Lukacs the Historical Novel

, LUKACS THE HISTORICAL NOVEL THE HISTORICAL NOVE�_ Georg Lukacs TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY Hannah and Stanley Mitchell Preface to the American edition by Irving Howe BEACON PRESS BOSTON First published in Russia, translated from the German, Moscow, I9 37 First German edition published in I955 in East Germany Second German edition published in I961 in West Germany English translation, from the second German edition, first published in 1962 by Merlin Press Limited, London Copyright© I962 by Merlin Press Limited First published as a Beacon Paperback in I963 by arrangement with Merlin Press Limited Library of Congress catalog card number: 63-8949 Printed in the United States of America ERRATA page II, head. For Translator's Note read Translators' Note page 68, lines 7-8 from bottom. For (Uproar in the Cevennes) read (The Revolt in the Cevennes) page 85, line I2. For with read which page ll8, para. 4, line 6. For Ocasionally read Occasionally page 150, line 7 from bottom. For co-called read so-called page I 54, line 4. For with which is most familiar read with which he is most familiar page I79, line 4 from bottom. For the injection a meaning read the injection of a meaning page I80, para. 4, line l. For historical solopism read historical solecism page I97, para. 3, line 2. For Gegenwartighkeit read Gegenwartigkeit page 22I, line 4 from bottom. For Bismark read Bismarck page 237, para. 3, line 2. For first half of the eighteenth century read first half of the nineteenth century page 246, para. 2, line 9. For E.Th.A. Hoffmann's read E.T.A. Hoff mann's. page 285, para. 2, line 4 from bottom. For Nikola read Nicholas Contents Translators' Note ll Preface to the English Edition l3 Foreword 17 ONE The Classical Form of the Historical Novel 19 1. SOCIAL ANn HISTORICAL CONDITIONS FOR THE RISE OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL 19 2. SIR WALTER SCOTT 30 3. THE CLASSICAL HISTORICAL NOVEL IN STRUGGI.E WITH ROMANTICISM 63 TWO Historical Novel and Historical Drama 89 1. FACTS OF LIFE UNDERLYING THE DIVISION BE- TWEEN EPIC AND DRAMA 90 2. THE PECULIARITY OF DRAMATIC CHARACTERIZATION 106 3. THE PROBLEM OF PUBLIC CHARACTER 128 4. THE PORTRAYAL OF COLLISION IN EPIC AND DRAMA 138 5. A SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICISM IN DRAMA AND DRAMATURGY 152 THREE The Historical Novel and the Crisis of Bourgeois Realism 171 1. CHANGES IN THE CONCEPTION OF HISTORY AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 172 2. MAKING PRIVATE, MODERNIZATION AND EXOTICISM 183 3. THE NATURALISM OF THE PLEBEIAN OPPOSITION 206 4. CONRAD FERDINAND MEYER AND THE NEW TYPE OF HISTORICAL NOVEL 221 5. THE GENERAL TENDENCIES OF DECADENCE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL AS A SPECIAL GENRE 230 5 FOUR The Historical Novel of Democratic Humanism 251 1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HUMANIST LITERATURE OF PROTEST IN THE IMPERIALIST PERIOD 253 2. POPULAR CHARACTER AND THE TRUE SPIRIT OF HISTORY 282 3. THE BIOGRAPHICAL FORM AND ITS HPROBLEMATIC" 300 4. THE HISTORICAL NOVEL OF ROMAIN ROLLAND 322 5. PROSPECTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW HUMANISM IN THE HISTORICAL NOVEL 332 Index of Names and Authors' Works 351 6 Preface to the American Edition A WORD ABOUT GEORG LUKACS BY IRVING HOWE The work- indeed, the very name- of Georg Lukacs is barely known in the United States. Yet for the past half-century he has been a major force in European intellectual life, a social and literary critic profoundly committed to the ideology of communism while being steadily denounced as a dangerous heretic by the guardians of Com munist dogma. He has been praised by Thomas Mann as "the most important literary critic of today" and b.y Jean Paul Sartre as a signif icant modern philosopher; he has been condemned by Russian and Hungarian party officials as a literary "formalist," philosophical "ideal ist" and political "revisionist." Such paradoxes run straight through the life and work of this extraordinary man! they stamp him as a dis tinctly modern figure. Lukacs' influence upon Western thought has been considerable, partly through Karl Mannheim's theory of the sociology of knowledge, which bears the imprint of, even while diverging from, Lukacs' major theoretical work Geschichte und Kiassenbewusstsein (History and Class Consciousness), and in recent years partly through the writings of a group of French intellectuals who have tried to absorb the philo sophical speculations of the young Marx into modern thought. In eastern Europe Lukacs has become a guiding, almost mythical, figure for those younger intellectuals who, repelled by the brutalities of Stalin ism and the lies of the totalitarian state, have tried to develop a Marxism that would be humanist in temper, subtle in tone and complex in method. Unless there is a reversion to open terror in the Com munist world, Lukacs' importance as a Marxist heresiarch seems likely to grow in the coming years, and for that reason alone- to say nothi.ng of the intrinsic value and power of his books- we ought to know something about him.. Born in 1885 into a wealthy Jewish-Hungarian family, Lukacs began his career as a writer on esthetics influenced by neo-Kantianism. His first important work, a history of European drama, appeared in 1908; Die Seele und die Formen (The Soul and Forms), a collection of literary essays, came out three years later and helped to consolidate his reputation. Influenced by the brilliant impressionist sociology of Georg Simmel, Lukacs was already an unsystematic critic of industrial capitalism, which he saw as the destroyer of human identity and as an agent of man's alienation from both the norms of community and the potentialities of his own. being. This concept of "alienation," derived from Hegel and the young Marx and then elaborated in German sociology, was to be central to Lukacs' thought. It would lead him to a tacit but unmistakable emphasis upon the values of human choice, subjectivity and self-determination, so that some students of his work 7 would come to regard him as a Marxist with deep subterranean links to existentialism. Understandably enough, this side of Lukacs aroused the suspicion of the Communist authorities- for the concept of "alienation" can be as powerful a weapon of criticism in regard to the Communist worl,d as when applied to capitalism. In his splendid study of Lukacs' intellectual d�velopment, Professor Morris Watnick remarks that "the humanism of Lukacs' pre-Marxist period was ... pessimistic, personal and given to introspective with drawal from the concerns of the day. Small wonder, then, that he found so much to admire in the poetry of Stefan Georg, or what he called the 'lyricism of the new solitude' ...." This concern with the "human essence" would remain with Lukacs throughout his tortured career even, in cryptic and self-alienated form, during the worst years of the Stalinist terror. By the end of World War I, Lukacs had become a Marxist, and in the short-lived Hungarian Communist regime of 1919 served as Com missar of Education. Years of exile followed, first in Austria and Germany, then in Russia. Soon after his Geschichte und Kassenbe wusstsein (a book that cries out for translation) appeared in 1923, it was attacked by Zinoviev at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International. For the next three decades. as he kept writing on philo sophical, social and literary subjects, Lukacs' career followed a pattern of theoretical deviation, vulgar abuse from party spokesmen, periods of disgrace, ritual recantation, and further deviation. Yet, unlike so many left-wing intellectuals with a yearning for independence, Lukacs always managed to land on his feet. He did not publicly challenge the politics of Stalinism, nor did he speak out against the terror of the thirties. His deviations were in the realm of theory, potential incitements to those who would later challenge the whole intellectual structure of Communist authoritarianism. He was indeed a heterodox figure, but not a rebel; even within the limits of the Marxist world, he displayed none of the Promethean defiance or romantic heroism of a Trotsky. Through shrewdness and caution he survived the years of blood -and also, it must be stressed, because he was committed to unconditional support of the Communist mov.ement, which in conformity with the theory of the "proletarian vanguard," he had identified as the central agent of historical motion and authority in our time. At one decisive point, surely the political climax of his career, Lukacs broke past this crippling mode of rationalization. During the 1956 Hungarian revolution he joined the cabinet of Imre Nagy, .and when the Russian troops entered Hungary to re-establish Soviet control, he was forced to flee, together with Nagy, to the Yugoslav Embassy. Abducted by the Russians to Roumania, Lukacs and the other Hun garian dissidents lived for some time under house arrest; but he was not made to stand trial, as was Nagy, by the Kadar regime. During the last few years Lukacs has been living quietly in Budapest. He has made no public comment on his role in the 19 56 revolution, nor has he joined those Hungarian intellectuals who have pledged their "loyalty" 8 to the Kadar government. An old man now, he seems mainly devoted to finishing an ambitious three-volume work on esthetics. The Historical Novel was written during the worst years of the Rus sian terror, yet it shows few signs of conscious adaptation to Stalinist apologetics. There is the standard praise for Maxim Gorky as "the greatest writer of our time," and an apparent readiness to take seriously such third-rate "progressive" writers as Lion Feuchtwanger; indeed, the book clearly declines in its last chapter, as Lukacs, turning to con temporary novelists, finds the pressures of political obligation to be increasing.

Load more