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Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.
--
Mistakenly attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993) by Andrew Samuels, p. 9; misakenly attributed to Brecht in Paulo Freire : A Critical Encounter (1993) by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, p. 80; variant translation: "Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it."
--
First recorded in Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924): "Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes."

 

Bertolt Brecht

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Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.

 

Leon Trotsky

 

Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes. But at present even the handling of a hammer is taught with the help of a mirror, a sensitive film that records all the movements. Photography and motion-picture photography, owing to their passive accuracy of depiction, are becoming important educational instruments in the field of labor. If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one resconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature? Of course no one speaks about an exact mirror. No one even thinks of asking the new literature to have mirror-like impassivity. The deeper literature is, and the more it is imbued with the desire to shape life, the more significantly and dynamically it will be able to "picture" life.

 

Leon Trotsky

 

In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest,
And read the authentic message of his eyes.

 

Edgar Lee Masters

 

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land...
Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

 

Pete Seeger