CORRESPONDENCE
them are like Greek vase designs. When
1
mentioned this to him he said he had
been illustrating a new translation of
Hesiod's
Theogony
and many of the
objects were originally conceived with
these illustrations in mind. But one
cannot make premature remarks about
'the .mellowness of old age,' 'back to
the Greeks at last.' The largest paint–
ing I saw there was an extremely bold,
almost heady thing . . . a table with
the surrounding objects in a perspective .
so distorted that each object in the
picture seems to be seen from a dif–
ferent angle ... above, below, level. I
know this has been done before ...
but never, to my knowledge, so drama–
tically and with such drastic simplicity,
so
alarming a delight.
I was of course unable to resist the
tempation to 'interview' Braque while
I had the chance, and I asked him a
number of questions, including a most
impudent one: what did he think of
Picasso's latest period? As you know,
Picasso's Salon d'Automne show con–
sisted mostly of "monsters," women
with two faces and such, which had to
be guarded by two policemen after the
famous manifestation by some unknown
and still uncaught Picasso-haters, whom
Picasso suspects to have been collab–
orating painters who were annoyed
with him for not collaborating. Braque
gave me the evasive answers the ques–
tion deserved: he thought Picasso con–
ceived his new style as 'a sort of magic,'
and that he (Braque) thinks it a 'per–
ilous venture.'
As to the occupation, Braque said
that he was approached ... indirectly,
of course, by several Germans who con–
demned 'cultural bolshevism' out of
one side of their mouths and offered
him good prices on the other, but did
not succeed in buying anything from
him. "I worked very hard during those
years," he said. "There was nothing
else to do." The one departure he per–
mitted himself from Paris was an ex–
pedition to his country place at Dieppe,
which coincided with the Canadians'
raid on that town. He said with some–
thing like satisfaction that he saw them
kill a good number of Germans in his
273
front yard. "For the Germans," he
said, "war is a national industry. Their
attack on culture is something utterly
abnormal and it had to be swept away."
He said that this not only as a French–
man wounded in the last war but as an
artist, and I liked the utterance, which
is of course neither profound nor orig–
inal. It went well, though, like Braque's
straightforward Norman manner and
virile speech and tall bright appear–
ance, with his luminous house, filled
with created things. . . . I found it
difficult to leave the dining-room with
its big bowl of Normandy
apples and
its Braque murals, and the living-room
with its Braque-made wooden bowls and
ashtrays and its Braques and a Picasso
on the walls. To look at such an affir–
mation of life is to reaffirm one's own,
and for hours after the visit I felt for–
tified and warmed. . ..
SoT.
F.
J.
.BRowN
Storm Over Burnham
Editorial Note.-We
have received nu–
merous comments on James Burnham's
article, "Lenin's Heir,'' in the last issue
of PR. The article is discussed else–
where in this issue, and we regret that
limitations of space permit us to print
only short excerpts from some of the
letters:
Lore Joseph (Madison, Wisconsin)
writes from the point of view of ortho–
doxy: "Burnham has demolished us.
The walls of J ericho have caved in.
Trotskyism, blared down by the Wag–
nerian strains of Mr. Burnham's trum–
pet, lies prostrate, and the interna–
tional proletariat ... will now lie down
and peacefully invite history to step
all over it, while the Chorus of the
Blessed chants hosannahs for multi–
national Bolshevism(!) and Stalin tri–
umphantly sails away on the crest of
a Wave of the Future!"
Dr. Leslie Adams (New York)
maintains that Burnham's article is
"the best piece of political writing
wJ;ich it has ever been your good luck
to print. ... And now, having gone so
far as to publish something in the na-
