Authors: Lewis Hyde
For now, however, the point is less about the particulars of this case than about the search for practical responses to the general problem posed by
The Gift.
Some responses will necessarily be fitted to their historical period; the Music Performance Fund belongs to a time of powerful trade unions, and the heyday of public support for art and science seems to belong to the cold war.
But surely there could also be responses that transcend their time. The royal patronage that Sir Isaac Newton received may have fallen out of favor, but other innovations from his day have survived. The idea that colleges might have endowed professorships has not been lost. Newton was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics; that position was created in 1663 by one Henry Lucas, and it endures to this day (the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is its current occupant). The forums
for scientific discourse that Newton knew have likewise endured. In 1672, Newton sent a long letter to Henry Oldenburg of the Royal Society in London, an outline of his theory of light and color. Oldenburg immediately printed the letter in the
Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society. It was Newton’s first scientific publication.
Philosophical Transactions
is the oldest scientific journal in the English-speaking world, having now published for over 340 years. Oldenburg was its founding editor. When he started it, it wasn’t part of a scientific community, it
created
a scientific community, and that community has endured.
Lucas and Oldenburg: these are good ancestors for the community of science; their institutions survive and their names are remembered. And for the community of artists? Those who can be clear about supporting the arts not as means to some other end but as ends in themselves, those who can shape that support in response to the gift-economy that lies at the heart of the practice, those who have the wit and power and vision to build beyond their own day: for artists, those will be the good ancestors of the generations of practitioners that will follow when we are gone.
Lewis Hyde
Cambridge, Massachusetts
April 2007
*
An amusing echo of this debacle was heard many years later: in 1948 one of the tour’s “surplus” paintings, Stuart Davis’s
Still Life with Flowers
, was bought for a high school in Chicago by one of its art teachers. The price was $62.50. In 2006 the school sold the painting at auction for $3.1 million.
*
Actually, wit may not be the key ingredient; power helps. It was the American Federation of Musicians that got the Music Performance Fund started as part of their collective bargaining with the recording industry. The loss of union power is another chapter of the recent saga of market triumphalism.
Part I
Bailey, F. G., ed.
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New York: Schocken, 1971.
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Translated by Elizabeth Palmer. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1973.
Blau, Peter.
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New York: Wiley, 1964.
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U.S. National Museum, Annual Report
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Drucker, Philip.
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Scranton, Pa.: Chandler Publishing Co., 1965.
Fox, Renée C, and Swazey, Judith P.
The Courage to Fail: A Social View of Organ Transplants and Dialysis.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Goody, Jack, and Tambiah, S. J.
Bridewealth and Dowry.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Goody, Jack, ed.
The Character of Kinship.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Grimms’ German Folk Tales, The.
Translated by Francis P. Magoun, Jr., and Alexander H. Krappe. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960.
Hagstrom, Warren O.
The Scientific Community.
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Hardin, Garrett.
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“Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de l′échange dans les sociétés archaïques,”
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Translated by Ian Cunnison. New York: Norton, 1967.
Meister Eckhart by Franz Pfeiffer.
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5 (1979): 83–85.
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________
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The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy.
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Tournier, Paul.
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Translated by John S. Gilmour. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1963.
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Part II
Asselineau, Roger.
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_________
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_______
Twenty Poems.
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________
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_______
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________
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_____________
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________
Personae.
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_________
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The Correspondence. 6
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___________
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________
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__________
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It is now time to try to free some of the spirits who labored with me in the creation of
The Gift.
The idea for this book took shape during a month spent at the Center for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I am grateful to Ivan Illich both for the example of his work and for the fertile atmosphere I found at CIDOC.
A creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts gave me the freedom to begin my project, and a fellowship for independent study and research from the National Endowment for the Humanities supported a year’s work in the library. The Millay Colony for the Arts provided a month of meals, shelter, and butterfly hunting without which my chapter on Whitman might never have taken shape.
The endowments and colonies such as Millay are truly gift institutions. I am grateful.
Both friends and strangers have given their support throughout the years, sending me newspaper clippings, talking all morning over coffee, convincing me of my errors, and offering typing, solace, diversion, and hope. I particularly wish to thank Robert Bly, Abby Freedman, Donald Hall, Patricia Hampl, Robert Hass, Dan Hobbing, Richard Hobby, Miriam Levine, Julia Markus, Jim Moore, Sherman Paul, Kris Rosenthal, Wendy Salinger, Marshall Sahlins, Millard Schumaker, Ron Sharp, Marc Shell, Daveda Tenenbaum, and Larry Wolken.
Bill Clark helped me gain access to valuable research materials. Charlotte Sheedy gave advice when it came time to
enter the marketplace. Jonathan Galassi edited the book with intelligence and care; his confidence in the unpredictable rhythms of creative labor often exceeded my own.
Linda Bamber responded to the book in manuscript, chapter by chapter. An ideal reader, she managed to combine a stranger’s cold eye with a sister’s unconditional support. If there are moments of clarity in
The Gift
, many of them are hers, not mine.
To Patsy Vigderman I owe a debt that I hope to repay, slowly, for years to come.