WRITERS IN EXILE
333
really working for the future . Once and for all we realize that you
mean business when you talk about "the creation of a new
man." Thanks to your contemporary style, everyone can easily
recognize the face of this new creature.
Our writers used to go to distant lands looking for new ad–
ventures. Under the Communists' sponsorship, literature itself
has turned into a dangerous adventure-a sort of conspiracy, a
matter of smuggling. So if you've heard something about the
Russian Connection, please keep in mind that it concerns books
rather than drugs .
If
one were to
H~ad
a mere chronology of the
so-called
Metropol
Affair, he would be carried away as if by a
thriller. From time to time, the rulers fight literature fiercely, as
though the whole existence of their system were at stake. Whether
we should thank them for this parochial overestimation of litera–
ture or not. ... Anyway, I indulged myself by talking with
high-ranking officers who came to warn me about one of my
books. I thank them for so many privileges, as well as for kicking
me out of their society and depriving me of their so-called
citizenship.
One can imagine that the process of turning from an internal
emigre into an external one is pretty natural in these days of wild
metamorphoses. After emigration, you find yourself in a deafen–
ing silence, as if you had left behind a sound barrier in a jet
flight. At first you feel discharged, but on second thought, you
may suppose that emigration came to you on time. At last you
are out of this damn Marxist ideological debauchery, as well as
out of your indecent, clumsy struggle against it. For the first time
in your life, you are able to feel the sweet temptation of being out
of any recruitment-an adventure of solitude, the life of a vagrant
juggler. Alas, you are not young anymore! But even so, from
time to time at least, you can listen
to
the tune of that music you
always dreamed of. So once again, I would like to express my
profound gratitude to my former rulers, as well as to Marx,
Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev , and Brezhnev, for helping me
to become a writer. I have never desired any other destiny.
DANIEL BELL: Thank you Mr. Aksyonov.
Many of us have had the experience of meeting a writer in
his books or essays before we meet him in person . I met Mr.
Nekrasov many years ago in a remarkable story he once wrote.
It
was about a trip to the United States, and in the story the narra-
