor of El Renacimiento, he was one of the principal defendants in
the most spectacular libel suit that this country has yet known. Growing out of the strong spirit of
nationalism and the universal aspiration for independence from America, this celebrated case may be said
to have marked the full intellectual maturity of the young literary journalist, fancier of beautiful thoughts
couched in beautiful words.
Having traveled the weary road from the Ivory Tower to jail, he had learned that the only true basis of
lasting beauty in literature is-power.
There are two perilous roads open to the heedless young writer. One road leads to indifferentism and the
other to misanthropy. The writer becomes a confirmed indifferentist either because he is ignorant and does
not know better or because, knowing better, he believes sincerely, if erroneously, that the things which men
live by are beyond the interests of his art. And a writer becomes a cynic and a misanthrope because the
waters of his spirit that were once clear and sparkling have become muddied by personal disappointment,
weakness of will or intellectual confusion.
Indifferentism is usually an inherent vice, and there is little that can be done to correct it. If it arises from

3. ignorance, it may be possible to apply the remedy of instruction, but if it arises from a twisted point of view,
the vice usually runs so deep that all who are thus afflicted may as well be counted lost to the cause of
moving and militant speech.
On the other hand, only those men suffer from cynicism and misanthropy who possess a profound and
sensitive spirit and who, somewhere along the road, received some injury in the heart, in the will or in the
mind. Their affliction is not necessarily incurable. Since it is almost certain to have been caused, in the first
place. by a fault understanding of the basic principles that underlie human existence, it can be cured by
helping the writer stand firmly upon some indestructible faith. For a sensitive spirit easily prone to cynicism
and misanthropy unless it is reinforced by the steel of undeviating principle. Spiritual sensitiveness becomes
a vice only when it is not married to toughmindedness.
Although the dogma of "Art for Art's sake” has been discredited in the minds of most thinking people
everywhere, yet it survives in our days in a new disguise that makes it more difficult to identify properly
and therefore to combat. The general condition of international chaos, has, surprisingly enough, encouraged
the revival of a dogma once favored by Oscar Wilde and the coterie of aesthetes who agreed with him.
This is easily explained. The universal fear of insecurity, chaos and war has had the effect of distorting the
vision of a beautiful and orderly world that third-rate artists as a rule are prone to affect. This fear has driven
them into fashioning a comfortable philosophy of escape through the medium of which they hope to flee
the ugly facts of life and the repulsive realities of the contemporary scene. Like frightened children they are
overcome by fear of the dark and seek refuge in some untroubled Shangri-la of art.
To the challenge that they become socially conscious and that they take part in the political struggle, they
answer: "The world is too much with us, we will have nothing to do with the struggle. We conceive of art
as an escape from the ugliness we see around us; we will henceforth consecrate ourselves to the expression
of beautiful thoughts and the creation of beautiful things. Life is ugly enough as it is; therefore, we propose
to make it more beautiful with the products of our imagination. Man being what he is, to attempt to change
him or the world he lives in is bound to be a futile enterprise. Art is a method of escape; it is an end in itself,
never a means to an end. The pen was made for purposes utterly different from the sword; we refuse to be
artists in uniform.” The argument will seem sound until we reflect that the highest form of art is that which
springs from the wells of man's deepest urges and longings—his love of his own kind and his longing to be
free. Divest man of these interests, and he ceases to be what he is: the richest subject for observation,
portrayal and study that the artist can have before him.
The opinion is still widely held that the artist and the man of letters should leave social agitation alone and
stick to art, that it is not their business to help advance social justice and to defend democracy, but
exclusively to paint a landscape, compose a song or write a sonnet. Despite the fact that events in the modern
world have made it increasingly difficult for artists so to do their work, there are still those who fondly cling
to the delusion that there is an Ivory Tower to which the worshippers of Beauty can retire away from the
madding crowd. Of course, there is no such tower; only people who imagine that they dwell in one. For
deliberate isolation from the rest of the world and complete indifference to the fortunes of mankind on the
part of the artist can only mean one thing: that he is incapable of profound thought and deep feeling and is
therefore, to that extent, incapable also of great art.
Only greatness of heart and mind and soul can produce great art. But the development of a man's emotional,
intellectual and spiritual qualities is impossible save his heart, mind and soul are enriched by fruitful contact
with others. A man can know himself only through knowing others. To be self-centered is to be small in

4. heart, narrow of mind, mean of soul. Selfishness is the natural effect of a cynical and barren solitude, and
the absolute divorcement of the artist from the world which alone can provide a large background for his
work must result in mediocre or inferior achievement.
Nothing more thoroughly disproves the contention of the Art-for-Art-sakers than the facts of everyday life.
When artists and writers meet, do they talk of art and literature? Outsiders who attend their gatherings and
listen to their conversation will be appalled to discover that for hours they will talk of everything under the
sun save only art and literature. These two things they will dismiss after one or two remarks on the latest
books and an unusually good story that appeared the previous day. Then, inevitably it seems, the talk will
veer to the arrant stupidities of public officials, the latest statement of President Quezon on social justice,
national defense, the war, the coming elections even perhaps the latest piece of scandal.
Go through the history of literature, and you will find that the greatest writers ever those whose feet were
planted solidly on the earth regardless of how high up in the clouds their heads might have been. This is
not to say, however, that great writing must pertain to some department of propaganda. Propaganda is
written with the definite object of influencing people to believe or to do something. While there are a few
books which have survived the immediate motive of propaganda that inspired them, yet one can say truly
that the bulk of literary works of permanent value consists of those that are neither pure propaganda nor
pure art but which are in some way deeply rooted in the earth of human experience.
If somebody should point to Shakespeare as an example of the pure artist, it would only be necessary to
show that Shakespeare was neither an aesthete shrinking in a corner nor a self-satisfied person too
complacent to bother about the problems of his time. The period in which he lived was one of the most
active that mankind has seen. Exploration and discovery, science and invention, art and letters—all these
activities were being carried on at a high pitch. The pall of the Dark Ages had just been lifted, and the minds
of men were once again free and venturesome. Since Shakespeare had one of the keenest minds of his time
and was a contemporary of Francis Bacon, it is impossible for a man of his deep and sensitive nature not to
have been stirred by the ideas and movements of the age. Well has it been said of him that he was a humanist
but not a "closet humanist," a man of historic perspective, reacting powerfully to the social and political
currents of his time, and striving earnestly to change the world.
The life of Emile Zola is the perfect refutation of the belief that the great artist is a gaunt, solitary being
forever immersed in visions of deathless beauty, untouched by questions of pain, poverty, injustice, and
oppression. In the beginning you have a young sensitive artist, quick to anger against social injustice and
political corruption. A time comes when his books bring him wealth and fame, and he forgets his
antecedents, saying to justify himself: Well, I have fought my battles. I don't see why I should not enjoy
my life as it is. As for those who are condemned to live in the gutter, there is nothing anybody can do about
them anyway.
Then, suddenly, in the midst of this smugness, the Dreyfus case burst upon France, and Zola is drawn into
it. The old fire in his heart burns again, and he fights as he never fought before. When the battle is won and
a great wrong has been righted, he has learned to say: The individual does not matter; only society does. I
thought that my work was done; now I know that it has only started. The world must be made over for the
humble and the wretched.
The choice of the writers of the Philippines is clear. Will they spin tales and string verses in an Ivory Tower?
Will they fiddle while Rome burns? Will they wall in a vacuum? Or will they, without forgetting that art
must make its appeal to man through beauty and power, rather do their work in the world of men, breathing

5. the air we breathe, thinking of the problems that puzzle us, lending the vision and genius with which they
are dowered to their ultimate solution?
Poetry is probably the oldest form of literature. On the one hand, it is akin 0 song in which form primitive
man sought to preserve the remembrance of his heroic past. On the other hand, it is akin to magic by means
of which he sought to preserve himself from evil spirits through incantation and to win the favor of the
beneficent deities through praise and prayer.
Thus primitive man may be said to have stumbled upon literature, if he did not purposely fashion it as an
instrument primarily functional in character. It may be stretching the point too far to say that with him, art
was a purely utilitarian device, but it seems logical to suppose that the natural economy of his life was such
that it did not easily encourage indulgence in activities of an artificial, superfluous, or useless character.
When he fashioned a stone ax, it was to facilitate the securing of his daily food, and when he sang, danced,
or chanted poetry it was not merely to fill an idle hour with pleasurable excitement but to invoke the favors
of his gods.
Undoubtedly there are men in every generation who will create for their own sake beautiful things which it
is our duty to treasure. But these artists represent an aberration from the normal course of nature, and if we
confer upon them the name of genius, it is genius of a decidely inferior category. Thus Shakespeare is a
greater artist than Christopher Marlowe, Shelly than Keats, Walt Whitman than Edgar Allan Poe.
Shakespeare, Shelley and Whitman achieved more than mere beauty in their works; they were, in a fashion
that is not to be confused with crude instruction, teachers of men.
If poetry originated as a functional activity, prose as such is even more frankly utilitarian in character. Prose
is on the world; it is too earthly to serve as a vehicle of pure fancy. And the greatest masters of prose are
those who have employed it in the service principally of reason and secondarily only of the imagination,
those who have used it for what Matthew Arnold has called the "criticism of life.” Thus, the man who wrote
The Book of Job was a greater artist than he who wrote the The Song of Songs, and the author of
Ecclesiastes than he who wrote the Psalms. So, too, Swift is the greater master of prose than Charles Lamb,
Thomas Huxley than Stevenson, and in our own day, Bertrand Russell than Christopher Morley, Theodore
Dreiser than Branch Cabell. The former are smiths of ideas as the latter are smiths of language; as the latter
have the talent to fashion the perfect phrase, so have the former the power to impart the stirring thought.
Language with the latter seems almost to be an end in itself, a device of pleasure; with the former it is a
means to an end, an instrument of ideas.
In the end, what really interests the writer, granting that he recognizes the value of social content in
literature, is some sort of assurance that his writing will result in something that he can lay his hands on as
good and useful. For certainly he has a right to expect that, having acceded to the demands of society upon
his talent, certain measurable benefits will flow from his work wholly distinct from the purely subjective
satisfaction that is his birthright as an artist and which comes naturally with the act of creative expression
The question is easily answered. The writer who has once admitted to himself that the problems of society
are his proper meat and drink has come to a point where merely technical problems have become of small
account compared to the ultimate problem which he is presumed to have already answered for himself;
namely, whether there is such a thing as progress, and whether it is within the capacity of man ever to
achieve progress.
Now, a writer either believes in progress or he does not. He either believes that man is improvable because
he has the innate capacity to correct his errors or he is convinced that man is eternally damned beyond any

6. possibility of redemption. All that we have said about the writers is meant only for those who believe in
progress, not that we would withhold from the others the name of writer, but that these have excluded
themselves by nature or by choice from a calling which is essentially an endeavor of hope.
Progress, then, is the best article in the creed of the writer of whom we have been speaking. He believes
that civilization, despite evident reverses, is forever picking up and moving upward. He believes, finally,
that he has a place in this scheme of universal progress and that whatever he can do to help is a worthy
contribution to the up movement of life.
We are not forgetting, despite the emphasis on "social content," that we are speaking of literature and not
propaganda. The challenge which we ask the intelligent writer meet is not challenge to beat the drums and
to blow the trumpet of progress. We are only reminding him that of all the ends to which he may dedicate
his talents, none is more worthy than the improvement of the condition of man and the defense of his
freedom.
Nor need the writer feel that he is being compelled to become a social reformer rather than an artist.
Whatever the writer's conception of his craft may be, he can safely cling to the principle that literature is
the imaginative representation of life and nature, and upon this principle honestly build his achievement. If
he is sincere and if he has the ability, he need have no fear that he will become a purveyor of propaganda
and lose caste as a creative artist.