I speak for myself as a private United States citizen, albeit in a public profession, whose views from time to time coincide with U.S. Government policies and this conference, and from time to time do not. I have no idea how it will go today.

Previously, I mentioned censorship briefly, quoting Karl Marx, who wrote, “All censorship is evil, no matter how well-intentioned.” I mentioned the two types — government control and individual self-censorship. I concentrated on the latter, explaining that in the U.S. our people are free to ignore the wisdom provided by unfettered artistic expression—at their own psychic peril, of course. But perhaps I did not make it sufficiently clear that I consider this failing far preferable to government artistic control; the first is control by public education, the second only by educating government, which is a far more difficult task.

As a creative artist in a country where the individual act of conscience is revered, though occasionally more in principle than in fact, I am concerned with and puzzled by countries where the individual act is discouraged and even feared.

I learned a powerful lesson about the force of the creative act of the individual several years ago when I was in South Korea petitioning the president of that country for the release of an imprisoned South Korean poet. I was told by the president that the release of the poet might well lead to circumstances which could bring about the fall of the government. I told the president publicly that I had been unaware that his government was so weak that a poet or a poem could bring it down; privately I was filled with wonder and delight at the power of that word.

I believe it is our function here to see to it that the creative act—and all the information and instruction it possesses—is given unfettered expression among our various countries. And much that I have heard these past four days has delighted and encouraged me, and much that I have heard has filled me with misgivings—even dismay. I was pleased by the suggestion of the distinguished Danish and Spanish delegates that there be greater freedom in our cultural exchange programs—that receiving countries have greater say in what they receive, and that sending countries be given greater freedom in what they wish to send. I have been pleased by the suggestion made concerning the freer exchange of students and individual practitioners of the arts—actors, directors, playwrights, for example, in order to learn other creativities, other wisdoms.

But I was discouraged by much of what I have heard. I disagree with the suggestion that we are not politically motivated here. It has become tiresomely clear that while some delegations are engaged in the attempt to accomplish an extra-governmental creative discourse, others are not. I am discouraged that most references to how wonderful the present state of esthetic exchange is tend to concentrate on dance, opera, ballet, and classical drama, ignoring the problems facing the free dissemination of contemporary ideas as represented by the contemporary word. In a world where governments fear the word, where practitioners of the arts as an act of conscience are imprisoned or exiled, there is no healthy exchange of cultures.

I am dismayed by the two prevalent implications that governments should be permitted to determine their individual esthetic and impose this view on their creative artists. And I am dismayed—no, that is too weak an expression—I detest the current invention that the experimental, the avant-garde, is decadent. This fear and loathing of the new, the adventurous, is perhaps as great a barrier to the healthy growth of a national esthetic as any other we face. To paraphrase Lincoln Steffens, the great progressive American journalist, we must go to the future... it works! The assumption that only the optimistic, the easy, the patriotically sycophantic, represents the essence of a nation is the greatest folly.

Of course we should try to reach agreements here, agreements reflecting each nation’s aspirations and fears, however reasonable or unreasonable they may be. At the same time, there is a great danger that formalization of exchange can become a limitation of exchange rather than an opening to greater exchange. Therefore, each government represented here must bend to our common goal, abandoning xenophobia, suspicion, and self-righteousness.

I warn you, unless you pay proper attention to these matters, you will only be serving yourselves and not your people. This congress will be limiting esthetic exchange rather than observing its mandate. You are capable here of avoiding esthetic and semantic collapse, but only if you are capable of transcending mutual suspicion, transcending censorship, transcending the swamp of self-serving bureaucracy, transcending short-term national interest, and are able to bind the profound wounds to the arts of the world produced by the East-West split.

The patient is on the table before you; you can either cure it or suffocate it. I beg you, choose wisely, choose unselfishly.