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Marx belongs to the West ; Benda had ignored half the Western
tradition in order to make his case ; the advances of modern science
are based on the very materialism Benda scorns. They swarmed all
over him.
The Congress was off, and it kept running for four more days
with sessions at three in the afternoon and nine in the evening and
an extra meeting Tuesday morning, Malraux presiding, on ques–
tions of organization. The speeches poured out, ranging from one
minute greetings to a forty-five minute harangue by Barbusse , who
mistook himself for the impresario of all left-wing culture . He emp–
tied the hall . In the heat, more and more suspenders came into sight
as jackets were taken off. Speeches in foreign tongues, followed by
translation , provided long intervals for beer and conversation . Yet
the enthusiasm kept returning. The German poet RegIer made a
fiery speech about the resistance to Hitler among writers still in Ger–
many and dramatically handed to Gide and Barbusse token copies of
underground pamphlets . "They're being circulated at this very mo–
ment. " Spontaneously by all accounts, the audience rose at this point
and sang the Internationale . RegIer had in fact departed from his
prepared text. Johannes Becher, later to become East German cul–
ture commissar, was outraged and hissed at RegIer from the wings.
"This Congress can't pretend to be neutral any longer." But Becher
had nothing to fear. Efficiently organized, indulgently reported in
most of the newpapers , capable of keeping its family squabbles in an
inside pocket, the Congress appeared to be a great success.
But could such a congress succeed in being anything more than
a mere epiphenomenon clinging to the surface of history? Could it
ever constitute a nexus of real forces, a congress of
res gestae?
The
thirties worried their way through a prolonged economic and politi–
cal crisis that threw intellectuals and artists into a state of increasing
tension. The Congress is a surprisingly clear window into that decade.
The year 1935 stands centered in a triple frame of events. In
1930, Europe felt the impact of the American
krach,
and it was the
year that the Nazi party won six and a half million votes. But the
German communist leader Thaelemann refused any united front
against Hitler and proclaimed that the enemy was still capitalism
and the fascism of social democracy . Until 1934 the famous "Third
Period" of the Communist International called for the radicalization
of the masses and no compromise with the noncommunist left. At
the other end of the decade , complementing 1930, stand Munich
and all that followed . Here is the first frame.
Hitler's installation as Chancellor in January 1933, and the
