PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES
5
The assimibtion of this new material requires direct participation instead
of external observation
j
and the critic's task is to point out the dangers
inherent in the
spectator's
attitude. The critic is the ideologi::.t of the
literary movement, and any ideologist, as Lenin pointed out "is worthy
of that name only when he marches ahead of the spontaneous movement,
points out the real road, and when he is able, ahead of all others, to solve
all the theoretical, political and tactical questions which the 'material ele–
ments' of the movement sp:l1ltancously encounter. It is necessary .to be
critical of it [the movement], to point out its dangers and defects and
to aspire to
elevate
spontaneity to conociousness."
(A Convers,ation With
Defenders of Economism).
Pulling in Opposite Directions
The most' striking tendency, and the most natural one in a young
revolutionary literature, is what is commonly called "leftism." Though
it has seldom been explicitly stated in literary' theory, its prejudices and
assumptions are so widespread that at this time its salient features are
easily
r~cognized .
Its zeal to steep literature overnight in the political
program of Communism results in the attempt to force the reader's re–
sponses through a barrage of sluganized and inorganic writing. "Leftism,"
by tacking on political perspectives to awkward literary forms, drains litera–
ture of its more specific qualities. Unacquainted with the real experiences
of workers, "leftism," in criticism and creation alike, hides behind a
smoke-screen of verbal revolutionism.
It
assumes a direct line between
economic base and ideology, and in this way distorts and
l
vulgarizes the
complexity of human nature, the motives of action and their expression
in thought and feeling. In theory the "leftist" sllbscribes to the Marxian
thesis of the continuity of culture, but in prac tice he makes a mockery
of it by combating all endeavors to use the heritage of the past. In
criticism the
~'leftist"
substitutes gush on the one hand, and invective on
the other, for analysis
j
and it is not difficult to see that to some of these
critics Marxism is not a science but a
sentiment.
Some of the poetry ot
Maxwell Bodenheim and H. H. Lewis, George Marlen's novel
The
Road,
and the short stories that Joseph Vogel has published of late are
examples of this tendency. In fact its influence has been so pervasive
that even some of our more important works have suffered from elements
of "leftism."
(It
is obviously beyond the scope of this editorial to analyze
the subtle way in which "leftism" has affected various revolutionary works.)
E. A. Schachner has written a long article on
Revolutionary Literature
in the United States Today (The Windsor Quarterly, Spring
1934) that
