tionably more differentiation than in the realms of
abstract thought. But this differentiation in any time
tends to be of form and content rather than of rul-
ing ideas. A study of the literature of a remote
period, like the Middle Ages or the Renaissance,
enables one to realize how uniform everywhere are
the main preoccupations of a culture. Just" as the
important writers of the last generation, the Prousts
and Manns and Joyces, despite vast differences in
subject matter and technique, managed to reflect an
identical negation of modern industrial civilization,
the important writers of the future will write out of
an attitude that is international in scope. If this at-
titude turns out to be an affirmation based on the
hope of a proletarian revolution, it will not be dif-
ferent in the United States from what it will be in
England or France. The differences between the
literature of any period are to be measured not in
terms of nationality but in terms of the perception,
intelligence, and imagination of individual writers.
I could answer your last question at all only by
reshaping it into the more general question of the
possible integration of Marxism with literature-
Marxism by itself with
the
literary tradition. And
this is much too complicated a problem to be under-
taken in this place. I will merely suggest that since
Americanism has been submitted to something like
a historical analysis, the same would have to be
accorded !vIarxism, which has also acquired so many
attached emotive meanings that its. original signi-
ficance is obscured. Apparently such a spokesman as
Waldo Frank is a Marxist in good standing; but it
is evident from his address at the Writers'
Congress
in Paris last year that he has taken from Marxism
only those things which appeal to him. By the time
that Mr. Frank has regretted Karl Marx's dualism,
the socialist reduction of the individual "from an
organic integer of cosmos to a mere quantitative
factor of the collective mass," and the notion that
"life's creative force" is something objective, there
is very little left of Marxism but the eagles and the
trumpets. It is plain that Mr. Frank is less concerned
with economic materialism than with his own pecul-
iar brand of religion. The "organic view of life" can
only be realized through revolution; Marxism pro-
vides the immediate instrument for this revolution;
therefore, Marxism must be embraced by the artist.
As a
ere.ative
individual; however, the artist must
ignore all elements in the Marxist system which
deny him his role-in particular, the objective or
mechanistic view of reality.
This is pointed out, not to expose Mr. Frank's
private heresies, but to illustrate how difficult it is
for the artist who cares anything for his role to
achieve a really logical bridge between dogmatic
Marxism and literature. Instead of a system of
dogma, Marxism becomes a state of mind, and this
state of mind is identified rhetorically with a stii"te
of mind that is perennial to literature-an intuition
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
of what Mr. Frank calls "the primal unity" of all
living matter. That certain logical steps are over-
looked in the process is perhaps not very important;
for certainly, if Mr. Frank's Marxism is not or-
thodox, it is more "like a Marxism that can appeal
to the artist than the Marxism, let us say, of Buk-
harin. What Mr. Frank's dialectical embarrassment
most simply reveals is the profound qualification of
Marxist doctrine that is necessary before it can
possibly be integrated with the literary tradition.
WILLIAM CARLOS
WILLIAMS
THE American cultural tradition appears to me to
stem directly from that of Western Europe of four
hundred years ago in its most liberal phases. From
that point it became a separate thing, or attempted
to become so. It failed in large part because of the
inability of the men of that day to absorb the new
ideology, faced as they were by a life-and-death
struggle with their primitive environment and also,
of course, the inevitable fallibility of all human
flesh-the dishonesty, self-seeking which character-
ize every phase of crude plenty in the world.
The essential democracy upon which an attempt
was made to found the United States has been the
central shaft about which all the other movements
and trends of thought have revolved-without
changing it in any way. This deeply embedded feel-
ing for a democracy has defeated the more radical
thought of each era, such as that of Tom Paine,
Gene Debs, Bill Haywood, making their movements
and thoughts seem foreign to the environment. It is
this same democracy of feeling which will defeat
Marxism in America and all other attempts at regi-
mentation of thought and action. It will also defeat
fascism-though it may have to pass through that.
This is an idealistic foundation which America has
been able to protect because of its isolated geo-
graphic position. Only the rather myopic European
or Asiatic could fail to sense the essential good
humor of the American democratic spirit which
permits the brutality of the self-seeker to go its way
in the perhaps misguided notion that essential demo-
cracy will triumph finally. Be that as it may, the
democratic spirit is still the same as it has always
been in the United States.
My opinion is that the American tradition is com-
pletely opposed to Marxism. America is progressing
through difficult mechanistic readjustments which it
is confident it can take care of. But Marxism is a
static philosophy of a hundred years ago which has
not yet kept up-as the democratic spirit has-
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