WASTE LAND TO FLOWER G1lRDEN
39
dass
within that society. And this is exactly what Krutch is doing, as
the one concept involves the other. It suffices to contrast hisi conception
of
art" as
optimism
with living artistic practice, not to mention his
arlier views, to see to what senile straits has class logic has brought him.
The brutal naturalism of modern literature and the atmospheres of disgust
md
nihilism which it recreates, are too well known to need further de–
monstration. As to the literature of the past, its affirmative or negative
qualities differ with their specific social and class genesis. But nowhere
in
history do we find these Krutchean centers of literary light that impel
the writer to shout Hallelujah regardless of the particular social complex
wherein he functions.
Let us examine his point about tragedy. In
The Modem Temper
ht
said that it is impossible for modern writers to create tragedy, for they
do
not believe in the greatness of man, and hence cannot make his "great–
'ness compensate for his frustration." But in
Literature and Utopia
the
modern writer suddenly becomes capable of seeing life as significantly
md
harmoniously as presumably only the ancient and feudal creators could
see it. The truth is that Krutch is wrong on both counts. Exce;>t for the
period of bourgeois class rise, the creation of tragedy is beyond the capacity
of bourgeois art. What is tragedy?
If
we rid ourselves of the fetishizing
of its externals, of its historical barnacles ( such as the mechanics of for–
mal catastrophe in the plot, the grand manner, dramatic verse forms, etc.),
we find that tragedy consists primarily in the
signification
of reality. Prole–
brian literature, because it expresses the movement of vast social forces, the
making of
positive
history, the suffering and heroism of multitudes, is in–
deed
capable
o~
that vital affirmation which is the essence of the tragic.
It
can be produced by those creators who are able not merely to state
the gigantic contradictions of contemporary li.fe, b.ut also to resolve them.
The signification .of a revolutionary class is of necessity kinetic, impelling
it
to the disruption of the social equilibrium
~nd
to the fulfilment of its
only possible emotional release-action. But signification is impossible
to
a class rolling down the incline of history. Its
representative~
in liter–
ature
cannot fathom the heroic, and the principal problems of the epoch,
which they are unable to solve, they cannot even pose except with the
"wrong consciousness." When Krutch laments the death of heroes, he is
really lamenting the death of bourgeois heroes. The workers have their
heroes--not the individual as hero, but men like Lenin and Stalin, Dimi–
trov and Thaelmann, Liebknecht and Luxembourg, the Altona Com–
munists and John Scheer, Wesley Everest and Harry Simms. The suffering
