TROTSKY IS DEAD
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was also a literary man, with all the professional delight of a man
of letters in owning books and in turning over the pages of a
freshly printed volume. For relaxation on the military train that
bore him from one front to another, he read French novels. Between
sessions of the peace conference at Brest-Litovsk he dictated a new
hook. He tells us how, deep in the Siberian wilderness, he studied
Marx for the first time, "brushing the cockroaches off the pages."
Trotsky's view of prison life would not be understood by many
wardens-or inmates. "I left the hermetically sealed cell of soli–
tary confinement in the Peter-Paul fortress with a tinge of regret,"
he writes. "It was so quiet there, so eventless, so perfect for intel·
lectual work." He himself has drawn us the best picture of this
complex dual personality: "One might say that my life was rather
full of adventures. But I must say that, by natural inclination, I
have nothing in common with seekers after adventure. I am
rather pedantic and conservative in my habits. I like and appre–
ciate discipline and system. Not to provide a paradox, but because
it is a fact, I must add that I cannot endure disorder or destruction.
. . . A well-written book in which one can find new ideas, and a
good
pen with which to communicate one's own ideas to others, for
me have always been and are today the most valuable and intimate
products of culture. The desire for study has never left me, and
many
times in my life I felt that the revolution was interfering
with my systematic work."
It would take a long article, and one that I hope some day
will be written, to consider adequately Trotsky's literary style. It
would be exaggerating to say that all of Trotsky's immense literary
production-a critical bibliography is another need-is written in
agreat style. But a remarkable amount of it is. The adjective that
comes first to every one's mind is "brilliant." His turn for witty
characterizations is well known, as in his description of the late
Morris Hillquit as "the ideal Socialist leader for successful den–
tists."
Or his comment on Nazi racial theories: "Rejecting 'eco–
IIOJilic thought' as a base, National Socialism descends a stage
lower-from economic materialism it appeals to zoologic material–
im."
His metaphors are daring. Only a supremely self-confident
writer could carry off the figure with which he describes Lenin's
