412
PARTISAN REVIEW
culture handed on by bourgeois society remains artificial, something
under glass.
Today in the capitalist society we still inhabit, it seems to me that
the only worthwhile literature is a literature of opposition.
For the bourgeois writer, to have a true communion with
his class is an impossibility . To have a communion with the peo–
pie ... Well, I'll have to say that it is equally impossible as long
as the people remain what they are today, as long as they are not
what they can and must become, what they will become if we do
our part.
... Only the enemies of Communism can see it as a desire
for uniformity. What we expect of it, and what the Soviet Union
is beginning to show us after a difficult period of struggles and
temporary constraints in expectation of greater freedom, is a
condition of society which would permit the fullest development
of each man, the bringing forth and application of all his poten–
tialities. In our sad Western world, as I have said, we still fall
short of the mark. For a time social questions threaten to en–
croach on all others - not that they strike us as more interesting
than the others- but because the condition of the culture de–
pends closely on the state of the society. It is a devotion to culture
that leads us to say: as long as our society remains what it is, our
first concern will be to change it.
Gide must have been in good form. He would soon regret and vir–
tually eat his words. Deep in politics and polemic he wrote very little
during 1935 in his
Journal.
There is only one page on the Congress,
which must have devoured three full weeks of his life. He tells how
he greeted one dark and richly robed lady by saying he was happy to
see Greece represented. "Moi," she replied with annoyance, "c'est
l'Inde."
Malraux delivered the only formal speech that did not follow a
written text. Afterwards the press bureau reproduced a single page
of notes from which he had talked for close to an hour. He numbered
eleven points, one a quotation from the Preface to
Days of Wrath,
each a potential speech by itself. Number eight:
Fascist and communist communions. Reply to Gide.
There is a communion possible as of now with the people; not in
its nature (there can never be a communion i:1 nature) but in its
finality, in this case meaning in its will to revolution. Every real
communion implies a finality.
