WHAT IS A PROLETARIAN NOVEL?
11
The proletarian novel must talco! cognizance of the conflicts between
bourgeoisie and proletariat since this cognizance furnishes the essential and
inevitable means by which the proletariat grows in self-consciousness (which
is identical with class-consciousness). This necessary attitude towards
the subject-matter implies a dialectic transformation of the two traditional
conceptions of literary form, the classical and the romantic.
If
the classical
is the survival of the materialistic absolute of Aristotle and the romantic
that of the idealistic absolute of transcendental philosophy, if the one is in
consequence a so-called "closed" form, and the other an "open": the
Marxian form of proletarian fiction so accepts and opposes both as to
transform them into a third, which is the reflection in fiction of the
dialectic materialistic conception of history. For example, the "closed"
aspect of Malraux'
Man's Fate
is that the Chinese uprising is betrayed, that
of Lumpkin's
To Make My Bread,
that the textile strike is lost; but in
both these novels the conflict of events is so described and the novels leave
the conflicts in such a state at the conclusion, that we sense the opposition
of an "open" form:
i.e.,
we sense the fact that the whole novel is only
an episode in a conflict to be continued in ·time, but a conflict to be con–
tinued definitely in a certain direction, to a certain outcome, to the
establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This "op·en" form,
however, is not "open" in the romantic sense since the direction is estab–
lished, and is not into a world of absolute ideas but rather into a new
stage in the materialistic development of history. This fact determines
the note of belief and optimism which must define the conclusion of the
proletarian novel.
Therefore, every proletarian novel craves its sequel. Every proletarian
novel is an historical novel, but one which recognizes that we can know
only the history of our own times and never with suffici·ent intimacy for
the purpose of fiction either the distant past or the distant future. It
represents the span of experience of its author and of his age seen thru
the philosophy of dialectic materialism at a peculiar moment in the
progress of history.
Henry Hart:
Seaver's remarl:s on the proletarian novel are apposite and true: they
are stated with great simplicity and clarity, and they are indisputable.
They contain, however, one contradiction which I am sure he would have
resolved had he written at greater length.
He define.s the proletariat as those who "literally have nothing to
lose but their chains," and a proletarian novel as one which deals with this
