Look I'm sympathetic to many arguments in favor of popular genre fiction (some of it is quite good, it's okay to like things that are comfortable, its dismissal often reflects prejudice toward its readers, etc etc) but I just can't with the people who are like "how very dare you *judge* art!!!??"
![Mr. Cohn. I am trying, Mr. Hughes, because I think you have
gone pretty far in some of these things, and I think you know
pretty well what you did. When you wrote something called
``Ballads of Lenin,'' did you believe that when you wrote it?
Mr. Hughes. Believe what, sir?
Mr. Cohn. Comrade Lenin of Russia speaks from marble:
On guard with the workers forever--
The world is our room!
Mr. Hughes. That is a poem. One can not state one believes
every word of a poem.
Mr. Cohn. I do not know what one can say. I am asking you
specifically do you believe in the message carried and conveyed
in this poem?
Mr. Hughes. It would demand a great deal of discussion. You
can not say yes or no.
Mr. Cohn. You can not say yes or no?
Mr. Hughes. One can if one wants to confuse one's opinions.
Mr. Cohn. You wrote it, Mr. Hughes, and we would like an
answer. This is very important. Did you or didn't you?
Mr. Hughes. May I confer with counsel, sir?
Mr. Cohn. Surely.
[Witness conferred with his counsel.]
Mr. Hughes. Would you ask me the question again, sir?
[Question read by the reporter.]
Mr. Hughes. My feeling is that one can not give a yes or no
answer to such a question, because the Bible, for example,
means many things to different people. That poem would mean
many things to different people.
Mr. Cohn. How did you intend it to mean?
Mr. Hughes. I would have to read and study it and go back
twenty years to tell you that.
Mr. Cohn. Read it right now. Is it your testimony that you
can not recall it?
Mr. Hughes. I could not recite it to you, no, sir. I can
not.
That, sir, in my opinion is a poem symbolizing what I felt
at that time Lenin as a symbol might mean to workers in various
parts of the world. The Spanish Negro in the cane fields, the
Chinese in Shanghai, and so on.
Mr. Cohn. Is that what it meant to you at that time?
Mr. Hughes. That is what it meant to me at that time.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5yoruzm6gs4bj42id2ye7yz7/bafkreigy7u6rn4ll7o4rv2tng63gr2gpvmxsnld6ayuui7gy56azj2se5m)
