Stephen Spender
WRITERS AND POLITICS
In England, the circumstances giving rise to poets interfering
in politics are special. In their study of Julian Bell's and John Corn–
ford's tragically broken off lives, Peter Stansky and William Abrahams:1
inevitably devote much space to explaining the family background and
the personal psychological and intellectual problems which led these
young men to anti-Fascism and their deaths in Spain.
If
they had been French critics writing about the young Malraux,
Aragon or Eluard, there would not have been need of so much ex–
planation. For in France the nineteen thirties was only a recent episode
in the long involvement of the French intellectuals with politics since
before the French Revolution. As David Caute
has
pointed out, writers
like Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Georges Duhamel and Andre
Gide publicly discussed their attitudes to the Russian Revolution, the
League of Nations, war, disarmament, after 1918.
The rightist as well as the leftist French intellectual had centers,
organizations, reviews, newspapers, platforms. They regarded imagina–
tion and critical intelligence as instruments which could be applied
to social problems. In taking sides, the intellectual exploited the legend
1 JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER. By Peter Stansky and William Abra–
hams.
Constable. 50,.
