MARXISM AND THE HERITAGE OF CULTURE
33
views because, in spite of them Balzac, better than anyone else, revealed
and exposed the realities of nineteenth century life in capitalist France.
It would indeed be absurd for me to attempt to convert the doubtful
or the hostile to the view that Marxism is the continuation of the European
cultural tradition, but just conceivably I might be able to persuade them
to examine the matter for themselves.
There are at last available in France and England most of the
Marxian classics. Might it not be worth while for writers who are
genuinely concerned about the present menace to culture to acquaint them–
selves with the Marxian view on this question as expressed for example
in such a book as Engels'
Anti-Duhring
or in the Marx-Engels corres–
pondence? "Yes, if people could only
read/'
as Marx used irascibly to
remark.
LITERATURE AND SOCIETY
Andre Gide
IN CONFRONTATION WITH THAT DANGER
of which we all are conscious,
the danger that brings us here today, it is to the deeply individual reactions
of each people and its representatives that we may look for the most useful
and generally applicable lesson that there is to be learned, for the reason
that it is the most profoundly and tUlaffectedly human one of all.
I should first lik:e to clear up certain confusions.
The first I meet with is one which the nationalists have endeavored
to create, through an identification of internationalism with a disaffection
toward, a disavowal and attempted disintegration of one's own country.
They have given to the word "patriot" a sense so cramped and narrow,
so hostile in intent, that we are no longer able to mak:e use of it. There
are some of us, there are a great many of us, who cannot admit that a love
for the land of one's birth consists above all of a hatred for other lands.
As
for myself, I feel that I am profoundly an internationalist, while re–
maining profoundly French; just as I feel that I am deeply an individualist,
in giving my full consent and my help as well to the cause of Communism.
My thesis has always been this: that it is by being the most himself
that each individual best serves the community. Another proposition may
now be added, as an appendage or corollary to the first one: it is in a
Communist society that each individual-what is most individual in him–
may find the fullest and freest development; or as Malraux puts it in a
