LITERATURE AND SOCIETY
39
him is by attaining to what is most deeply and irreducibly human in one
self.
The U.S.S.R. at this moment presents an unprecedented spectacle, an
unlooked for and tremendously important one, and one which, I would
add, well may serve us as a model.
It
is, namely, that of a country in
which a writer finds it possible to enter into direct communion with his
readers. In place of rowing upstream as we are compelled to do, the writer
has but to let himself be borne along with the current. In the reality all
about him and close at hand, he may find at once inspiration, copy and an
immediate echo of what he has to say; which is not without a danger of
its own, inasmuch as the creation of a work of art implies the overcoming of
a certain resistance.
But there will be time later to discuss these new dangers that threaten.
As to the Soviet literary output, I have seen some praiseworthy productions,
but none as yet satisfactorily bodying forth that new man who is in process
of formation, and whom we
ar~
all anxiously awaiting. The Soviet litera–
ture is still engaged in depicting his formative struggles, his birth-throes.
What I am confidently looking forward to is works of an :annunciatory
character, works with a mighty impulse behind them, in which the writer,
stepping ahead and blazing the trail, extends to reality a beckoning invita–
tion to follow.
What would we think of a treatise on-let us say-radium which
dealt solely with the manner in which the substance is obtained? Ob–
viously, the extraction, the production of radium is chronologically of first
importance; but nevertheless, what interests me more than anything else
is learning what the properties, qualities and degree of efficaciousness of
the new and brilliant metal are. So with us today, the first thing we have
to think about is man, the new man, how to get him; and in this tortured
West of ours, we are still wide of the mark; we are still ·in the period of
struggle. That struggle is one that we neither desire nor cherish for its
own sake, but for the result it brings; we are not so much partisans as
getters.
In every enduring work of art, that is to say, one that is capable of
appealing to the appetites of successive generations, there is to be found
a good d·eal more than a mere response to the momentary needs of a class
or period. It goes without saying that it is a good thing to encourage the
reading of such masterpieces; and the U.S.S.R., by its reprints of Pushkin
and its performances of Shakespeare, better shows its real love of culture
than it does by the publication of a swarm of productions which, while
they may be remarkable enough in kind, and while they may exalt its
triumph, are possessed, possibly, of but a passing interest.
The mistake, I feel, lies in trying to indicate too narrowly, too pre-
