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Sontag's speech, the Left feels it
cannot speak of Poland without a bit
of "preliminary throat-clearing" on
EI Salvador; at worst, it is more
concerned with EI Salvador, i.e . ,
with the sufferings of those within
the American sphere of influence
than with the oppression of the
peoples of Soviet-ruled Eastern
Europe. The rally last February 6
was unfortunately an example of the
latter kind of thinking. The audi–
ence even grew restive and began to
boo when, during a screening of a
short film about the strikes at
Gdansk in 1980, there was a scene
of workers taking Communion .
Wieseltier is pleased to find
Sontag' s contribution "undistin–
guished." It might be pointed out
that the merit and significance of an
act has some relation to its context.
It
is, for example, rather more
admirable to support religious free–
dom in the Soviet Union than in the
United States; more praiseworthy
to oppose police power in Argentina
than in Sweden. When the audience
at Town Hall realized that they were
not only going to hear the familiar
denunciations of Reagan from
Sontag, but were going to be
denounced themselves, they did
more than boo. Sontag could barely
be heard and the audience could
barely
be
restrained. When Sontag
drew her conclusions, referring to
the "utter villainy of the communist
system" and equating communism
with fascism, people were on their
feet , screaming with rage . So if the
effect on Wieseltier was so disap–
pointing, one nonetheless might
wonder why the effect the speech
had on the Left-evidenced by the
Nation
symposium-is a matter of so
little concern to him. Why is he not
pleased that a bit of missionary
work for what is, after all , his posi–
tion (i .e., anticommunism) was
done that night? And , as a practical
PARTISAN REVIEW
man (Wieseltier tells us repeatedly
that he is a practical man), doesn't
he find it gratifying that this
procommunist event was thrown
into disarray? (This is certainly
Ralph Schoenmann's view of what
occurred.)
Wieseltier tells us that "politics
is not pretty" -as if Sontag thought
otherwise . He seems unaware of the
pluckiness of Sontag' s decision to
appear before an audience that
would , predictably, be extremely
hostile to her assertions. It would,
after all, have been more pleasant,
safer, and altogether less taxing for
Sontag to have published her
remarks in some sympathetic maga–
zine (the
New lOrk Review of Boolcs,
for example) and left it at that. Her
decision to speak at the rally was
precisely her game attempt to sway
people on the Left, to move them
from their own pieties and cher–
ished assumptions .
Susan Sontag, to the extent
that her intellectual life has been
concerned with politics, has been a
person of the Left. Given this alle–
giance, is it not the honorable thing
to declare one's change of view in
front of a left-wing audience? The
editors of the
Nation,
although they
behaved impeccably vis-a.-vis
Sontag, made no secret of their dis–
like for her views. For the most
part, the exchange they printed was
Sontag versus the
Nation-a
fact
that Wieseltier neglects to mention
but that was stated explicitly in the
preface to the exchange. True, the
Nation
ran an ad of the most comical
fellow-traveling kind for a tour of
the Soviet Union . For Wieseltier,
this seems to betoken something
wrong with Sontag's position
because it was in the journal that
ran such an ad that "Sontag chose
to settle her accounts with commu–
nism ." Isn't the new senior editor
of the
New Republic
aware that a
