CREATE DANGEROUSLY

Camus delivered “Create Dangerously” as a lecture in 1957, the year of his Nobel Prize. He had spent years being pulled apart by camps that wanted his endorsement, and by allies who turned on him when he refused to take sides. He had earned, painfully, the right to say this. In such an age, to make anything at all is to take a risk.

The artist used to publish into an age that could be charmed, scandalized, or ignored. Now, Camus says, every public act drops into an arena of ideologies that do not forgive. Each side waits for the writer to slip, so it can claim him or destroy him. Silence is one response. Camus chose another. Create anyway. Create knowing that what you make will be misread, weaponized, and resented. Make it anyway, with care, refusing to write either for the persecutors or for the easy applause.

This is not only a problem for artists. It is the problem of anyone who tries to do honest public work in a polarized time. The thing you make will be received in bad faith by someone. If you wait for a safer moment, you will wait forever. The work is to keep your inner standard intact while everything around you treats your output as ammunition.

If you have stopped making the thing because of how it might be taken, you have already let the passions of the age decide for you. Create anyway.

See also: The restraints it chooses (May 18), The right not to lie (May 20)