INTELLECTUALS AND WRITERS
SINCE THE THIRTIES
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servants of these transforming elements, whether we like it or not. But
that does not mean that humankind is infinitely plastic and has no more
going for it than the present time and its forces. One has to step aside
from historical specu lations of that kind to look inside the soul and to
find what it is that is truly of significance. T hi s alone can remove you
from the field of forces. I think you all know what I'm talking about,
this new techno logy, this universal change to new modes of existence.
This does not mean that the modes of existence we represent have no
more place; it is only a question of how many souls wi ll be able to resist
the distraction of the immense range of interests and projects that a
society like ours instills in us. It is true for me, and it must be true for
others, too, that our resistance cannot be eradicated. An example from
the Stalinist era wou ld be the writer Osip Mandelstam. Everything was
against him in Soviet society, politics, and all the rest. Yet he was loya l
to what I have been talking about. And I often think of a country as
numerous as ours in population , that if on ly one tenth of the population
thinks this way, you already have a considerable public that you can
count on. They don't even know that they are a public. The power of
the sou l that is in them requires them to step outside this millennia of
desires , this utopia . You can hardly wonder that people are absorbed by
this, by its sheer power. Whether it eliminates these other forms of indi–
vidual cultivation - I think the answer has to be " no," because it is as
real and vivid to us as it ever was. Even though it may not command the
attention of tens of billions of people, that is not an indictment of its
reality or its importance .
Qllestioll:
In li ght of what you just said, wou ld you say that the tolet that
we do have this free society with so many choices is a positive thing?
Saul Bellow:
There are two ways of seeing it. One is that it is a new
barbarism and that it w ill crush everything. T he other is
to
bank on the
disposition of the people to whom culture is of the first importance.
What the outcome will be, as a prophet, I am at a loss to predict.
Joseph Brodsky:
There is one more thing, I suppose, that one can bank
on in this society: all of the material objects the individual can accu–
mulate are of a kind; they share a common denominator, in that they
cannot provide individual fulfillment. I think people accumu late ex–
pecting social fulfillment, but in the end tangible objects never do pro–
vide anyone with a sense of fulfillment. Then, an individual looks else–
where. This could be interpreted as evidence of the possession of a soul.
