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PARTISAN REVIEW
population is, the more it needs serious, well-considered opinions.
The second institution that will help is international publishing.
Western Europe is experiencing a wave of interest in the rest of Europe
and the rest of the world. National egotism is far from dead, but it can–
not stop people from thinking and is not yet considered a quality wor–
thy of celebration. To the east of the former Iron Curtain, however, the
outburst of national sentiment that played so crucial a role in the break–
up of what used to be called the Soviet bloc or socialist world has con–
siderably decreased the relations - and with them the once ritualistically
official cultural exchanges - among members of what used to be called
Comecon. As a result, there has been little incentive to establish a true
exchange of ideas on the East-Central European front. Here publishing
has made a negative contribution: its malady - or, as the bleaker seers
would have it, its collapse - prevents our own books from becoming
bestsellers in our own part of the world.
Writers in our part of the world and century have overrated their
importance, becoming propagandists, priests, proclaiming this or that
principle, railing against the demon of the day, playing the spiritual
leader. The time has come to change ;Ill tlut. State socialism was so de–
pendent on ideology that it could not survive without the cooperation
of a loyal intelligentsia, but now the chapter of extra-literary commit–
ment is closed . Writers arc no longer required
to
foist distracting preju–
dices on their readers, to overstep their craft and cross literature with
something that has little to do with it. There is always a quasi-moral in–
ducement to crossing literature with something else, and some writers
feel they can't do without it. They picture themselves arriving in the
nick of time, only moments before the ultimate catastrophe, and saving .
. what do they plan to save?
My twentieth century began
111
the year Hitler took power:
I
was
born in 1933.
The twentieth century has been characterized by the view on the
part of numerous radicals that it is both possible and desirable
to
take
power by the most expedient means - by force, if necessary - and hold
onto it for dear life. Men and words traveled back and forth between
nationalist and socialist revolutions, and the path of many an intellectual
led from one extreme to the other. The relationship between politics
and literature has been an uneasy one in all this, never quite fusing, yet
never entirely separate. Moreover, the twentieth century has brought
politics into the home, the bedroom, the telephone, the brain. Both fas–
cism and communism defended their states by reaching into our cup-
