28
PARTISAN REVIEW
We are born only once on this earth, and only one and no other
historical time is given to us. If we recognize that it is our lot
to
live in
a decadent era, we are faced with the problem of choosing our tactics.
Since man is not an animal and is in touch with the entire past of his
species, and since the past, to the extent that forgotten civilizations are
being rediscovered, is becoming even more accessible, we cannot but be
depressed by the thought that instead of trying to equal the greatest hu–
man achievements, we yield to inferior philosophies only because they are
contemporary. It is very difficult to find appropriate tactics for resistance,
and our development, if it is to be worthy of that name, must be
founded, I believe, on advancing from unconscious tactics to conscious
tactics. Unfortunately, the individual, because he absorbs the same things
as everyone around him, is weak and is continually considering whether
it is not he who is mistaken.
It would be an exaggeration to insist that man can change radically.
The germ of energy which is his alone - let's call it predestination - will
remain the same in evil and in good, in truth and in error; he also has
certain set limits, his own ability to interpret things properly. The fun–
damental constructs in his life are repetitive, but they can assume a new
shape . I did not stop being a "catastrophist" after the Second World
War, in the sense that losing one's sense of reality still seems to me de–
serving of punishment. But I have chosen my guides more and more
consciously, and not from among the representatives of contemporary
belles lettres, which are infected with the loss of a sense of reality. I also
consciously kept apart from that plaintive whimpering that is practically
synonymous with the written word these days. Having crossed a certain
boundary, inside which, unfortunately, the nature of things is our mis–
tress, one begins to treat such whimpering and also the entire theater of
the abs1,lrd, along with the attempts at traditional "realism" that are
doomed to failure - as belonging to the past. A pessimistic appraisal of
the powerlessness of contemporary forces, and of the literature and art
that unconsciously submit to these forces, is not synonymous with a lack
of faith in individual achievements or with doubts about an eventual vic–
tory of the human race over "reality." After all, consciousness, in the
clutches of the epoch, is always incomplete, and as it grows older we
shall at best be able
to
describe clearly what it is that we do not want.
And that is how it ought to be, for our zealousness has its source in our
nay-saying to what the age obligingly places before us.
*
"What is truth?" asked Pilate. "What is reality?" people ask. Such a
question one should refuse to answer.
