LITERATURE IN OUR TIME
genuinely revolutionary party it would find the propitious climate for
its blossoming because the freedom of man and the coming of the
classless society are likewise absolute goals, unconditioned exigencies
which literature can reflect in its own exigency. But the C.P. today
has entered the infernal circle of means.
It
must take and keep key
positions, that is, means of acquiring means. When ends withdraw,
when means are swarming like gnats as far as the eye can see, the
work of art in turn becomes a means. It enters the chain. Its ends and
its principles become external to it. It is governed from the outside.
It no longer makes demands. It takes man by the belly or the short
hairs. The writer maintains the appearance of talent, that is, the art
of finding words which gleam, but something is dead within. Litera–
ture has changed into propaganda.
5
Yet it is someone like M. Gar–
audy, a Communist and a propagandist, who accuses me of being a
gravedigger. I could return the insult, but I prefer to plead guilty;
it
1
could do so, I would bury literature with my own hands rather
than make it serve ends which utilize it. But why the excitement?
Gravediggers are honest people, certainly unionized, perhaps Commu–
nists. I'd rather be a gravedigger than a lackey.
Since we are still free, we won't join the C.P. watchdogs. The
fact that we have talent does not depend upon us, but as we have
chosen the profession of writing, each of us is responsible for literature,
and whether or not it becomes alienated does depend upon us. It is
sometimes claimed that our books reflect the hesitations of the petty
bourgeoisie which decides for neither the proletariat nor for capital–
ism. That's false; we've made up our minds. We are then told that
our choice is ineffectual and abstract, that it is an intellectual game
if it is not accompanied by our adhesion· to a revolutionary party.
I don't deny it, but it is not our fault if the C.P. is no longer a revo–
lutionary party. It is true that today in France one can hardly reach
the working classes if not through the Party. But only loose thinking
can identify their cause with the C.P.'s.
Even if, as citizens, we can in strictly specific circumstances sup–
port its politics with our v.otes, that does not mean that we should
serve it with our pens.
If
the two alternatives are really the bourgeoisie
and the C.P., then the choice is impossible. For we do not have the
5
In Communist literature in France, I find only one genuine writer. Nor is
it accidental that he writes about mimosa and beach pebbles.
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