ARTHUR MIZENER
74
PARTISAN REVIEW
but the emphasis, for example, in Elizabeth Bishop's
The Sea and Its
Shore,
is such as to prevent it from functioning simply as fantasy. On the
other hand, 'allegory' is not an applicable term, for the narrative not
only has relevant references to far too wide a variety of moral patterns
but is plainly not intended to work out completely for any single one
of them. That is, its value is not dependent on the validity of some one,
or even all, of the moral patterns implied, but on its ability to con·
centrate references to a wide variety of patterns, all pertinent enough
to make significant a fable which holds these references in solution.
One would like to say a great deal more about this collection; about
the poetry, which is less successful but quite as interesting as the prose;
about James Agee's ingenious adoption of the shooting script to the
purpose of a complex narrative with a simple moral referent; or about
the dramatic skill of Robert Herring's
Aurochs.
For here at last is a
generation of socially conscious writers who appear to be landing on
their feet, to have learned, as Engels put it, that 'it is not the poet's duty
to supply the reader in advance with the future historical solution of the
conflicts he describes.'
RIPOSTES
Independence Plus Literature
Equals Fascism
Since the first announcement of the
new
PARTISAN
REVIEw-and, of course,
long before anything could be known
of its character or contents-the press
of the Communist Party has savagely,
at times hysterically, attacked the
magazine and its editors. These pol-
emics have been entirely political in
nature. Their cultural level is suggest-
ed by their headings: "Falsely Labeled
Goods"
(New Masses),
"A Literary
Snake Sheds his Skin for Trotzky"
(Daily Worker,
Oct. 12), "Trotzkyist
Schemers Exposed"
(Daily Worker,
Oct. 19) " "No Quarter to Trotskyists-
Literary or Otherwise"
(Daily Worker,
Oct. 20). In the language of V. J.
Jerome, one of the Party's deviation
experts, we are "of the same ilk that
murdered Kirov, that turned the guns
on the backs of Loyalist civilians in
Spain and betrayed the Army's front
line, that have been caught red-handed
in plots with the Gestapo and Japanese
militarists to dismember the Soviet
Union." What we, in our innocence,
conceived of as a literary magazine has
become the organ of the murderers of
Kirov. Such is the result of refusing
to accept the Party Line in literature.
It would be tedious to examine in
detail the "charges" hurled at us by
the Party press. They are based in
each case either on misconception or
falsification. Two examples of the
latter may be given. The
Daily Worker
charged that our colleague, F. W.
Dupee, while he was literary editor of
the
New Masses
last winter "had the
gall to demand freedom of expression
for attacks against the Soviet Union
and against the Communist move·
ment." This is a reference to Dupee's
efforts to relax the pressure of the
Party Line in the book review section.
Our fellow editor, Philip Rahv, in an
unpublished essay which the Party's
OGPU somehow laid hands on, wrote:
"The literary Left-wing movement is
particularly native to New York, for
its underlying philosophy, Marxism, is
a product of European thought." This
observation, accurate to the point of
being positively banal, the
Daily Work·
er
quotes, taking the precaution to
omit the word "literary" and thus ex·
tend its scope to include the New Deal
