Gabrielle Bellot

Art, Camus claims, is not owned by the privileged, and a literature that encompasses everyone is a stronger art. “In the face of so much suffering, if art insists on being a luxury, it will also be a lie,” he said. He continued that “if there is any man who has no right to solitude, it is the artist. Art cannot be a monologue… Art advances between two chasms, which are frivolity and propaganda.” Towards the end, Camus noted that “all greatness, after all, is rooted in risk. The time of irresponsible artists is over.” In a line that has stayed with me, Camus cuts to the core of what great art must aim for, regardless of its author or ken: “[t]he aim of art… is not to legislate or to reign supreme, but rather to understand first of all.” Art does not seek to dictate the rigid laws of a society; instead, it must seek to try to capture something true about the world it conjures up. Camus goes on to condemn art crafted purely out of hate. We must do the opposite of hatred, which, as I said after Trump’s election, is not love, but empathy, understanding.

Immigrant art is always important, but it is more urgent now than ever in America and beyond. In this toxic atmosphere of anti-immigrant sentiment, we must speak out, must write the work that drives us. We must create dangerously, as Danticat said, so that, perhaps, one day the sky will be clouded with a few less night-dark butterflies than before, not because of some naïve presumption that art always saves lives, but because art does, in fact, save lives, often when we least expect it to. Like Camus and Danticat, we must attempt, above all, to understand; without this, there is no art, but only a sky filled with thousands of butterflies we cannot begin to comprehend.

On Danticat, Camus, and the Art of Exile
Gabrielle Bellot Reminds Us That Immigrant Art is American Art
https://lithub.com/on-danticat-camus-and-the-art-of-exile/