LITERATURE IN OUR TIME
of approval. Compare this sentence of Joseph de Maistre, "The
married woman is necessarily chaste," with this one of a correspondent
of
Action,
"The communist is the
permanent
hero of our time." That
there are heroes in the Communist Party-let me be the first to
admit it. So what? Has no married woman ever been weak? No,
since she is married before God. And is it enough to enter the Party
to become a hero? Yes, since the C.P. is the party of heroes. But what
if
someone cited the name of a Communist who sometimes was not
all he should be? It's because he wasn't a
real
Communist.
In the nineteenth century one had to give all sorts of guaranties
and lead an exemplary life in order to cleanse oneself in the eyes of
the bourgeois of the sin of writing, since literature is, in essence, heresy.
The situation has not changed except that it is now the Communists,
that is, the qualified representatives of the proletariat, who as a mat–
ter of principle regard the writer as suspect. Even though he may be
irreproachable in his morals, a Communist intellectual bears within
him this original defect: that he entered the party
freely;
he was
led to this decision by a thoughtful reading of
Capital,
a critical
examination of the historical situation, an acute sense of justice and
generosity, and a taste for solidarity; all this is proof of an indepen–
dence which doesn't smell so very good. He entered the party by free
choice; therefore, he can leave it! He entered because he had criticized
the politics of his class of origin; therefore, he will be able to criticize
that of the representatives of his class of adoption. Thus in the very
action by which he inaugurates a new life, there is a malediction which
will weigh upon
him
all through this life. From the moment of ordina–
tion there begins for him a long trial, similar to the one Kafka has
described for us, in which the judges are unknown and the dossiers
secret, where the only definitive sentences are condemnations. It is
not up to his invisible accusers to give proof of his crime, as is cus–
tomary in justice; it is for him to prove his innocence.
As
everything
he writes can be held against him and as he knows it, each of his
works presents the ambiguous character of being both a public appeal
in the name of the C.P. and a secret plea for his own cause. Every–
thing that from the outside, for the readers, seems a chain of peremp–
tory affirmations, appears within the Party, in the eyes of the judges,
• The worker has joined the C.P. under the pressure of circumstances. He is
less suspect because his possible choices are more limited.
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