10
'PARTISAN REVIEW
This goes both ways. The critic, no more than the poet, may pretend
to be infallible, laying down the irrefutable "line," uttering ex-cathedra
the last word about life and art. Let the creative writer, or his critical
partisans, take issue with a specific critic on a specific question. Thomas
Wolfe may say to me: ''You arc mistaken about Abe Jones. You have
read that passage with an oversensitive regard for the negative sides of
Abe, and overlooked the tribute I paid him and his race. The Jew in my
novel is, like Shylock, not wholly repulsive; he has his noble side; besides,
I am under no obligation in this great and free republic of ours to treat
minor nationalities according to a Comintern thesis. My Jewish friends
have taken no exception to the portrait."
That, in effect, is what some people said in reply to M ichael. Gold's
complaint against MacLeish's
Frescos.
They went further and said: "But
isn't it true that many of the Communists one meets in New York are
Jews who talk English with a foreign accent?" This
~aises
a whole
problem of imagery and symbolism in poetry.
Yes, it is true that some Communists are Jews who speak with a
foreign accent. But that is no indictment of Communism, Jews or accents.
Communism is an international movement of workers, farmers and intel–
lectuals of all races and nationalities,
to
which Jews have contributed thc!r
share of fighters and heroes. There are also Jewish banlcers and indus–
trialists whose interests lie with the gentile bourgeoisie as against the work–
ers, Jew and gentile alike. The Communist · movement in America, as
everywhere else, is not predominantly Jewish. It is no more "disgraceful"
for an alien worker to speak English with an accent than for an American
tourist to butcher the French language in Paris cafes. The producers of
America's coal, iron, steel, automobiles, clothes, the men and women who
labor in heavy industry, are predominantly of alien stock-and they are
as American as the parasites who invest their "unearned increment" in for–
eign princes. The interests and aims of the proletariat transcend racial
and national boundaries. In a strike, Negro and white workers, Jews and
gentiles, the native and foreign-born American fight side by side against
the employers, whose greed for profit transcends race, nationality and
language.
A poem, play or novel describing "radicals" which would convey
that impression-not in the abstract language of sociology which I have
used, but in the living images of creative art-would be telling the truth.
A poem, play or novel which presents the Communist
only
as a Jew with
an accent; the Jew
only
with a beak-nose, a cruel, contemptuous, arrogant
face, is distorting the truth.
Such a symbol or image is based on a prejudice which the fascists of
the world exploit. The German reaction said communists were paid
