infinitely quotable

i'm starting to find Milan Kundera infinitely quotable. Or maybe it's just this particular essay collection, and how my thoughts seem to be trailing in his footsteps these last couple of weeks, clumsily stumbling where he's gone before, trying to keep up.
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"I have always, deeply, violently, detested those who look for a position (political, philosophical, religious, whatever) in a work of art rather than searching it for an effort to know, to understand, to grasp this or that aspect of reality."
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(Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay In Nine Parts)
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He goes on to talk about the beauty of the barbaric in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring -- something i'm not so ready to agree with or endorse, in the light of so much that has happened in recent years. But yes -- this aversion to art as propaganda, it's always been there, although i wouldn't go so far as to say that i deeply violently detest the people who wish to see art in such terms. Seems to me a bit too trivial a thing to get deeply violently upset about; and definitely not enough of a reason to detest anyone. (i mean, getalife, seriously. There's so much more to life than Art.)
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But yeah -- an aversion to art being seen as propaganda; together with a deep fear of my writing being harnessed for some purpose external to my own. i think it's for this reason that i find i cannot ally myself with the-group-formerly-known-as-CLV -- lovely though the people are, and much as i can understand what they're trying to do. It feels too determined, like it has an agenda, no matter how well-intentioned. It's funny -- i'm sure there are people there who do understand where i'm coming from, who are artists themselves, in fact, and would claim to feel the same. Yet they are still there. Maybe they're seeing something that i'm not seeing.
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