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PARTISAN REVIEW
possibility of social solutions to problems of culture that reminds one
of
Partisan Review
in its youthful phase. The H-bomb, one might say,
is to the English left today what the depression was to the American
Left of the 1930's-a disaster that stimulates enthusiastic intellectual
activity.
The conclusion to be drawn from this admittedly sketchy analysis
is that England, as usual, represents a special case. English writers–
at least on the Left-are as deeply preoccupied with the new nihilism
as the Americans or the French, but they tend to identify it with the
specific domestic conditions of their own country, and in particular with
the refusal of moribund Establishment values to lie down and die.
(John Osborne, who is the most extreme exponent of this point of view,
has declared that the British masses are "not conditioned to seriousness
but to totem worship" by the monarchy, by the church, by "people sod–
den in the culture-mores of Oxford and Cambridge," and by "implicit
ruling-class ideals like 'restraint,' 'good taste,' 'healthy caution,' and
so
on," and he voices the hope that "there will be singing one day"
under socialism.)
But confidence in the possibility of a social answer to the new
nihilism seems confined to England. Silone's latest novel,
The Secret
of Luca/
projects as an ideal the heroic individual who triumphs by
following his own deepest convictions against the demands of society.
Since these convictions include a belief that the law has no business
prying into his private affairs, Luca refuses to defend himself against a
false murder charge, and he spends forty years in prison until he is
exonerated by the actual criminal's deathbed confession.
If
this were
all, we could accept Silone's contention (in a recent interview) that
his
book is a defense of the right of privacy, though the weaknesses in his
argument would still be very damaging. What sense does it make for a
man to claim the right of privacy when he has been accused of a crime?
Is
any sane principle being served when such a man goes to jail rather
than reveal his whereabouts on the night of the crime? On the evidence
of the novel itself, however, it is not Luca's defense of a principle more
sacred than the law that draws Silone's admiration.
It
is, quite simply,
his astonishing ability to hold out against all pressure for what he believes
is right. But we cannot be moved by Luca's heroism without respecting
the conventions of chivalry and honor to which he has sacrificed him–
self, and they are of a kind that can only seem silly today (to have ac–
counted for his movements when the murder was committed would,
in
7. Harper. $3.95.
