THREE GENERATIONS
51
their writing are identifying themselves with the struggle of the workers.
It seems almost natural that Alle'n Tate, for example, whose poetry and
criticism is so turgid, should have receded into the reactionary hybrid
of Harvard humanism and Southern feudalism.
While the exiles were cavorting in France, and sporting, on their
return, their new accomplishments, an undercurrent of revolutionary
literature was being built by a few confident pioneers. The work of
writers like Freeman, Gold and Kunitz is familiar enough not to. require
summanzmg. But what has not been adequately emphasized is that in
general they belong to the same generation as Cowley, Communigs, Hem–
ingway, and the others. After several years of partial eclipse, the swing
to the left has made of these ulder revolutionary writers the Marxian
teachers of the leftward moving writers, not only of the lost generation
but alsq of older writers like Anderson (during his short lurch to the
left). But just at the time when the tempo of revolution has brought
to the fore the forces which Gold, for instance, represents, a new gen–
eration of revolutionary writers is rising.
Much of our uncertainty and experiment in proletarian writing,
aside from the obvious cause, youth, has been produced by this literary
anomaly of two generations being confronted with a single task. The
older revolutionary writers, for the most part, and with qualifications
of course, never really passed through the literary period which their
"lost" contemporaries introduced. They side-stepped it in order to carry the
line of revolution forward. And the strain and the exigencies of pio–
neering kept them from assimilating· the literary spirit of the twenties.
To say this is not to disparage thei17 work, but to praise their integrity
and power, Nevertheless, the spirit of the twenties is part of om· heritage,
and many of the younger revolutionary generations are acutely conscious
of this. Though, to be exact, we are far from possessing homogeneity in
literary derivation and outlook, and are divided on many basic literary
questions.
The job of our generation is to tie these threads, to use whatever
heritage there is at our disposal for our revolutionary tasks. But it is the
revolutionary thread which gives the color to our pattern. By participation
in workers' struggles we both help to spin this thread and gain an intimate
knowledge of the new human relations the revolutionary movement is
forming. We are widening the revolutionary tradition because our ma–
terial is enlarging and our audience is expanding. And the added per–
spective time has given us is enabling us to assimilate many currents which
