8
PARTISAN REVIEW
temporary American novel. In accordance with the propos1t1on stated
above, concerning beginning and end terms, we should not expect Soviet
novelists to be talking very much any more about proletarian literature.
And this is true. They talk today about Soviet literature, about the
literature of the socialist fatherland, about the problems of socialist realism
and the like. Proletarian literature is not something they are working
toward; it is something which exists, and they do not have to talk about
it precisely because they have it. Proletarian Literature in the U.S.S.R.
is the uncontested literature of a victorious and firmly established socialist
society. Proletarian literature in the U. S., on the other. hand, has its
roots in the future; it must deal not only with present reality but with
reality still in the process of becoming.
If
it does not deal with the latter
it cannot be proletarian literature. But if it neglects the former, it cannot
be literature at all.
.
• •
•
To sum up then: the proletarian novel in the U. S., in the present
stage of revolutionary crisis, cannot be defined in terms of aesthetics, or
in terms of characters or subject matter. It can be defined only in terms
of history and of political philosophy: the materialist dialectic, ·recogni–
tion of the class struggle, acceptance of the historic role of the proletariat
in the formation of a new and socialist society. It is not only the class
alignment of the novelist that must be considered, not only his acceptance
and use of the Marxian interpretation in his work, but the revolutionary
purpose of his work, his aim not merely to understand the world and not
merely to explain it, but to change it. Without the presence of all these
elements in a given work:, it seems to me, we cannot have a genuine prol–
etarian novel.
DISCUSSION
Edwin Berry Burgum:
The proletarian novel is a novel written under the'! influence of
dialectic materialism from the point of view of the class-conscious prole–
tariat.
The bourgeois novel is either (
1)
a novel of escape written under
the influence of idealistic philosophy or (2) a novel of despondency written
under the influence of pragmatism or (3) a novd combining elements of
both. An example of the first is Thornton Wilder's
Bridge of San Luis
Rey,
of the second William Faulkner's
Sanctuary,
and of the third Thomas
Wolfe's
Of Time
and the
River.
These three types ·exist in time:
i.e.
