F. 0. MATTHIESSEN
his political views directly and, if possible, without hortatory reference&
to Jefferson.
Here, then, is the political portrait of our outstanding literary
fellow-traveler: a literary critic succumbing to the most abominable
totalitarian movement of our time; a man of literary refinement insen–
sitive to half a continent of victims and charmed by the pseudosocialist
rhetoric of those who grind these victims; an American intellectual who
would join the French Communist Party because it is large but not the
American Communist Party which is small, even though their aims are
identical; a writer who calJs himself a democratic socialist while apolo–
gizing for the regimes that have jailed, exiled, and murdered demo–
cratic socialists.
Is this too harsh, too fractious? WiiJ some judicious souls cry
"Stalinophobia"? Does it offend genteel sensibilities ready to become
violently partisan about questions relating to the structure of poetry
but indifferent to Stalinism as a bogey that frightens only New York in–
tellectuals?
I would only record the fact that as I read Matthiessen's book an
uncontrolled fear arose within me, of a sort I had never known while
reading outright Stalinists. For I could not help thinking of the thou–
sands of European Matthiessens who, with the best will in the world,
had helped bring about their own downfall; I could not help thinking
that if some of us ever end our days in a "corrective labor camp" it
might well be because of the equally good intentions of intellectuals
like F. 0. Matthiessen.
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