Books
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERSONALITY
Meyer Schapiro
t
THE FINLAND STATION*
is addressed to the reader as "a study
in the writing and acting of history."
It
begins with Vico's .asser–
tion that "the social world is certainly the work of man" and ends
with the arrival of Lenin on the scene of the Russian revolution.
The real subject is the revolutionary leaders who foresee the future
and assume consciously an historical role, as if the future was some–
how already written out in the nature of the existing society and
was waiting for the actors to come upon the stage to enact their
parts. This stage is modern capitalism, with its inherent tendencies
and possibilities, and the actors are those heroic personalities who
are impelled by their own natures in response to conditions, to
devote themselves to the revolutionary task with an energy, a purity
of purpose and probing intelligence unparalleled in the conserva–
tive leaders of the time. The emergence of such individuals is itself
an extraordinary historical fact. And although the whole work is
shaped to exhibit an historical process and theories of history, the
accounts of the men are its most memorable parts.
In the first chapters we see the line of French historical
writers (Michelet, Renan, Taine and Anatole France) which
derives from the French revolution its initial impulse toward a
historical view of man, but, with the decline of the bourgeoisie,
1hows an increasing scepticism and finally a nihilistic despair. In
the second part, Wilson presents the Utopians who establish ideal
communities, ·but lack the historical insight to see the futility of
such plans; then the revolutionary thinkers who have discovered
the historical conditions of social change and revolution, but cannot
effect a successful revolution. And finally, in the third part, for the
first time "the key of a philosophy of history fits an historical
lock," and Lenin and Trotsky are able to lead the revolution for
which the writings of Marx and Engels have prepared them.
*TO THE FINLAND STATION. By Edmund Wilson. Harcourt Brace. $4.00.
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