REVOLUTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL WRITER
53
starwd to stupefaction or should be sent to Bellevue. The reversal of this
action, or "thinking of his work:" is also a momentary aberration.
The frame of reference cannot be made to coincide with any other
frame of reference, nor can it exist as a separate entity; it would be like
talking about "pure" poetry, "pure" eating, "pure" economics, "pure"
politics, or "pure" anything else.
The point I wish to make is this:
that the act of writing is a frame
of reference,
that by its very definition it has a different set of laws than
those which govern other activities, that different kinds of w.riting have
different sets of standards by which we judge the intention of the writer,
but we must not confuse the standards.
Because of the subtle confusion of all these points in the uiscussion
raised by Edwin Seaver and Meridel Le Sueur I believe them to be far
more confused (in this respect) than I am.
I doubt if Marx dropped into like confusion when he appraised and
defended Heine; I doubt if Lenin in reading Pushkin or the Latin Classi.:s
felt he was wasting time. I would say that both Marx and Lenin made
allowances for translation of one kind of action into another; to apply
the logic of a poerri by Heine directly and literally into terms of political
action is, I think, insanity-though the "content" of the poem may be
as
"revolutionary" as you please. Yet it is precisely that kind of confusion
that takes place when Mr. Seaver speaks of Lenin as "the poet of action."
If
he means that Lenin's action was like in
quality
to Shakespeare's
Macbeth
I agree, but if he implies, as I think he does, a lihness in
kind,
I say that he is walking into the same confusion that Granville Hick;s
ran into when he warned readers of
The New Masses
against Marcel
Proust.
Another illustration of my point is contained in Kenneth Fearing's
poem,
Cuitural Notes.
Fearing, from the very start of his care<:r, has
been revolutionary in his intentions; so far as I know, the Communist
Party and the activity sur.rounding it, has always been the source of his
material. Lately, as Edwin Rolfe says in his essay on revolutionary poetry
in this issue of
Partisan R eview,
Fearing's new work: has proved the value
of this close association, yet he saw clearly enough the very problem I
haw in mind and he stated it from a number of different points of view
in this single poem :
Professor Burke's symphony ''Colorado Vistas"
In
four movements,
I
Mountains,
II
Canyons
Ill
Dus.k
