254
PARTISAN REVIEW
I ·would be most grateful to hear your
reactions, soon.
Sincerely yours,
JocELYN WAGNER,
Chairman,
Inaugural Dinner Proceedings.
March 13, 1941.
Dear Miss Wagner:
Thank you most warmly for the invi·
tation to join the P.E.N. Club in its cul–
tural fight against fascism. As you prob·
ably know, in its three years of exist·
ence, the present pARTISAN REVIEW has
steadfastly opposed all forms of totali·
tarian oppression, both red and black.
We are therefore glad to accept your in·
vitation to help the P.E.N. Inaugural
Dinner give "some back-talk to Hitler."
There is, however, one condition we
feel obliged to make: that among the
speakers at the dinner there shall be one
at least who represents our general politi–
cal point of view. For, as you are also
no doubt aware, while there is no dis·
agreement between PARTISAN REVIEW
and the P.E.N. Club as to the life-and–
death necessity for fighting fascism, there
is considerable disagreement as to the
proper tactics in this fight.
Specifically, the P.E.N. Club has gen–
erally seemed to favor a defense of the
existing democratic status-quo, support·
ing the present governments of the United
States and England in the war against
Hitler. We of PARTISAN REVIEW, on the
other hand, have never made any secret
of the fact that we think this course
must lead either to military defeat or to
the installation of a domestic fascism
over here, or-as in France--to both.
We think that only a democratic social–
ist government, installed by revolution·
ary action of the workingclass, can de–
fend democracy against fascism from
without- and from within.
If
provision can be made to allow for
the presentation of
this
method of fight·
ing fascism, then we should be very glad
to give any help we can to your Inaugu·
ral Dinner. This seems to us, I might
add, a reasonable request from the stand–
point of democratic procedure. We have
no doubt the P.E.N. Club will want to
have the fullest possible freedom of ex·
pression-and disagreement-at its In·
augural Dinner.
Sincerely,
DWIGHT MACDONALD
for the editOr$ of
pARTISAN REVIEW
March 28, 1941
Dear Mr. Macdonald:
Have you a sense of humor?
April 2, 1941
Cordially yours,
JocELYN WAGNER
NOTE FROM MR. JOLAS
Sirs:
Altho I have long ceased to protest
against the misinterpretations of
Transi·
tion
that have appeared on two conti·
nents, I confess to being astonished at
Mr. Greenberg's reference to
"Tranlition
bunk." Now that is cheap. A review
that for 10 years presented practically
all the modern movements that are now
the fashion here-expressionism, dada–
ism, abstractionism, Stein, Joyce, etc.,
etc.-mostly in rather difficult transJa.
tions, cannot be dismissed like that. Franz
Kafka, whose story you present
in
the
current issue, was first introduced in
Transition
in 1928, and I continuously
published him in subsequent numbers up
to the very end. And in 1928
Transition
Stories
published my translation of
The
Sentence
in NYC. . . .
Kafka, by the way, seems to assume
a unique importance today. My friend,
Georges Duthuit, had a letter from Andre
Masson, the painter, the other day, say–
ing: "J'ai )'impression que je vis un des
contes de Kafka en France." He means
the alien mood of paroxysm, guilt, wel–
tangst which we all feel now.
Sincerely,
New York City
A CORRECTION
Sirs:
EuGENE JoLAS
The March-April issue of the PARTISAN
REVIEW has just arrived and I hasten to
send you this note as a correction of the
printing of the lines from Mr. Mac–
Leish's poem "Sentiments for a Dedica-
