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PARTISAN REVIEW
of convenience. What I mean is, I've stayed with you and your friends
because you are persecuted, and in a certain sense that happened to suit
me. As you see, for all my cynicism, it's a sentimental reason, almost
frivolous in fact. Now, however, I feel myself mature enough to part
company.
DoN PAOLO. Are you so convinced that our ideal is to exchange the
role of victims for that of victimizers?
UuvA. It's not your ideal, no; but it's undoubtedly your destiny.
DoN PAoLO. Destiny is the alibi of resigned weaklings.
DLIVA. It would be too easy if we could give it the slip just by shutting
our eyes to it.
DoN PAoLo. And I maintain that nothing will ever induce us to sacri–
fice the essence of our ideal to the success of our ideal.
UuvA. Nothing?
If
the word destiny isn't to your liking, you can put
the word history in its place.
DoN PAoLo. Our history hasn't yet been written.
UuvA. You haven't read it, but it has already been written for a long
time. Or else, you probably have read it without ever realizing that it
was your own history and that of your friends.
DoN PAOLO. One can add new pages to history.
UuvA.
By copying the old ones, and adding spelling mistakes.
DoN PAOLO
(in a tone of distaste).
You know, Uliva, quibbling is no
argument.
UuvA. You've always tried to run away from real arguments. I'll give
you a real argument now: every revolution, every one of them, without
a single exception, began as a movement of freedom and ended up as
a tyranny. There was never yet a revolution that escaped this doom.
DoN PAOLO. That's not true, but even if it were true, we ought to say:
the revolutions of the past have turned to ashes, we will make one that
will keep its promise.
UuvA. Illusions, illusions. Yes, maybe we'll have economic changes,
thanks to which, just as we now have state railways, state quinine, state
salt, state matches and state tobacco, in the same way we shall then have
state bread, state shoes, state shirts and state underpants, state potatoes
and fresh state peas. Will that be progress, from a technical standpoint?
Let's be generous and admit it will. But this technical innovation will
fall into the hands of a privifeged caste which will profess official shib–
boleths and will use every means, from the cinema to terrorism, to stamp
out all trace of heresy and tyrannize the people. The present inquisition
will be succeeded by a Red inquisition, the present censorship by a Red
