8
PARTISAN REVIEW
in Russian literature. Such analyses are invaluable, and no serious writer
can object to them. But even if some writers do object to a social inter–
pretation of their work-as is the case with those who have been conducting
a persistent agitation against Marxist criticism-why should that deflect
us from speaking the necessary truths? Why should we let any writer
who happens to be called "creative" delude us into believing that chauvin–
ism and self-adulation, hatred, fear and misunderstanding of everything
which lies
outside
his provincial and class prejudices is either art or Amer–
ican?
If
a poet may give his views of the revolutionary movement, why
may we not give our views of the poet? Is it any less a "creative" act to
reflect about a work: of art than to slander one's friends, lovers and bene–
factors under fictitious names?
We know what happens: the moment the critics stop writing, about
a certain kind of poet, novelist or playwright, he stands up in the cafes and
studios and yells to the four corners of the city that he is the victim of a
conspiracy of silence.
Citizens, I am being ignored!
When the critics do
write about him but fail to declare him the equal of Dostoyevsky, Proust,
..
Shelley and Ibsen, they are not good critics; they are merely pompous
bigots wallowing in the opium of dialectic materialism. Needless ·to say,
the best poets, novelists and critics do not do this. Neither do they make
false and invidious distinctions between "creative" and "critical" writing
as if the first were sacred and the second sterile, just as true scientists
do not oppose practical to theoretical science.
The Marxist critic interprets, appreciates and applauds good art, but
he rips the masks off the priests of art. He exposes the propagandist behind
the poet, translates the equivocal images of verse into the lucid concepts of
prose, holds the author responsible for his characters when these actually
do speak for him. The Marxist critic is not concerned with puffing or
blasting reputations, with log-rolling or intrigue. He wishes to promote
the best, the most vigorous, the most illuminating art. He seeks to pro–
pagate the truth.
But every man sees the world from some viewpoint. Because the
Marxist critic sees it from the viewpoint of the revolutionary working–
class, a certain type of "creative" writer, anxious not to be disturbed in
his allegiances, preconceptions and magic incantations, hates the critic,
as
the church hates the unbeliever, the industrial baron the labor organizer,
the capitalist politician the Communist.
The "united front" against Marxist critics headed by writers fresh
from the reactionary camp is a "united front" against the Marxist de–
ciphering of bourgeois symbols. Without the Communist, the propertied
class·es would
unrestricted
bamboozle the masses with their "democratic"
images. Without the Marxist critic the "faustian" creative writer would
