MASK,
IMAGE, AND
TRUTH
Joseph Freeman
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning;
And he whose fustian's so sublimely bdd,
It is not poetry, but Pr·ose run mad.
-POPE
A
FRIEND WRITES ME:
"The pogrom on . Marxian cnttctsm con–
tinues unabated.
It
is said that a well-known author, sympathetic to the
Left-Wing, has written an article in which he assails criticism in general
and
t~e
Marxian brand in particular. The other day he harangued a
group of writers on the necessity of defending 'creative' writing against
criticism. The word 'creative' is beginning to reek with the grease of piety.
The other day I was reading in the
Literaturnia Gaxetta
that much the
same situation prevails in the Soviet Union, and they even have a special
phrase for it which, translated literally, means
critic-hounding.
Further–
more, the Party there is beginning to see that this pogrom on criticism,
aside from certain well-known historical justifications, has its political
.
"
meanmg.
This news has an ironical side. The author who is said to be lead–
ing the "revolt" against criticism is himself
:t
·prolific critic who for several
years has attacked Marxism. And, as is typical of many people who object
mixing politics with literature, he has turned politician. Is not the call
against Marxist critics a political an·d organizational activity? It smacks
a little of Technocracy, which urged "scientists" of every shade of opinion
to unite against "politicians" of all the social classes.
American literature suffers from strange distortions and confusions.
When a Marxist writer describes facts as he sees them, he is a paid propa–
gandist for the Kremlin. When a bourgeois writer utters the meanest,
most malicious, most barbarous superstitions, he is exercising his right of
free speech, his "intellectual integrity" and his imagined monopoly of
truth. We say, with the best western critics from Prosper de Barante
down, that literature reflects the social struggle. That makes us "artists
in uniform." They say that our poor, hungry, jobless, coatless, foodless,
roomless writers who bum nickles from each other around Union Square
for coffee and crullers-that these are living on Moscow gold. That is
impartial, aesthetic criticism. Archibald MacLeish says some very ques-
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