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passed in silence--except for one consideration.
Barea was one of those gray murky middle-class Social Democrats
who made of his adherence a means of avoiding rather than of engaging
in political thought. Not until his wife, a dissident Austrian Socialist,
began to receive visits from the GPU did Barea even become aware
of the role of Stalinism in Spain. He vaguely recalls Stalinist frame ups
of dissident revolutionists (the POUM, anarchists, and Trotskyists) but
blandly admits he paid little attention to them. Even when the GPU
drove him and his wife out of Spain, they decided not to publicize their
treatment at the hands of the Stalinists because of attachment to the
conception of ... unity.
This phenomenon of a political activist of the "left" uncritical of
either Social Democracy ·or Stalinism, that is, a "left" politician not
concerned with political ideas, must be considered an important reason
for both the Spanish defeat and the victories of Stalinism in Europe.
One can no more dabble in politics than in any other discipline-less
so, in fact, for irresponsibility and sloppiness in art usually implicate no
one but their agent, while in politics they can cause damage to whole
peoples and generations. How many others were there in Spain who did
not even try to think through in an organized and rigorous manner the
problems facing the Spanish revolution? How many others were there
who drifted to disaster in the Social Democratic muddle and in the
name of unity (that phrase which is the first refuge of weak minds!) shut
their eyes to Stalinist totalitarianism? For here Barea's wonderful recep–
tivity to impressions and sensuous phenomena was not enough; here
thought and system were required, revolutionary precision and intellec–
tual thoroughness.
If
men like Barea are at last appalled by the power
of Stalinism, let them look to their own past for part of the explanation.
One always pays for indifference.
IRVING HowE
SARTRE'S THEATRE
No ExiT
and
THE FLIES.
By Jean-Paul Sartre. Translat ed by Stuart
Gilbert. Knopf.
$2.50.
S
ARTRE HAS DEFINED his theater as one of "situations," rather than of
"characters." By this he means that its purpose is to present on the
stage precisely what for him is invariable: the condition of man, ex–
pressed in the conflicts that are eternally common to human experience.
Sartre's man, by the fact that he defines himself only by his acts, is
infinitely variable. Consequently, the analysis of an individual character,
if he is abstracted from the conflicting systems of values and rights which
make up his condition, and paraded on the stage as the totality of his
psychological traits and nothing more (as a miser, a coward, a misan-
