Vol. 36 No. 1 1969 - page 129

BOOKS
129
The death of Che had - and it is difficult to use the word after it
has been so cheaply misused - tragic quality. To use a dramatic
metaphor is not to suggest anything histrionic about Che's actions or
passions; it is to indicate that those actions and passions are an ap–
propriate subject for poetry as well as for history, because, as Aristotle
said, poetry is "more universal" than history. Che was not just an
individual, but a representative figure, who lived out a tragic action.
A tragic action is one in which a hero encounters a catastrophe as a
result of a flaw in his character. By a character I do not mean a mere
assemblage of psychological traits, I mean rather the incarnation of a
role. (What poetry was for Aristotle, sociology is for us.) What was
Che's flaw?
To ask this question, I have suggested, is to ask about a role and
not about an assemblage of personal traits. That personal traits can
explain little in political or social action is made clear once again in
reading reminiscences of Che by those who knew him well. He was an
asthmatic who developed a will strong enough to take him on to the
athletic field and through medical school. He was an ascetic who did
not undervalue sex or alcohol. He was an altruist, but without any
signs of that self-contempt which so often underpins altruism. I shall
suggest later that these traits were not entirely unimportant in relation
to some key positions that Che took up; but there are no splendid
psychological generalizations to be constructed which will demonstrate
that asthmatic, ascetic, altruism is the seedbed of revolution. As so
often, what is impressive is not the connection, but the relative lack of
connection between individual personality and social role. The need to
reminisce about Che has in any case obviously little to do with any
task of explanation; it is much more as though his friends still have to
reassure themselves that it all really did happen, that this living out
of one of our political dreams was not in fact only a dream.
The search for such reassurance is perhaps connected with the
extent to which the Cuban Revolution was an accidental happening. By
this I mean much more than that it did not follow out the patterns of
previous revolutions. Regis Debray is able to emphasize that and yet
to insist that the Cuban Revolution embodied an experience from
which more generally applicable laws and maxims can be extracted.
In this he follows Che faithfully and yet there is an important differ–
ence in tone between what Huberman and Sweezy call Debray's
"comprehensive and authoritative presentation of the revolutionary
thought of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara" and what we actually
encounter in Che's writings. This difference arises from the stale,
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