404
PARTISAN REVIEW
Palais de la Mutualite produced a standing ovation. Here is the ac–
count carried in Barbusse's
Monde:
its bad faith makes one wince . "In
spite of an illness from which he has been suffering for two months,
the great Soviet lyric poet insisted on attending the Congress. He
recited two poems, beautiful examples of the blossoming of the new
socialist realism." No one else had the courage or the imagination to
read anything but a prepared speech. Pasternak made his short pre–
liminary remarks in French.
I wish to speak here of poetry, and not of sickness. Poetry will
always exist down in the grass; it will always be necessary to bend
down to perceive it; it will always be too simple a thing to discuss
in meetings. It will always remain the organic function of a happy
creature, overflowing with the felicity of !anguage, tensed in the
birthright of his heart, forever aware of his mission . The more
happy men there are, the easier it will be to find artists.
One of the poems he recited (with Malraux translating) was "So
It
Begins" about children growing up . It ends: "So poetry sets them
on their way." Without that instant of light and life, the Congress
might have shrivelled up and blown away.
If
Pasternak gave literature back to the Congress in the form of
poetry, it was the dissidents and the hot-heads that gave it life. Ob–
viously the organizers wanted to show a united front, both to the in–
tellectuals they were trying to galvanize into action, and to the forces
of fascism that were marching all over Europe. Malcontents who
doubted the purposes or the integrity of the Congress were not wel–
come, and in general they were maneuvered into the background.
Since texts of the announced speeches had to be sent to the sec–
retariat of the Congress in advance in order to allow for preparation
of press releases, summaries, and in some cases translations, the
organizing committee could usually anticipate undesirable speakers.
For example, the Czech delegate and poet, Vitezlav Nezval, waited
his turn for two days in the wings and suddenly discovered the Con–
gress was over. He had planned to greet the gathering in the name of
both the Left Front and the literary avant-garde of Czechoslovakia,
and to go on to condemn both proletarian literature and socialist
realism. He was also one of those responsible for inviting the two
surrealists, Breton and Eluard, to Prague two months earlier for a
series of literary-political mainifestations outside party sponsorship.
This carries us into another story.
•
•
