OTHER VOICES
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humanism. Forgive me if I say a few very simple, maybe even banal
things. But, as they say, the simpler the more effective---I said the same
thing to the Americans I met last year in California.
"What, essentially, does it all add up to?
"The world was in very bad shape. In the long run it became im–
possible to go on living any longer in the old way. And so the common
folk of Russia said: as you cannot alter anything we shall have a try
at doing things in such a way that there will be less evil in life, more
justice in the world. Since then our land has become a vast laboratory
where a very difficult and complicated process, important for all man–
kind, is going on. And in so far as our literature, with all its short–
comings, is a reflection of that process it requires close and respectful
study and attention.
"A subject like 'Soviet Literature 1917-1961' requires not one but
several volumes of conscientious research. The anthology compiled for
Partisan Review
for all its appearance of universality reveals at the best
a superficial attitude to our writings by Western students of literature.
I had occasion to tell Americans personally that their interest in our
literature often bore a specific character-hasn't something gone wrong
somewhere in Russia. The success that
Doctor Zhivago
and
Not By Bread
Alone
recently enjoyed in the West is a demonstration of really morbid
interest in everything sensational and scandalous. Similarly, in the article
I have just read I find, unfortunately, that a most motley collection of
names is lumped carelessly together, like a lot of chemical elements of
contradictory nature in one vessel (perhaps because the editors feared
to attach too much importance to us).
"Last year four Soviet writers-Oles Gonchar, Stepan Shchipachov,
Mukhtar Auezov and myself went to America and met a number of
Americans professionally interested in literature. I felt that for them
we were all as alike as two peas. They had heard about us only vaguely
and, to be frank, only by what we had written thirty years ago. During
our discussions on literature they kept harking back to Pasternak al–
though on those occasions I was left with an impression that most of
them had not read
Doctor Zhivago
from cover to cover."
. I asked Leonov how he felt about Max Hayward's statement that
he regarded his work as "a kind of
podvig
(spiritual feat) in the Russian
Oithodox tradition."
"The Orthodox tradition ..." Leonov smiled. "It seems to me
there's some confusion or misunderstanding here. Perhaps Hayward is
judging by the peculiarities of my language, by my constant search for
verbal freshness in the roots of the language, in the genealogy of a word,
