12
PARTISAN REVIEW
How can we learn from the old masters, from the classics and their
predecessors? The general answer to this question is given by the
material–
istic dialectic,
according to which the "negation" is not a simple process
oi
destruction, but a new phase in which, to speak with Hegel, "the old
exists in a higher form." ln this type of "movement" a "succession" is
possible which dialectically represents both a breach with the past and its
peculiar perpetuation. The truth is that a whole series of factors begin to
lead a new life in other relations and in another trameworll:, so that an
"all-unity" is maintained.
When we regard the level of our poetry we must confess that we are
still very backward, that we have taken only the first few steps along the
world historic path of the new poetic culture. In comparison with the
gigantic content of life, the content of our poetry is pale. Our poetry has
not yet raised itself to the level of understanding the whole significance
of our epoch.
And here we arrive at another question: the question of the multi–
plicity and unity of poetic material.
Once when dealing caustically with buorgeois political economy Marx
wrote that it was "a highly moral science" and that its real ideal was "the
ascetic but usurious miser and the ascetic but productive slave." In a
biting characteristic of the hypocrisy of bourgeois economic teachings, Marx
wrote: "Abstinence, the renunciation of worldly pleasures and of all
human desires. The less you eat and drink, the fewer books you buy, the
less you go to the theatre, to the ball or to the public house, the less you
think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., and the more you save, the
greater will become the treasure that neither moths nor rust shall corrupt,
your
capital."
These searing remarks throw a light on the positive opinions of Marx.
Marxian Communism has as its aim the illimitable and multifarious
development of human desires. It wants a full and all-round development
of all the potentialities of man, and not a poverty-stricken, one-sided mutila–
tion of man in this or that direction.
Love, theoritise, paint, think and fence-Marx certainly did not
place these non-comparable things side by side without deliberate intention.
All these things are no "sin,'-' but thoroughly excellent functions in the life
of man for whom labour is the "first" function. This is the direction in
which we are now going. We have tremendous difficulties to overcome
and we have to fight every inch of our way, but we are going forward.
And from this follows the compelling conclusion:
The material of poetic
creation must be in accordance with the multiplicity of our great epoch and
all its contradictions.
Unity must be obtained from the standpoint from
which the material is used and not by the unification itself. This stand–
point is the standpoint of the victorious struggle of the proletariat.
