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PARTISAN REVIEW
PHILIP RAHV
It is true, of course, that of late American artists and
intellectuals have largely come to terms with the realities of the
national life. Hence, if they no longer feel "disinherited" and
"astray," as the editorial statement suggests, neither for that matter
are they attached any more to the attitudes of dissidence and revolt
that prevailed among them for some decades.
As
their mood has
gradually shifted from opposition to acceptance, they have grown
unreceptive to extreme ideas, less exacting and 'pure' in ideological
commitment, more open to the persuasions of actuality.
This
far–
reaching change has by no means run its course.
It
is of a complexity
not to be grasped by a simple approach, whether positive or nega–
tive; and it is easy
to
fall into one-sided constructions in discussing it.
Among the factors entering into the change, the principal one,
to my mind, is the exposure of the Soviet myth and the consequent
resolve (shared by nearly all but the few remaining fellow-travelers)
to
be done with Utopian illusions and heady expectations. In their
chastened mood American democracy looks like the real thing to
the intellectuals. Its incontestable virtue is that, for all its distortions
and contradictions, it actually exists. It is not a mere theory or a
deduction from some textbook of world-salvation. Whether capitalist
or not, it has so far sustained that freedom of expression and ex–
periment without which the survival of the intelligence is incon–
ceivable in a modern society, which lacks any organic basis, social
or religious, for unity of belief or uniformity of conduct. In the
palmy days when it was possible to take democracy for granted–
that is, before the rise to global power of Hitlerism and then of
Stalinism-the intellectuals were hardly aware of the very tangible
benefits they derived from it. Now, however, only the most doctrinaire
types would be disposed to trade in those benefits for some imaginary
perfection of good in the remote future.
This
change of perspective has inevitably made for a greater
degree of identification with American life, with its traditions and
prospects; and to suppose that this is simply a regression to nation–
alism is a mistake. (The nationalist motive is in fact far more
strongly operative among European than among American intellec–
tuals.) What has happened, rather, is that we have gained a sense of
