26
PARTISAN REVIEW
our anger may be like and no matter how strong our sympathy for the
fate of the oppressed, we will have a difficult time achieving that mini–
mum of attention without which literature is only paper if we remain
convinced that man, whom we are concerned about, is interchangeable,
is but a bubble on the current of "processes."
It
is not for nothing that
dread of the future rules the work of Dostoevsky, the second prophet of
"nihilism." Dostoevsky was not a psychologist; he was, as he has rightly
been called, a pneumatologist, and there is a great difference between the
two .
Pnellma,
the spirit, is not the same as that instrument for inscribing
impressions that once was called the soul, and the struggle for the salva–
tion of
homo pneumatikos,
despite the temptations of
homo psychikos ,
is
worth the highest stakes. Dostoevsky considered himself an authentic
realist, and he was one, he could still be one, and that is the reason why.
Having lived for a long time in France and in America, I have been
astounded by my observation that the tough and predatory reality that
surrounds me
does not exist
in the literature of these countries. Not that it
would be worthwhile to offer some formulas, because they would turn
out to be impossible . Many a formula has been applied by writers who
swear that they will faithfully describe only what has truly taken place,
will stick to the "facts," and every time the result was, at best, naturalism.
But naturalism is total unreality - in disguise . Bundles of reflexes torment
bundles of reflexes, bundles of reflexes copulate with bundles of reflexes,
bundles of reflexes murder bundles of reflexes. A world not of people but
of flies. And if man is only a fly , then why be so upset about his unhap–
piness? Only a hero, in whose existence both the author and the reader
believe, can be a measure of reality. Such nineteenth-century heroes as
Rastignac, Raskolnikov, Ivan Karamazov, Fabrizcio del Dongo from
The
Charterhot/se oj Parma
still exist to this day. The heroes that Western
authors have managed to create in the last few decades are striking. The
preeminent hero is, without a doubt, the youthful comic-book detective
Tintin; far behind him comes another detective, a grown man, Simenon's
Maigret. That's the situation in the Francophone countries. On the
other hand, in the English-speaking countries, only one character seems
to have truly captivated readers . It is Frodo Baggins, the hero of
Tolkien's
The Lord oj the Rings,
a rich allegorical novel about the strug–
gle between the forces oflight and the forces of darkness, similar, in fact,
in its narrative strategy, to Sienkiewicz's trilogy. Only, the young Frodo
is not even a human child; he is a fantastic creation, a hobbit, an elf, the
Englishman's daydream of himself, who lives in snug dens, drinks tea in
the afternoon, and is capable of heroic deeds - but only if they are ab–
solutely necessary.
Reality, if it is to be captured, demands a hero, but it also demands
