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SUBJECTIVE STYLIZATION 273
can live and express in his works, as his own subjective experience, this historical tradition transformed into objective phenomena, the result will be that happiest of coincidences, when the artist can create objective, general works of historical validity through his own most subjective, personal manifestations. This is one of the rare cases when an art may be stylized to the limit and yet not be arbitrarily subjective.
In the western cultural sphere such a contingency is almost unimaginable to-day, for ancient and primitive folk styles are not suitable for the presentation of modern industrialized life. And is there anywhere a traditional folk style which is not primitive and not antiquated, which could therefore be used to express present-day experiences?
Citizens of Western Europe or America would certainly be startled if Homer or one of the singers of the Kalevala were suddenly to appear in a French literary cafe and it would be no less strange if someone were to sing of the rights between modern aeroplanes in the ancient rhythm and melody of the rhapsodies. And yet such strange things are happening now among the national minorities in the Soviet Union. The most surprising and striking evidence of this are the products of Central Asian folk poetry. But the same can be observed in the films made by the people of Soviet Asia, in the interesting productions of the Kazakhstan, Tashkent, Uzbek and Turkmen film studios.
As everyone knows, the people of Central Asia awoke to the consciousness of their own national and folk culture only as a result of the cultural policy of the Soviet government. Until then it was merely a dwindling tradition, a memory in the minds of the old people. But under the Soviets not only was the almost forgotten tradition awakened to new life, but its revival and continuation stimulated and encouraged. Among the peoples of Central Asia the tradition of the old minstrels was still alive because the minstrels themselves still existed. Grey-haired old rhapsodists roamed the country from aul to aul with their two-stringed dombra, singing the ancient epics which were passed on from mouth to mouth and had never been written down. The Soviet government not only had these glorious old epics written down but saw to it that this last 18