32
PARTISAN REVIEW
adapted to conform to its demands.
In the first place the elements of his "world" have been shaken
up and put together in a new design; and some of the more important
features of the old pattern have been omitted from the new. The
world of
L'Espoir
is defined by the aggregate of the people's front
and encompasses the extremes of neither right nor left. The evils of
Franco totalitarianism are taken for granted; its destruction is assumed
in the principle of Hope, and Hope is equally an imperative for all
the characters. The fascists consequently do not figure in the inti-
mate moral scheme of the novel; they are the abstract Enemy, authors
of the tragedy, super stagehands, and that is all. Now this alienation
of the capitalists-for the fascists are but capitalists !-is an expression
of people's-frontism, which, because it must ignore the existence of
capitalism in order to maintain relations with the "liberal" bour-
geoisie, deprives the fascist of a material base in human society and
turns him into a monster from Mars. It is true that Malraux, speaking
through his inveterate oracle, Garcia, offers the fascist a remote psy-
chological footing in reality by attributing his politics to the "cult of
humiliation." But since he is not permitted to practise his cult in the
pages of the novel we are forced to take Garcia's word for it. Compare,
then, the straitened world of
L'Espoir,
circumscribed by the con-
tours of a transient and ill-fated political bloc, with the inclusive
world of
Man's Fate-where
right, left and center are all present and
duly evaluated in tenns of their historical roles-and you have the
difference between reality soundly projected and judged, and reality
deformed by the crooked glass of a reactionary dogma.
But the revolutionary socialists have been even more neatly eased
out of moral existence. In the first place, they are ignored. The POUM
is mentioned once, in a purely statistical connection; the Fourth Inter-
national once also, by a minor character who was formerly
«dans le
trotskysme"
but has since repudiated it. In the second place, their
role is played by the people's front itself, which is assumed to be
intent on making the revolution as soon as possible-republicans,
Catholics and all! Now the Stalinist propaganda machine, like the
Church, has its special indulgences as well as its characteristic prohibi-
tions. A writer who is headed towards a party conclusion is at liberty
to arrive there by any route he pleascs. And providing he depicts no
fundamental contradictions in the sacred totality of the people's front,
he may improvise
ad lib.
on the question of the revolution and the
opposition. In the case of Spain he is free to follow the official ration-
alization, according to which the war is a struggle between fascism
and bourgeois democracy (and this line he usually
does
follow when
he is addressing liberals), or if he has an audience of "leftist" intel-
