BOOKS
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been as fortunate in the translators of his other works! But the question
has to be posed: is this amalgam of fact and imagination justified?
From the point of view of the historian the objection to it is obvious.
He is strictly limited by his sources.
If
he reproduces conversations or
thoughts they must be authenticated by reliable memoirs or by letters.
Certainly, Solzhenitsyn can rightly claim that the style of Lenin's
speech in his book is authentic-he lists some twelve works of Lenin in
support of his claim. But, of course, Lenin never committed · his
intimate thoughts to paper or indeed tolerated any probing of them by
others.
Nevertheless, one may well ask: if historians are precluded by the
terms of their craft from probing into the unknown in this manner,
who is to do it, if not the novelist? There is no doubt that our
understanding of Lenin would be poorer without this book, and is not
that the ultimate test?
LEONARD SCHAPIRO
IMAGES OF MODERNISM
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: A LYRIC POET IN THE ERA OF HIGH
CAPITALISM.
By Walter Benjamin. Translated by Harry Zohn and
Quintin Hoare. London: New Left Books.
The publication in English of anything by Walter Ben–
jamin is or ought to be a major critical event. This volume is no
exception, even though its long central essay, " Some Motifs in
Baudelaire" -surely one of the greatest critical performances of this
century-is but slightly revised from the translation published in
Illuminations
in 1968; and even though the remainder of the book
translates posthumously published studies preliminary to the ambi–
tious book on Paris and modern culture that remained unfinished
when Benjamin, fleeing the Nazis, committed suicide in 1940. The
result is occasional repetition of examples, interpretations, or even
