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It is the privilege of the literary essayist to illuminate aspects and
excite by. special emphasis; but the historian seems to owe some sort
of obligation to wholeness and connection. In general I should say that
parts of this book might make a stimulating if controversial collection
of occasional essays; but together they make an odd history. The danger
is that the academic simplicity of its title (in which, as far as I know, it
has no rival) will make it read by the wrong people. It should be read
by those who are experienced enough in its subject to use it where it
is useful and contest it where it is not; I am afraid that it will be read
by those who will take it for an unwavering guide.
·
ANDREWS WANNING
EUROPE'S NIGHT
THE
LoNG
DusK.
By
Victor Serge. Dial Press.
$2.75.
V
ICTOR
SERGE bears a remarkable past: a revolutionist of libertarian
inclinations, who has fought in numerous revolts, been a member of
the Executive of the Communist International in its heroic period and
then worked with the Trotskyists for a while, he is one of the few still
responsive survivors of a destroyed generation. Despite the cumulative
series of defeats, which often threatened his very existence, he has retained
his socialist convictions, always tempered by a warming humanism and a
vital sense of personal value. Though he has written much, neither his
political work nor his novels are as significant as the man himself.
His writing has suffered from an indiscriminate seasoning of the
very qualities which give him personal stature but which also produces
a certain kind of loose journalism: the impressionistic memoir, the nostal–
gic reminiscence, the ready overflow of indignation. These blights of
modern journalism frequently make Serge's political writing "soft" and
bereft of analytical closeness, though at times lending it a touching
warmth; they also corrode the discipline so necessary for the novelist
whose talent is not of the highest order. Serge's fiction is accordingly
susceptible to the leavening influence of undifferentiated observation and
to the vague rhetoric one associates with the "romantic" mind. For
Serge is essentially a romantic for whom the revolution is above all ·a
human adventure; and perhaps the difficulty in bridging the gap between
the outlook of his generation and ours-to whom Serge's simple idealism
seems a little naive-accounts for the difficulties felt while reading his
novel.
The
Long Dusk
is an attempt to find values connective with the
past and relevant to the present. Its subject-the fall of France and the
disintegration of European socialism-is depressing enough, but not
