ALetter to the New
Republic
In the October 19 issue of the
New Republic,
Malcolm Cowley
published a lengthy article abusing PARTISAN
REVIEW
as
'factional',
'anti-Soviet', a perpetrator of 'literary crimes', and 'hardly' distin–
guishable from the
American Mercury.
As
we go to press, the
New
Republic
has promised to print our reply in an early issue. Pleading
limitations of space, however, the
New Republic
insisted that we cut
down our original letter to 1,000 words-although Mr. Cowley's at–
tack ran over 1,700 words. (The only specific omission they stipulated
was the sentence: ''Isn't
this
the same Malcolm Cowley whose use of
his
position on the
New Republic
to play Communist Party politics
has long been a literary scandal?" This, Bruce Bliven wrote us, "ob–
viously transcends the legitimate boundaries of public controversy"–
though Mr. Cowley was apparently
within
those bounds when he im–
plied that PARTISAN
REVIEW
is a quasi-fascist organ. For the interest
of our readers, we print below the full text of our original letter. It
may be regarded
as
a restatement of our political position
as
well
as
an
answer to Mr. Cowley.
Editor, The New Republic,
Sir:
We sympathize with Malcolm Cowley's growing impatience
with
PARTISAN
REVIEW,
whose literary and political values are at drastic
variance with his own. But we must point out that his article on our
magazine is a malicious and politically motivated attack masquerading
as
a matter of literary differences. These are strong words. We think
we can show they are justified.
Mr. Cowley makes two main charges against PARTISAN
REVIEW.
( 1) We have proclaimed that literature should not be degraded to
an instrument of political factionalism, and yet we devote much
space to what Mr. Cowley calls "anti-Soviet articles."
(2)
This secret
addiction to politics has reduced PARTISAN
REVIEW
to the literary
level of the
New Masses.
To support
his
first charge, Mr. Cowley quotes from our opening
Editorial Statement, which announced a policy of "no commitments
to any political party." This he interprets to mean that PARTISAN
REVIEW
had foresworn politics and was going to devote itself to
an above-the-battle kind of pure Literature, such
as
the
Dial
once
stood for. And so he points triumphantly to the fact that we have
actually paid a good deal of attention to politics. But we have never
aspired to stand for Pure Literature. We have always agreed with Mr.
Cowley that the contemporary writer must concern himself
with
politics
if
his work is to have any deep meaning for our time. Mr.
Cowley's quotations from our editorial were, to say the least, very
selective. One sentence he did
not
quote was: "Any magazine, we
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