178
PARTISAN REVIEW
as a person. He is choosing the permanence and the impenetrability
of rock, the total irresponsibility of the warrior who obeys
his
leaders
-and he has no leader. He chooses to acquire nothing, to deserve
nothing but that everything be given him as his birthright-and he
is not noble. He chooses finally, that good be ready made, not in
question, out of reach; he dare not look at it for fear of being forced
to contest it and seek another form of it. The Jew is only a pretext:
elsewhere it will be the Negro, the yellow race. The Jew's existence sim–
ply allows the antisemite to nip
his
anxieties in the bud by persuading
himself that
his
place has always been cut out in the world, that it
was waiting for him and that by virtue of tradition he has the right
to occupy it. Antisemitism, in a word, is fear of man's fate. The
antisemite is the man who wants to be pitiless stone, furious torrent,
devastating lightning: in short, everything but a man.
(Translated by Mary Guggenheim)
