WRITERS AND POLITICS
373
scientious, sometimes irresponsible attempts to translate their tradi–
tionalist standpoint into programs of action.
Whereas the leftist anti-Fascist writers-believing that the over–
throw of Fascism was
the
most important task of their generation–
tended to think that their writing should perhaps be the instrument
of the overriding public cause, the reactionaries thought that politics
should be the servant of their vision of the high tradition. Wyndham
Lewis, for example, never supposed that he should become the mouth–
piece of Hitler. What he thought was that as the living representative
in the contemporary world of renaissance "genius" perhaps a few
renaissance thugs would be helpful to the cause of his art: if this was
the role that Hitler and Mussolini had unknowingly cast for them–
selves, maybe they should be encouraged. Yeats had a not very different
attitude toward the soldiers of the Right who could perhaps be given
orders by Art, and who also were useful in providing sound effects for
the end of a civilization.
The most important thing common to the reactionaries was
that they had a kind of shared vision of the greatness of the European
past which implied hatred and contempt for the present.
It
might
be
said that all their most important work was an attempt to relate
their experiences to this central vision. On the secondary level of their
attempts to carry forward the vision into action and propaganda there
is a good deal of peripheral mess, resulting from their search for
political approximations to their love of past intellect, art, discipline
and order. Often their politics only shows that they care less for
politics than for literature.
Mr. John Harrison takes some remarks of Orwell as his text
which he sets out to illustrate with examples drawn from his authors.
This text
is
worth examining:
The relationship between fascism and the literary intelligentsia
badly needs investigating, and Yeats might well be the starting
point. He is best studied by someone like Mr. Menon who
knows that a writer's politics and religious beliefs are not ex–
cre~cences
to
be
laughed away, but something that will leave
thelr mark even On the smallest detail of his work.
This sounds sensible enough though it is perhaps too offhand to
bear the weight of Mr. Harrison's thesis. Certain objections occur to
one. For example, if it were true that a writer's politics and religious
beliefs extend from a center outward into every smallest detail of
