30~
PARTISAN REV IEW
We do not want to be ashamed of writing, and we have no desire
to speak without saying anything. Let us hope-for ourselves, at any
rate-that we will never reach that stage: for no one can reach it.
. All that is written has a meaning, even if the meaning is far from that
which the author wished to imply. For us, the writer is neither a
Vestal nor an Ariel: he is 'in it up to the neck', whatever he writes,
branded, committed, even in the most distant withdrawal.
If
at cer–
tain times he uses his art to fabricate knick-knacks of sonvrous non–
sense, even that is a sign: it means that there is a crisis in literature
and, hence, in society, or else it means that the ruling classes have
goaded him into frivolous activities without his knowledge, for fear
lest he should escape or swell the ranks of the revolutionaries. Flaubert,
who railed so bitterly against the bourgeoisie, and who imagined that
he had withdrawn completely from the social machine-what is he
to us but a talented property-owner? And does not the meticulous art
of Croisset suggest his comfort, the solicitude of a mother or a niece,
a well-ordered existence, a prosperous business and cheques regularly
drawn? It requires but a few years for a book to become a social
fact which
is
consulted as an institution and which is admitted as a
matter for statistics; only a short while needs to elapse before it mer–
ges with the furnishings of a period, with its clothes, its hats, its means
of transport and its food. The historian will say of us: 'They ate this,
they read that, they dressed thus.' The first railway, the cholera, the
revolt of the Canuts, Balzac's novels, and the rapid progress of indus–
try rank equally in characterizing the July Monarchy. All this has
been repeated again and again since Hegel: we want to draw prac–
tical conclusions from the statement. Since the writer has no possible
means of escape, we wish him to cover his epoch exclusively; it is
his
only chance; his time is made for him, and he is made for it. Balzac's
indifference in the days of '48 and Flaubert's frightened incomprehen–
sion of the Commune are to be regretted
for the writers' own sakes:
for there lies something which they have missed for ever. We want
to miss nothing in our time: there may be other epochs more beauti–
fut, but this is ours; we have only
this
life to live, in the midst of
this
war, perhaps, of
this
revolution.
It
must not be concluded from this
that we are preaching a kind of populism: quite the contrary. Popul–
ism is a child of old parents, the wretched offspring of the last real–
ists: it is yet another attempt to sneak away from the mess. We are
convinced, on the contrary, that one
cannot
sneak away. Were we
dumb and immobile as stones, our very passivity would be an action.
The abstention of one who devotes his life to writing novels about
the Hittites entails taking up some kind of attitude. The writer is
