300
PARTISAN REVIEW
At this point you may perhaps say to yourself that you are listen–
ing to someone making extensive use of quotations, alert for whatever
he can pick up, on the lookout for advice and information, like a
young girl travelling alone, and you may ask yourself: What is he
after, what is he getting at? Is there something personal hidden
be–
hind all this? Yes, indeed, that is precisely the case, there
is
something
personal behind it all, but it does not take up undue space in what
is to follow. All the same, just for a moment, if you please, imagine
a writer with an unquiet past, unquiet times, who began his vocation
together with a whole circle of others of the same age from all coun–
tries of the world, and who also underwent that same stylistic devel–
opment which was known by various names-Futurism, Expression–
ism, Surrealism-and still keeps discussion alive today, since it is a
stylistic development of decidedly revolutionary character-admittedlY,
and let us get this said once and for all-no more revolutionary, in
our author's opinion, than such earlier stylistic developments as Im–
pressionism, Baroque, or Mannerism-but still, for this century it
certainly was revolutionary.
This
author sailed under various colors
in his life: as a poet and as an essayist, as a citizen and as a soldier,
as a hermit in the country and as a man of the world in this or that
great metropolis-and for most of the time under criticism and at–
tack. Well, now this writer is getting on in years, and he still goes on
publishing things. And
if
he has not entirely quenched the volcanic
element in himself, not entirely lost the dash and vigor of youth,
what it comes to is that the critics nowadays exclaim: "Good heavens,
why can't the man be quiet? Isn't it time he got down to writing
something classical and preferably with something of a Christian
tinge? Surely it's high time for him to ripen and mellow as befits his
years!" But if for once he does write something rather more mellow
and glowing and, so far as he has it in him, classical, the cry is: "Oh,
the fellow's completely senile! He was moderately interesting when
he was young, in his storm-and-stress period, but now he's a mere
hanger-on desperately trying to keep up with himself. He hasn't any–
thing to say so why can't he have the decency to shut up?"
So far, so good. When an individual book of a writer's is re–
viewed, whether it is panned or praised he can feel proud or an–
noyed, according to his mood. But the situation changes when the
writer has got on so far in years that
books
begin to appear about
