166
PARTISAN REVIEW
the same pattern, with a tendency toward monotony, but
in
the aggregate
a unity of tone. Oddly enough, the "just cause" that he is espousing and
which is brought forward validly enough in warm imagery is responsible
for his failures. "Conscription Camp" is more tirade than poem. A poem
carries no banners (poets may), is reformless, itself an art and an end–
if political reform is to follow the poem, the poem hasn't finished its
work. But Karl Shapiro is distinctly worth reading, as poet.
OscAR
WILUAMS
THE BRITISH GENIUS
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and English Genius.
By
George Orwell.
Seeker
&
Warburg (London). 2 shillings.
In
its virtues and in its defects,
The Lion and the Unicorn
is typical
of English leftwing political writing. Its approach to politics is impres·
sionistic rather than analytic, literary rather than technical, that of the
amateur, not the professional. This has its advantages. Orwell's conscious·
ness embraces a good deal that our own Marxists have wrongly excluded
from their data (though Marx himself most decidedly didn't): such as
that British army officers wear civilian clothes off duty, that the British
are a nation of flower-lovers and stamp-collectors, the contrast between
the goose-step of the German Army and the "formalized walk" of the
British. There is also a
human
quality to Orwell's poltical writing; you feel
it engages him as a moral and cultural whole, not merely as a specialist.
For this reason it has a life, an ease and color which our own Marxist
epigones seem to feel is somehow sinful; and its values are rarely
inhuman,
however muddled they seem at times.
But there are also the defects of the amateur: if Orwell's scope is
broad, it is none too deep; he describes where he should analyze, and
poses questions so impressionistically that his answers get nowhere; he
uses terms in a shockingly vague way; he makes sweeping generalizations
with the confidence of ignorance; his innocence of scientific criteria is
appalling. What can one make of a statement like: "No real revolutionist
has ever been an internationalist."? On p11ge 62 he writes: "It has become
clear in the last few years that 'common ownership of the means of pro·
duction' is not in itself a sufficient definition of socialism. One must also
add the following: approximate equality of incomes ... political democ·
racy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education."
Six pages later he speaks of "Russia, the only definitely socialist country."
Obviously not a single one of Orwell's three necessary additions exist
in
Russia. Since Orwell's anti·Stalinism is well-known, one can only con·
elude that he is using the term "socialist" in very different senses in the
two passages.
With most of Orwell's generalizations about the present war, I find
myself in agreement. "What this war has demonstrated is that private
capitalism
does not work."
"Either we turn this war into a revolutionary
