302
SOVIET COMMENT
so to speak.... Not for nothing did Pushkin say that the Russian
language should
be
learned amongst the common folk.
"I grant too that Hayward may have formed his views on my
work as a result of my interest-sometimes abstract, sometimes specific–
in the problem of good and evil, something that was always akin to the
great Russian literature of the 19th century. I said 'abstract,' because for
me, I tell you confidentially, the concept of 'good' requires no supple–
mentary adjectives.
If
one places before it any special attribute it can
only restrict its nature. For me every weeping mother is bad and every
happy child is very good (true, if its happiness is not at the expense of
the happiness of another child). I also think that it would
be
very
useful for all of us in the world if we thought more about good and evil,
particularly today when we are all threatened with a common danger.
It's a great pity that in literature as a whole reflections on good and evil
are noticeably disappearing, that they are being replaced more and more
by what I called in my
Russian Forest
'novels on the life of flies.' It's
high time for literature to start a more serious talk-in proportion to
talent, of course-about general things (side by side with urgent topics),
such as the future or culture or the deadly nature of our knowledge. I
think that in the long run this would help people to establish the un–
written laws of life more firmly and that there'd
be
less need to legalize
in codes that grown-up children must support their parents. ...
"As for Max Hayward's reference to a 'kind of spiritual feat,' I
hardly think he had in mind the life of St. Barbara the Martyr but I
agree with the statement in so far that the work of a writer, his service
to the cause of humanity, had never been easy. Concerning myself I can
add that I have, indeed, always tried as honestly as possible and in the
measure of my powers and understanding, to keep alight the spark of the
tradition of philosophical writing, not letting it
be
extinguished by the
rather sharp gusts of wind that have sometimes arisen...."
[Here Mr. Leonov complains that the 1927 version of his novel
The
Thief
recently appeared
in
America, instead of the edition rewritten
by him twenty years later.-P. B.]
