JUNE~ 1952 . 35 cents Vol. 5, No. 6

Editor SAMUEL SILLEN MASSES Associate Editors HERBERT APTHEKER & LLOYD L. BROWN Mainstream Contributing Editors MILTON BLAU PHILLIP BONOSKY RICHARD 0 . BOYER W. E. B. DUBOIS ARNAUD D'USSEAU June, 1952 PHILIP EVERGOOD HOWARD FAST BEN FIELD The Fictional American Woman Ma-rg-rit Reiner 1 FREDERICK V. FIELD SIDNEY FINKELSTEIN HUGO GELLERT Civil Rights and the Liberals Herbert Aptheker 11 BARBARA GILES MICHAEL GOLD ]. D. Bernal 18 SHIRLEY GRAHAM The Living Leonardo WILLIAM GROPPER ROBERT GWATHMEY Carmencita Jesus Colon 24 MILTON HOWARD CHARLES HUMBOLDT V. J. JEROME Right Face 31 JOHN HOWARD LAWSON MERIDEL LE SUEUR A. B. MAGIL The Relation of Art to Reality G. N edoshivin 32 JOS_E;PH NORTH PAUL ROBESON HOWARD SELSAM 0 Great Green Wall A-Growing (poem) JOSEPH STAROBIN Lee Jenson 48 JOHN STUART THEODORE WARD CHARLES WHITE Good Morning (poem) Menelaos Loudemis 49

Literature of the New Resistance joseph Starobin 50

MASSES & MAINSTREAM IS pubtished monthly by Masses Books in Review: & Mainstream, Inc., 832 Broadway, New York 3, N.Y. Atomic Imperialism, by James S. Allen: Subscription rate $4 a year; Rob F. Hall 59 foreign and Canada, $4.50 a year. Single copies 35c,· out­ side the U.S.A., 50c. Re­ Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison: Lloyd L. Brown 62 entered as second class matter February 25, 1948, at the Post Office at New York, Drawings by Beltran, Levine, Zimmerman N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright 1952. PRINTED IN U.S.A. ~209 THE FICTIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN

:~i r.. :: ·· ~- ~ A. Look At Some Recent Novels l .... ·- -" .

By MARGRIT REINER

THE treatment of women in Amer- of labor, equal with men and their ican fiction today confronts pro­ partners in the socialist society. The gressive critics with a challenge they upsurge of understanding of the role can no longer ignore. Writers, read­ and position of women is similarly ers and reviewers alike have . become reflected in the literature of the New . so accustomed to male supremacist Democracies and especially of Peo­ ideas that they take them for granted ple's China, where women are step­ and regard them as normal. The bour­ ping from feudalism to socialist free­ geois writer reflects in his writing dom in one generation. the male supremacist attitudes he ob­ The U.S. fictional heroine is cut serves in the world around him, but from a different cloth. To observe the distortion does not end there. her, novels from last year's best sell­ His treatment of women in fiction is ers and book club selections were designed to justify and perpetuate chosen. An examination of these these attitudes. books reveals a clear pattern. .This purpose governs the writer's The problems, real or distorted, of selection, his viewpoint and his omis­ the bourgeois woman occupy a pre­ sions. Female writers as well as male, dominant place in U.S. literature. many progressive as well as all re­ With a few notable exceptions the actionary writers follow the ruling working-class women appear mainly class ideology, the taboos and stereo­ as domestic workers or "comic relief" type concepts, in their trea~ent of ~ueer, uncouth, peculiar people. women. This is especially glaring in the de­ Such concepts are far from being piction of Negro women . . "universal": Gorky's "Mother" has It is assumed of most fictional long since been joined by a host of heroines that they-or their husbands heroines in Soviet fiction-heroines -have sufficient money at their dis-. 1 2 Masses & Mainstream posal to solve their household and writer to shun such "unpleasant" sub­ child care problems by way of "the jects. · maid." Since this situation is taken This, then, is the first part of the for granted, the bourgeois novelist pattern: omission - the forgotten hardly ever concerns himself with it. heroine. But ro bury her safely . is The only subject fit for his considera­ no easy matter. Every major gain in tion is the bourgeois personality and this country was made possible only its problems. with her active participation, often By this very choice, reality has her leadership. Her workworn figure slipped through the writer's fingers. intrudes upon the agitated bedroom For at the base of all reality concern­ scene. The culture based on denying ing the bourgeois woman stands the her existence remains a hollow edi­ forgotten heroine-the working-class fice peopled with vague creatures. and Negro woman. It is the presence of women workers in factories which · THEN there is the stereotype. The provides the economic ground upon "good woman" in fiction is the which the loves and emotions of the woman happily confined in the glass "woman in the suburb" thrive. It is cag~ of "her proper place." Love, not the domestic worker in the kitchen, labor is woman's concern and wom­ unsung and unmentioned, who frees an's place is. in the home-these ideas the lady for her "interesting" loves, reflect and bolster the economic ex­ adulteries and career. ploitation of women under capital­ Were the writer to deal with the ism. Unequal pay for equal work is forgotten heroine as a subject he one side of the coin-the little wom­ would immediately have to face up an in her dream home is the other. to the issues of economic dependence, Novel after novel expounds the limited job opportunities, lower theme that woman's happiness is to wages, absence of child care and be found only in the home and the heal~ facilities, and educational re­ family. Josephine Johnson's The Way strictions. He would have to reckon Things Are is typical. Here, the mod­ with mothers robbed of their normal ern woman is the "bad woman." She family life, oppressed with the double goes to work, leaves her children in burden of work outside the home and the indifferent care of domestic work­ work for their own families, children ers and progressive schools, drinks, deprived and stunted, marriages shad­ plays cards and runs to meetings. The owed by insecurity and drudgery. husbands are not much better, but Reason · enough for the bourgeois it is understood that they are "hen­ pecked," so that it's really the women who are to blame for the inevitable MARGRIT REINER is the author of result: divorce, juvenile delinquency, "Morning," a short story which appeared feelings of insecurity. in our March, 1951, issue. The old-fashioned girl in the story The Fictional American Woman 3 is sweet and · kind but clearly unfit in bourgeois fiction. ". . . we have to live alone in the unsheltered world. only one important problem. Your Fortunately, the strong guiding hand happiness, your success, what you of a kind and capable young man is want." Here the active "bad" woman available. Wedding bells take care of subordinates herself to "superior" man all problems. The old-fashioned girl ·and becomes passive - a "good" will be happy, because she knows her woman. place. The gilded cage in which women Such themes are legion. One of were confined as willing prisoners America's most popular women writ­ to their "superior" husbands was ers, Taylor Caldwell, illustrates the shaken when-at the turn of the cen­ workings of the double standard as tury-Ibsen's Nora slammed the door applied to men and women in fiction. on her "doll's house" and walked In The Balance Wheel her hero out into freedom. But that was a long Charles, a Pennsylvania manufacturer, time ago, in an era of bourgeois real­ struggles actively with his conscience, ism and liberal thought. Current U.S. a man in conflict with his brothers literature, true to the class interest of and his time. His struggles to keep his imperialism, has retreated even be­ son out of war, his failure and resig­ hind the limited advancement of nation lend some depth and credibil­ Ibsen's thought, and is now attack­ ity to an otherwise banal plot. ing even the hard-won bourgeois But the heroine, Phyllis, the proto­ rights of American women. type of the "good woman," is sharply Nora left the doll'.s house because in contrast to the man she loves. Pure, she refused to suffer any longer a patient .and slightly inhuman, Phyllis marriage based on the oppression of moves through the plot gracefully, woman. The modern bourgeois hero­ braving family feud, love for her hus­ ine is quite content with the empty band's brother, scandal and war with­ "freedom" of sexual license. This new out disturbing a hair on her head. Her "love," while somewhat different in function is to love and to suffer, to form from the·old, is just as securely heal and smooth over. Her role is based on inequality. Hemingway's passivity, her main asset beauty, her heroines, from Catherine in A Fare­ world is confined to home, love and well to Arms down to the insipid family. Contessa of Across the River and There is also a "bad woman," Isabel, Into the Trees, are typical of this who is no lady, being a butcher's literary pattern. daughter. She drives her husband, To speak of Contessa Renata as a chases wealth and success, gossips, person is difficult. She is a foil, de­ ruins lives. But when she and her signed to decorate, titillate and enrich husband are finally faced with the the peculiar masculine world of Hem­ failure of all their schemes, Isabel ingway. Here masculinity means love states succinctly the role of the wife of war and violence, a childish mysti- 4 Masses & Mainstream cism about killing and-by way of wHERE the heroine is not com- the cultural side of life-a ludicrous pletely submissive, love becomes preoccupation with the refinements a battle for power. Men are either of food and drink. This inner core of strong or weak-the weak being dom­ the Colonel's life Renata will never inated by the women, the strong kick­ be a part of, she knows better than ing the women around. There is no even to suggest that she accompany pretense of love being an emotion him while duck-hunting. Her own among equals. It is a weapon in the feelings, if they exist, are barely re­ jungle of the marriage market where vealed, nor are they explainable. women are both commodity and An interesting bit of dialogue indi­ struggling victims. cates the depth of thinking regarding Susan Yorke's The Widow treats woman's place in the world. This with the Woman Over Forty, a strong concerns the Colonel's first wife. Re­ woman, active and therefore eviL nata: "Was she awful?" The Colonel: Told in the first person by the widow "Yes, terrible. She was a newspaper it dissects her romance with a younger woman and ambitious ...." "Not that man and describes how she con­ -my God, not terrible like that." sciously drives her lover to suicide.

WOMAN OF SPAIN: by Alberto Beltran The Fictional American Woman 5

The story is narrowed down to the in their millions of gory pocket book smallest orbit possible-the self. In editions. Not only detective and the neurotic preoccupation with the thriller fiction depends on depravity most trivial nuances of emotion, love for its sales. From the war novels is totally lost. of Irwin Shaw and James Jones to The widow moves in a world in the literary creations of such deca­ which there is not humanity enough dents as Truman Capote and Paul for deep feeling about one other hu­ Bowles-and including especially the man being. This book takes every frenzied outpourings of anti-Soviet bourgeois myth and stereotype about and anti-Communist authors ...:.__ sex, women and draws the final conse­ sadism and sensation is the substitute quence: love no one, for love-being for thought and genuine creative a social emotion-is danger to the effort. self. It is not only that sex sells books Tennessee Williams' ·novel, The -there is an inner necessity for the Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, brings innumerable scenes of violence, rape love very quickly to the level of sex­ . and brutality toward women. Just as by-purchase. An American woman the increasing militancy and power nearing fifty, having lost her husband, of the colonial peoples abroad and beauty and stage career, finds herself the Negro people at home is met in Rome trying to decide what to do with increasing chauvinism and lynch with her life. Her Italian gigolo terror, so is the increasing militancy deserts her when richer and more and peace sentiment of women met appealing ladies arrive on the scene. by the glorification of sadistic sex Faced with this tragedy, Mrs. and violence. Stone decides to have her face rebuilt At the core of cultural corruption in Paris. Meanwhile she takes a stands the degradation of the human young sex pervert off the street and being. The new hero, fascist-minded, into her bed. The book puts it racist and military, demands the ut­ bluntly: A woman in her forties ter subjection before him of "in­ must buy a man, hook a man, get a ferior" people. Traditionally, this is man any way she can or be con­ symbolized in the degradation of demned to empty old age. the women of foreign countries and From this shopkeeper's approach especially of colored women. And to love it is only a small step to the just as traditionally, the white wom­ glorification of force and violence in an at home-wife, sweetheart and love-the cult of rape. "Sex, sadism girl-left-behind-reaps the fruits of and sensation ..." predicts the New such conquest. Inevitably, the mas­ York Times Book Review under the ter-race theory of "Anglo-Saxon heading "Trends for 1952." No supremacy" breeds in its exponents doubt. Book stalls all over the coun­ a "Lord-of-the-Manor" attitude to­ try blare forth this cultural message ward women. 6 Masses & Mainstream

THE pattern of male supremacist wrong with a society setting up such ideology develops an added a standard for its women. feature-a sense of isolation. We This, then, is the pattern: omis­ .find heroines in .fiction .filled with the sion, stereotype, distortion, violence idea that they have no common cause and a sense of isolation. Fictional with either men or women, that their women have no positive will, they problems are their own and bear no are passive, emotional, erratic and relation to the rest of society. The childlike. All references to past treatment of the problems of aging , struggles of women and the heroines women in The Widow, The Roman of history are obliterated. No will, Spring of Mrs. Stone and Mary Jane no militancy, no history-wherever Ward's A Little Night Music il­ rotten ideology props up the whole­ lustrates this. sale exploitation of a people, a na­ These books have in common tion, a minority, these slanders recur their approach that whatever hap­ with unfailing certainty. They are pens to the woman over forty is her meant to add up to a total-no or­ problem and hers alone. There is no ganization, no struggle, no future hint of criticism of a society that free from oppression. The ideology consigns middle-aged women to the of male supremacy is a tool of class scrap heap, fails to provide jobs or rule, designed to blur the conscious­ training for lifelong usefulness. It ness of both men and women, divert becomes merely a question of the criticism of social conditions into unhappy women learning to "adjust" the safe channels of a "battle of the to the sad fate of life without love. sexes." Only in A Little Night Music is there even a suggestion of another HOW then is it possible for pro- solution. The heroine, after all kinds gressive and socially conscious of soul-searching and childhood­ writers to accept these male suprem­ evaluating, detides to accept the di­ acist standards and attitudes? Far rectorship of the conservatory of too many writers who uphold in their music where she has been teaching. work and their thinking the dignity · (This promotion is accomplished as of all men regardless of nationality, a result of anti-Semitic discrimination color and creed fail to apply such against another teacher, a fact which knowledge and convictions to the seems to disturb neither the author women they write of. nor the heroine very much.) But Stefan.Heym's The Eyes of Reason even in this case of adjustment to is an example of this double standard. work, the fate of the "spinster" in The male characters, while far from question is depicted as quite tragic, being as well realized as the im­ simply because she is an unmarried portance of the subject matter would woman and no suggestion is permit­ warrant, are at least understandable ted that there might be something human beings, conditioned by social SIGNING FOR PEACE: by the German artist, Kurt Zimmerman 8 Masses & Mainstream struggle. The women, one and all, Related to countless fictional crea­ are in line with every male su­ tures she winds her way through in­ premacist prejudice and, as a result, numerable emotional scenes, a sweet unrealized and unsatisfactory as pain to the reader as well as to the literary characters. hero. Swayed only by passion, never There are no working-class wom­ by reason, she cannot choose be­ en in this story of the people's re­ tween two men, but neurotically volution in Czechoslovakia-this in waits fot the right one to salvage itself .flies in the face of history. Due her. Her final conversion and pro­ to a similar weakness there is also jected marriage to poor Steve is as insufficient emphasis on the role of incredible as is the similar union of the working class as a whole, but at Kitty and Karel in The Eyes of least . there are some working-class Reason. male characters of importance in­ volved in the story. All the "good" pERHAPS the most destructive in­ women in the novel are afflicted with fluence on the literary portrayal a deep-seated paralysis of will, while of women has been wielded by the "evil" women are active and ag­ Freudianism. Today the old standbys gressive. ·of religious doctrine and unscientific Vlasta, one of the "new people," is superstition to justify the continued dealt with solely as a fine woman inequality of· women's status are unable to love; all that seems to in­ wearing thin. Few believe any longer terest the author about her is her that women are "inferior" because emotional life. Similarly, Petra, their brains are smaller than men's. whose adolescence and revolt against It is here that Freudianism has step­ parental authority are painstakingly ped into the breach, providing a detailed, lives through the crucial day pseudo-scientific explanation of of revolution with hardly a recogni­ women's "inferiority" and an elabo­ tion of the world around her. rate rationale for her continued op­ Above all, Kitty Benda, the heroine, pression. Its emphasis on the "sexual is treated as a stereotype bourgeois drive" as the basic motivating force wife. Moving through social change of human behavior has lent new as though confined in a glass cage, lustre to the fading glory of the fic­ Kitty is forever undecided and un­ tional bourgeois heroine. willing to make a decision. There is Abraham Polonsky's novel, The a strong resemblance between her World Above, is an example of this and Phyllis of The Balance lf/heel. trend. Here a young psychiatrist's Millard Lampell's The H(Jro suf­ quest for truth leads him into op- . fers from a similar contradiction be­ position to orthodox Freudian psy­ tween the hero and his unequal mate. chiatry as well as to thought-control­ There actually is no heroine--Melis­ ling congressional committees. But sa is like no woman who ever lived. despite the hero's intellectual con- The Fictional American Woman 9

elusions the author takes a strictly problems ·with home, family and Freudian view of character, stressing husband in this situation. The drama­ the primacy of sexual drives in life, tic and heroic struggle of working­ particularly in his women. · class mothers against landlords, There are several women in the school boards, poverty, and strike­ hero's life, of different background breaking bosses remains to be told. and viewpoints, but they all have The story of the Negro heroines-the in common their lack of positive will many Amy Mallards, Bessie Mitch­ and their preoccupation with emo­ ells, Rosalee McGees - are truly tion. The hero's relationship to them the stuff that great fiction is made is entirely on that level. of. The final scene is illuminating: The rich and beautiful relation­ . the hero has just taken the decisive ships between men and women, step of refusing to disavow his mothers and children, comrades in scientific beliefs before an investigat­ the working-class movement of our ing committee and with it-pre­ country, have yet to find their way sumably-he has reached a higher into fiction, to highlight and illumi­ level of political understanding. nate life for our men and women Juley, the working-class woman who as did Gorky and Nexo and O'Casey has lived through many union strug­ with their writing. gles, awaits him. She offers him food, warmth and love. JT IS good to be able to report at But she does not help him-as least some steps in the right direc­ well she might-to see his role more tion. Louis Falstein's novel, The clearly in relation to the many union Face of A H~ero, is by its nature men and women who have made mainly concerned with and written similar decisions before him. She from the viewpoint of men-the does not share his political and in­ crew of a B-24 sweating out their tellectual experience, discuss it with fifty missions in World War II. The him or partake of it as an equal. She author shows great insight and is simply the mother, the lover, the respect in his treatment of the wives sheltering haven--a woman in her and sweethearts the men have left "proper" place. behind. For the most part progressive There are several episodes dealing novelists have avoided and ignored with the relations of GI's with Ital­ the crucial ,themes of woman's life. ian girls, typical of the U.S. soldier's There has not been a story of a wom­ thoughtless chauvinism against na­ an industrial worker battling her tive populations. But these episodes way through restrictions, discrimina­ are not exploited for cheap sex, they tion and prejudices to an equal place are written with a profound under­ on the assembly line, finding herself standing and love of people. The in the labor movement, solving her brave, hungry washerwomen of Me- 10 Masses & Mainstream

dia who befriend a lonely Negro are in jail, but these women are not sergeant are beautifully drawn. resigned to sit ~ack and wait. They In Myra Page's With Sun In Our organize ably and well to free these Blood we meet the rare heroine-a men and the frameup victim, Lonnie working-class woman-Dolly Haw­ James. kins, daughter, wife and mother of miners telling the story of her life T IS high time for progressive in the rich speech of the Cumber­ I writers to free themselves of land mountains. Despite an overly male supremacist thinking and con­ sentimental approach, the lives and duct a conscious struggle for a work­ struggies of Dolly Hawkins and her ing-class approach to the treatment family are real enough and there is of women. Marxist criticism must a dignity in the treatment of this fulfill its great responsibility in this woman rarely found in current fic­ field. There is need for a serious tion. Certainly the Dolly Hawkinses evaluation of the treatment of women in our country deserve the attention in the works of progressive writers of many other creative talents, for in like Howard Fast, Alexander Saxton, their lives they embody the power David Alman, Len Zinberg and and richness of the working class. others. A working class approach to Outstanding is Lloyd Brown's novel, character and to the relationship be­ Iron City. Like Falstein he faced the tween men and women will deepen problem of treating with women the artistic impact of any writer's characters solely from the viewpoint work. of the male heroes. By the very Education, discussion and self­ nature of the story the women, while criticism are urgently needed. The playing an important role in the male supremacist pattern of omis­ lives of the men, are not in the main sion, stereotype, distortion, violence focus. Yet they emerge as strong and a sense of isolation can be and militant characters, heroic as broken. There is a proud and mili­ their husbands and certainly equal. tant tradition of struggle for the Lucy Jackson, the woman who rights of women in our country and collected more signatures for Scotts­ there are hundreds of heroines of boro than anyone else; Charlene, the history awaiting to be rediscovered. resourceful and able wife of the And there is around us a growing Communist organizer; and Anne mass movement of women for peace Mae Zachary-here are Negro wom­ and Negro liberation. There are new en truthfully depicted with love and heroines to be written and sung respect. Their husbands and friends about. CI.VIL RIGHTS and the LIBERALS

By HERBERT APTHEKER

THE American people are becom- ties because ~one had "demonstrated ing increasingly impatient at war any genuine concern for civil rights." scares, price hikes, Jim Crow and In Cincinnati when the 950 dele­ witchhunts. The monopolized com­ gates to the biennial convention of munications do well at smothering the League of Women Voters ob­ and distorting, but when flyers won't served that their national board had fly and workers won't work and omitted reference to civil rights in 250,000 Negro men and women be­ its recommended program, they al­ come registered voters in Florida tered the program from the floor. A despite hell, high-water and Grove­ delegate from Shaker Heights, Ohio, land, the news will out. pointed to this omission and declared Here are some of the signs of stir­ "that threats to individual freedom ring on the anti-witch hunt front were growing, individual rights were culled only from a recent week. A being restricted and character annihi­ priest stated in a sermon that "Every lation was prevalent." She called on . Catholic - especially the Catholic the assembled women to "help stem writer-should be distinguished by the tide of our disappearing freedom'~ a love of justice and freedom and by and was-said the New York Times,. a spirit of charity in his writings." April 29-"roundly applauded." And the priest, Father McCullen, per­ And in Cleveland, the 2,500 dele­ mitted The Nation (April 26, 1952) gates to the convention of the Right­ to publish the sermon in its entirety, led Textile Workers Union-C.I.O., with a preceding editorial paragraph adopted a resolution condemning the naming the particular Catholic writer Smith and McCarran Acts, the con­ he had in mind in his criticism-the victions of the eleven national lead­ hierarchy-sponsored Louis Budenz. ers of the Communist Party, calling In Atlanta, Georgia, fifty delegates the Supreme Court's decision uphold­ from six Southern state organizations ing those convictions "a grave blow of the N.A.A.C.P. denounced all to our heritage of free speech and avowed Presidential candidates from free thought," and labeling anti­ the Republican and Democratic par- Communism as "a cloak for reaction- II 12 Masses & M ainstrean ary forces to drive the people into -in however limited a fashion (and patterns of conformity." ~ the limits will be analyzed)-the Some recent books reflect this grow­ general, growing concern with the ing popular awar~ness of and con­ steady eating away of our Bill of cern about the corrosion of our civil Rights. This concern is expressed liberties. This article will briefly ex­ with sufficient impact to arouse furi­ amine and assess three influential ex­ ou~ attacks from the reactionary press amples of this literature. These are: -Hearst, Scripps-Howard, the New A collection of essays, edited by Leader and the others. Clair Wilcox, Professor of Political The authors and contributors to &ieru:e at Swarthmore College, en­ these volumes are appalled at the titled Civil Liberties under Attack.* grossness of the Un-American Com­ The contributors to this volume in­ mittee which questions a scholar like clude Henry Steele Commager, Pro­ Professor Harlow Shapley behind fessor of History at Columbia, Zecha­ barred doors, forcibly ejects his law­ riah Chafee, of Harvard Law School, yer, denies him the right to call wit­ Walter Gellhorn of Columbia Law nesses and has the professor's written School and James B. Baxter III, Presi­ statement torn from his hands. dent of Williams College. They believe people should be Second, The Loyalty of Free Men, punished for deeds, not thoughts; they by Alan Barth, editorial writer for find intolerable the advice of a Con­ the Washington Post, with a long gressman that one join only those foreword by Professor Chafee, issued organizations approved by the Amer­ in mass quantities by Pocket Books ican Legion and the U.S. Chamber of at thirty-five cents. Commerce; they think coercing "loy­ Third, a report by the American alty" is self-defeating; they believe Civil Liberties Union, The Judges and that heterodoxy of thought is stimu­ the Judged,** by Merle Miller. lating rather than subversive. One of these writers, Professor HE first two volumes deal gen­ Robert Carr-contributing to the Terally with the assault upon civil Wilcox volume-wants a strong, na­ rights; the Miller volume examines tional F.E.P.C., recognizes that the the effect of this assault-in the form Negro people really desire equality of a private racket conducted by ex­ and freedom, and finds a cause of war F.B.I. agents-upon the radio and to lie in "the prejudiced, contemptu­ television industry. ous policies followed by American The central positive fact about all states or communities toward their these volumes is that they do reflect Negro citizens, their Oriental citi­ zens, or their Indian citizens." To have such views expressed in • University of Pennsylvania Press, these times, by men such as these, is $3.50. • • Doubleday, $2.50. invaluable and tremendously heart- Civil Rights and the Liberals 13 ening to all who believe that freedom who have, so far, been particularly need not be and will not be wholly attacked! lost in the United States. Mr. Commager, for example, la­ menting Congressional inquisitions, yET all the contributions suffer finds these denying the basic principle from serious limitations in analy­ that "even the worst criminal has a sis and errors in fact which greatly right to his day in court" and con­ undermine their effectiveness. A criti­ cludes, "If this principle goes by the cal evaluation of these works is neces­ board, under pressure from Commu­ sary to advance the common effort of nism, then Communism has won a all democratic and peace-minded peo­ notable victory." ple. Similarly, Mr. Barth, horrified at The books appeared because of the recent glaring examples of the vio­ writers' concern with finding, as ·the lation of elementary democratic rights, title of one reads, civil liberties under exclaims: "Nothing that the agents of attack. Immediate questions that arise Communism have done or can do in are: Under attack from whom? For this country is so dangerous to the what reasons? What is to be done United States as what they have in­ about it? On each of these crucial duced us to do to ourselves." questions the volumes fail the reader. And Mr. Miller concludes his study The first question--who is attack­ of the Red-baiting victimization of ing civil liberties?-is hardly posed, radio and television performers by let alone answered. Capitalism, im­ remarking that rrRed Channels has perialism are words which never ap­ surely done exactly what the Commu­ pear in these volumes. The word nists would wish it to do ... [It has] "fascism" appears once in the three created in one of this country's most books. This is in Professor Chafee's crucial industries the kind of terri­ foreword to Barth's book, where the fied dissension on which the Commu- · reader is told "there is no need to nist Party always has and always will worry much about fascism." grow." They say, too, that Communism is All of these writers falsely pictur~ not much of a "danger." Or, at least, the Soviet Union as an aggressive, "internal" Communism::_at the pres­ reactionary power and repeat the ent moment. But, at the same time, slander that the leaders of the Com­ their thesis is, as the cover to :Mr. munist Party of the United States­ Barth's volume maintains, that it is if not each of its members--are "the Communist threat to freedom" agents of this power. which really ·evokes the attack upon It is because these authors have · civil liberties! That is, while none accepted the basic argument of those states who is attacking civil liberties, whose gross anti-democratic and in­ all assume that the responsibility for decent behavior alarms them, that the attack rests with the Communists they are unable to discover who is 14 : Masses & Mainstream

attacking civil liberties. dren" and "it is th~ task ~f a wise What, then, is their explanation psychiatrist to reach isolated and per­ for that which alarms them? "We are plexed minds and bring them into afraid," replies Professor Wilcox. renewed communication with fellow­ Who are "we"? All of us. Of what men"~including, no doubt, Mr. are we afraid? A phantom-"our fear Chafee's "stuffed shirts." has no conceivable foundation in This is for peace-time. But, in an fact." emergency or in war-time, the "iso­ Professor Chafee feels the Second lated and perplexed minds" will have World War is to blame; it "taught · to forego psychoanalysis and partake us to hate each other." "We" have of the blunter care provided by con­ thus become afflicted with a "mental centration camps. Mr. Chafee adds the pestilence of hatred and fear." Else­ precaution - really superfluous, for where he finds, in all seriousness: Mr. McCarran had already thought of "The biggest danger to the United it-that when such measures are in­ States is from stuffed shirts-stuffed stituted "we ought to limit them to shirts in positions of authority who the emergency and be absolutely sure seek to fill every government office that they come to an end when the and every teaching position with eme~gency is over." Who, among the stuffed shirts." Professor Gellhorn "we," Mr. Chafee, will decide the mo­ dismisses this particular question ment of liberation-you, or Senator more briefly but with no less-and McCarran? no more-illumination: We are in It is a measure of the corrosive the midst of "the periodic hubbubs." pow~r of anti -Communism that, once embraced, it leads a Professor Chafee, ELL, then, civil liberties are un­ historian of the struggle for freedom W der attack, we know not by of speech in the United States, to go whom, because all of "us" have the along with the essential program of "hubbubs" induced by Communists an arch enemy of free speech like who really are terrible, but really McCarran. aren't dangerous. And what of Mr. Miller and his What to do? Given such a diagno­ investigation of the blacklist in rad!o sis, the therapy may be imagined. It and television? Has he found such consists in prison for the Communist repression·? Yes, indeed. His book is leaders-the "incorrigible" ones. For a valuable collection of data proving the rank-and-file, who must be certi­ the victimization of hundreds of tal­ fied as such non by a careless old Con­ ented artists and writers and docu­ gressional committee but by the su­ menting the manner whereby witch­ perbly efficient F.B.I., we can provide hunters have "panicked" these indus­ psychiatric treatment. Thus urges tries and driven from the air consid­ Professor Chafee. Communists, he eration of such "Communist ques­ says, are "American problem chil- tions" as academic freedom, peace and \ Civil Rights and the Liberals 15

civil rights. discovered lately: freedom from cul­ But what are the proposals? Basic­ ture." ally, surrender, for Mr. Miller pas­ sively concludes that where it comes· JT IS worth noting, in passing, that to commentators, newscasters and our authors, having accepted the programs of substantive social con­ basic anti -Communist lie of the tent, "no important sponsor" would witch-hunters, take over in some in­ pay for views · he disapproves. And stances even their techniques. that settles it! In the exalted language For example, Mr. Ernest Angell, of Richard Rovere, in Partisan Re­ chairman of the Board of Directors view: "It is plain that among the of the American Civil Liberties Union, rights of lard merchants are the right and Mr. Patrick Malin, its Executive to make themselves absurd and the Director, state in an introduction to right to hire and fire radio perform­ Miller's volume that the A.C.L.U. was ers as they please." determined that Miller's "investiga­ Having surrendered the outer­ tion should include the utmost possi­ works, what about the rest of the bas­ ble checking on every suggestion of tion? For pure and simple entertain­ black-listing by Communists or other ers, .Mr. Miller thinks it would be 'leftists,' and he devoted weeks of well if the American Federation of time to this effort." Radio Artists policed themselves. All In the text itself Mr. Miller says "accused" personnel would write a "several weeks" were given to a "confidential" letter of "explanation." search for this but "not a sirigle in­ This would be filed by A.F .R.A. and stance of such proof was uncovered." when the sponsor, through the Amer­ Which proves what? It proves, says ican Association of Advertising Miller, that if there is such a list "it, Agencies, raised any question about a like the Party itself, operates in se­ performer, his letter of "explanation" cret,'' while Messrs. Angell and Ma­ would be forwarded and then he lin point to the absence of evidence might-or might not-be hired. All of such a list as showing "once again with a minimum of fuss. [!] that one of the main dangers of The standards of A.A.A.A. were in­ . Communist tyranny is the .secrecy in dicated in a recent article by one of its which its adherents regularly operate." big wheels, Maurice B. Mitchell, "It's Or, as Budenz put it, the absence of Still A Business," in The Satwrday the advocacy of violence on the part Review of Literature. Mr. Mitchell of Communists proves how diaboli­ dismissed as "crackpots" those who cally sinister is their conspiracy to worried about "educational talks and advocate it! discussions." "Sometimes," he went Or, again, President Baxter, of Wil­ on, "the broadcaster wonders whether liams College, focuses his contribu­ there shouldn't be another 'freedom' tion to Civil Liberties Under Attack added to the list of new ones we've upon the evil nature of Communism 16 Masses & Mainstream

especially as demonstrated in its al­ It is difficult to believe that Presi­ leged violation of all tenets of scien­ dent Baxter would be guilty of such tific inquiry. To bolster his case, Mr. gross violations of elementary stand­ Baxter, a professional historian, bases ards of scholarly inquiry were he a false summary of Lenin's Material­ writing about any subject other than ism and Empirio-Criticism (whose Communism, in which, apparently, appearance he misdates), on a sum­ no holds are barred. mary of the book appearing in a work by James B. Conant. published forty­ THESE volumes maintain a delib- three years after Lenin's! erate blindness as to the source He tears out of context and com­ of the present assault upon civil lib­ pletely distorts words written by erties because their authors have fallen Zhdanov as partially quoted in the victims to the key weapon of the as­ Annals of the American Academy of saulters. Political and Social Science, when The civil liberties of the mass of Zhdanov's own work-Essays on Lit­ American people are being attacked erature, Philosophy and Music-is today by the class which hitherto has readily available in English. President robbed the Negro people of their Baxter quotes at length from the civil liberties. The economic masters "memoirs" of the renegade Ignazio of this country are basically responsi­ Silone as to the "unprincipled" na­ ble for the oppression of the ~egro ture of Communists-published in people-the greatest single example the impartial New Leader-but never of the rape of civil liberties in this mentions and probably is unaware of country, though the books under re­ the detailed exposure of Silone writ­ view do not indicate it-becauSe ten in specific reply to these "mem­ much of their power and profit has oirs," by Togliatti and available in been derived from this oppression. the London IAboU1' Monthly (May, Similarly, these economic masters 1950). control the political and ideological President Baxter quotes from the life of this country. It is they who are discussions held in the Soviet Union responsible for the assault upon basic on Lysenko's theories, but he quotes democratic rights. It is they who-­ not from the published proceedings, seeking war-find such rights increas­ but rather from excerpts offered in a ingly irksome and would bind their hostile article by Professor Sonne­ home population with the chains of born in Science. And Baxter's quo­ fascism while launching war upon the tation, excerpting from Sonneborn, world. distorts Sonneborn, whose own ex­ Merle Miller seems surprised to cerpting, needless to say, completely discover that it is the Columbia distorted the whole essence of the Broadcasting System and Columbia 600 page volume* carrying the text • The Situation in Biological Science. of the discussions! International, 1949, New York. Ci"il Righta and the Liberal• IT Pictures Inc., and the multi-million­ McLeod Bethune; from the Smith aire Chiang-supporter Kohlberg, who Act to "regulate" thought to the Smith pay the ex-cops who make a racket Bill to "regulate" trade-unions, the out of Red Channels} but he need not line is straight and clear. be surprised. Nothing except unity will break. Anti-Communism is the supreme the line. The unity cannot he based racket, of the supreme racketeers­ on anti-Communism, main weapon the monopoly-capitalists. It is inter­ of reaction. The unity must be built national-Japanese, German, Italian, on anti-fascism, on a program for Spanish-and American. It is the peace, security and equality. policy embarked on by those who · Freedom-fighters are not called seek war and fascism. Its aim is to upon to make more "reasonable" the destroy all decent thought and cul­ "excesses" of the McCarrans. Free­ ture-and all decent living standards. dom-fighters must throw the McCar-­ This is why Red-baiting inevitably rans out of office. We must not "im-· moves out to get all-Mrs. Bethune, prove" the Smith Act, we must re­ president of the National Council of peal it; not hope for restraint in the Negro Women and Dr. Harold Lenz, enforcement of loyalty oaths, but dean of students at Queens College eliminate them. and leader of the Americans for Dem­ "Though," said Theodore Parker,. ocratic Action. This is no aberration; "all the governors in the world bid us rather it is the intent of red-baiting. commit treason against man, and set From Benjamin J. Davis to Mary the example, let us never submit."

Win Amnesty! One year has passed since the Supreme Court upheld the con­ viction of the 11 leaders of the Communist Party who were indicted· under the thought-control provisions of the Smith Act. It has been a year of cruel punishment for these men and the wives and fami­ lies from whom they were torn. Amnesty is the only practical way­ to redress this great wrong. We urge our readers to support the National Confere hce to Win Amnesty for Smith Act Victims, which will be held on June 14 at the St. Nicholas Arena in New York City. For full information write to Conference Headquarters: Room 643, 799 Broadway, New York: 3, N.Y. -The Editors I'h@ Living LEONARDO

By J. D. BERNAL

rrMay I be deprived of movement of the age he was born into. He ap­ if 1 ever weary of being useful.'~ pears at a crucial point in history -LEONARDO DA VINCI where art was at its peak and science was just beginning its triumphant HERE are men whose achieve­ career. He contributed more than any Tments we need no centenaries to other single man to the advancement celebrate. Their works speak for them­ of both and he showed, in his own selves. This is especially true for the person, how harmoniously and effec­ great artist who writes in a universal tively they needed to be combined. language which neither time nor dis­ That union has since been almost tance diminishes.* Centenaries do, lost, but with the new movement of nevertheless, serve a useful purpose in society, it is on the way to being reminding us of the total achievement reformed. of a man, asking us to assess what Gorky, with the experience of the his work meant in his own time and revolution behind him, has shown the how its message needs be read for the way in which the great individual is work of our own days. The turn of himself the special product of a centuries sometimes brings back a period of social stress such as that dose and fresh echo of what has been, which marked the end of the Middle in the intervening time, blurred and Ages. di~torted. Leonardo da Vinci was a great man "The rapid development of the power of a great age. His native gifts and of the individual has no other explanation abilities were enormous, but they than that, in periods of social storms the personality becomes the focal point of were multiplied by the circumstances thousands of wills which have selected it for their instrument and we see the indi­ knew *Leonardo da Vinci, himself, vidual divinely strong and beautiful, il­ of the medium he well enough the power bright flame of the de­ science is more useful whose luminated by the used. "That party. fruit is most communicable to all genera­ sires of his people, his class or his tions of the universe." (Paragone.) ''Who the individw.al is does not matter 18 The Living Leonardo 19

. . . what matters is that all these heroes fight, one by speaking and writing, another appear before us as carriers of collective with the sword, many with both. Hence energy, as mouthpieces of mass desires .... the fullness and force of character that Always in the course of history it was the makes them complete men." (Preface to people who created the man. A specially Dialectics of N atuf'e, quoted in Literatuf'e striking example of this is provided by and Af't, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the Italian city republics of the 14th and Selections from their writings, New York, 15th centuries where the creative activities 1947, pp. 73f.) of the Italian people embraced all spheres of the spirit, the entire field of human re­ EONARDO DA VINCI more lations, and created truly great art, bring­ ing forth an amazing number of great L than any other single figure of masters of the word, the brush and the his time expresses that completeness chisel." (From an article on "The De­ in his life and work. The reason he struction of Personality," in Literatuf'e and Life, p. 117.) does so is that by his birth and train­ ing-he was the illegitimate son of a The many-sidedness of the indi­ successful local solicitor, apprenticed vidual was itself a feature of libera­ at fourteen to the leading goldsmith tion from the limits imposed by the of Florence-he carried with him the state order of the Middle Ages. The . training of the craftsman rather than Renaissance was, in Engels' words, the scholar. He had no formal educa­ writing before the· changes he had tion and despised those that had. foreseen and worked for: What he valued was the direct ex­ perience of his eye and hand: "It was the greatest progressive revolu­ tion that mankind has so far experienced, "If indeed I have no power to quote a time which called for giants and pro­ from authors as they have, it is a far big­ duced giants-giants in power of thought, ger and more worthy thing to read by the passion and character, in universality and light of experience, which is the instruc­ learning. The men who founded the tress of their masters. They strut about modern rule of the bourgeoisie had any­ puffed up and pompous, decked out and thing but bourgeois limitations. On the adorned not with their own labors but by contrary, the adventurous character of the those of others, and they will not even time inspired them to a greater or less allow me my own. And if they despise degree .... me who am an inventor, how much more "Leonardo da Vinci was not only a should blame be given to themselves who great painter but also a great mathema­ are not inventors but trumpeters and re­ tician, mechanician and engineer, to whom citers of the work of others. . .. the most diverse branches of physics are "Those who are inventors and inter­ indebted for important discoveries·. . . . preters between . Nature and man as com­ "The heroes of that time had not yet pared with the reciters and trumpeters of cG>me under the servitude of the division of labor, the restricting effects of which, ]. D. BERNAL, distinguished British with its production of one-sidedness, we scientist, is a Fellow of the Royal Society so often notice in their successors. But and a vice-president of the World Peace what is especially characteristic of them Council. His article was written for the is that they almost all pursue their lives and activities in the midst of the con­ world-wide celebration, sponsored by the temporary movements, in the practical Peace Council, of the 500th anniversary struggle; they take sides and join in the of Leonardo Da Vinci's birth. 20 Mcuses & Mainstream the works of others, are to be considered elsewhere, produced little finished simply as is an object in front of a mirror work, but what he did was of such in comparison with its image when seen excellence that even in an age of in the mirror, the one being something in superb art no one questioned his per­ itself, the other nothing; people whose debt to nature is small, for it seems only sonal supremacy in painting. But this by chance that they wear human form, but did not satisfy him. His idea of paint­ for this one might class them with the ing as a science involved such a range herds of beasts." (The Notebooks of of investigations and practical trials Leonardo dt:A Vinci, ed. Edward MacCurdy, London, 1938, Vol. 1, p. 61.) that only the purse of a great prince : could provide. He rejected equally the age-old He found it in Ludovico il Moro, religious philosophical idea, born of Duke of Milan, at that time the upper class contempt for hand work, greatest and wealthiest state of Italy. that experience was delusive and that Its revenues were equal to those of we should rather depend on tradition France and England combined. They or pure reasoning. "Experience is were derived from an intensive agri­ never at fault; it is only your judg­ culture based on irrigation and a ment that is in error in promising it­ flourishing metal industry, particu­ self such results from experience as larly of arms manufacture. But the are not caused by our experiments." government was a dictatorship based Leonardo was, however, far from on crime and violence covered by a having the idea. that crude experience magnificent and wasteful expenditure, was enough-he understood the need and had long forfeited the support to refine it by science, particularly of the people. mathematics, which he thought of as Leonardo was appointed on the itself derived from material experi­ strength of an application where he ence. stressed his ability to construct all "No human investigation can be kinds of new military machines, men­ called true science without passing tioning almost as an afterthought: through mathematical tests, and if "Also, I can execute sculptu.11e in you say that the sciences which begin marble, bronze or clay and a16o paint­ and end in the mind contain truth, ing, in which my work will stand this cannot be conceded, and must be comparison with anyone else whoever denied for many reasons. First and he may be." foremost because in such mental dis­ It was in Milan that Leonardo was ~ourses experience does not come in, able to develop to the full his me­ without which nothing reveals itself chanical bent in the devising and with certainty." (Paragone, a Com­ constructing 0f machine tools and parisoa of the Arts by Leonardo da civil engineering plant. His drawings Vinci, ed. Irma A. Richter, London, bear witness to his close attention to 1949, p. 23.) workshop practice of the day, to Leonardo at Florence, or indeed which he himself could contribute his The Living Leonardo 21 unexampled capae1t1es for drawing color, to render solidity and depth, and invention.* and the creation of the illusion of movement. Both required a deep BUT the scientist a~d artist wer.e knowledge of natural science. But always blended w1th the engi­ Leonardo could not turn to the na­ neer. Indeed we can see that he had tural scientists-they hardly existed­ conceived all his work as a great he had to make his science directly unity, comprised in what he called from observation and experiment. the Science of Painting set out in his The enormous range of his achieve­ one book, the Pa'f'agone. To him this ment here in optics, in mechanics, in science was necessarily all inclusive geology, natural history, anatomy and for: physiology is a proof of his altogether exceptional ability to see and set is the "If you despise painting, which drawings and notebooks sole imitator of all visible works of na­ down in his ture, you certainly will be despising a the most significant aspects of nature. subtle invention which brings philosophy It also bears evidence to a tireless in­ and subtle speculation to bear on the na­ dustry and firm purpose that belies land, plants ture of all forms-sea and reports of his contemporaries of and animals, grasses and flowers-which the are enveloped in shade and light. Truly his inability to achieve what he un­ painting is a science, the true-born child dertook. No one but himself under­ of nature. For painting is born of nature; stood what he was trying to do. to be more correct we should call it the But his scientific success is at least grandchild of , nature, since all visible things were brought forth by nature and as much a measure of the fact that these, her children, have given birth to he started clear of the encumbrance painting. Therefore we may justly speak of traditional beliefs; that his educa­ of it as the grandchild of nature and as tion was the materialist practice of related to God." (Paragone.) the workshop, not the idealist dispu­ His view of painting was absolutely tation of the schools. straightforward; it was to represent "They say knowledge born of experi­ nature, solid, living and moving, on a ence is mechanical, but that knowledge flat, colored, changeless surface. To born and consummated in the mind is him this was primarily a scientific scientific. . . . But to me it seems that all problem and he bent all his energies sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of experience, mother of all to solve it. His two greatest contribu­ certainty and are not tested by experience." tions to its solution were his use of (Paragone, p. 25.) light and shade as well as atmospheric J EONAROO'S materialism was * H is interest in these was more than ~ anything but static, indeed he academic. He hoped to make his fortune clearly the out of a semi-automatic needle-polishing was the first to express machine while at the other extreme his new concept of movement, of dynam­ gigantic double boom mechanical exca­ ics, that characterizes modern sci­ vator anticipated modern Soviet methods of mechanical excavation. ence in contrast to that of the Greeks. 22 Masses & Mainstream

Movement he loved and studied end­ Cesare Borgia, the "Prince" of Ma­ lessly-in water, with his practical chiavelli, in his criminal and futile preoccupation with canals and irri­ campaign in the Romagna. His hatred gation; in air, with the flight of birds of the brutalities of war deepened and his own attempt~ at mechanical with his experience of its reality. flight; in animals and human beings He left the service of Cesare be­ "laughing, weeping, fighting and fore his final collapse and returned to working." Florence, where his chief achievement He understood movement, not as was the preparation of a picture, an abstraction, but in terms of force never finished and now lost, "The acting on heavy matter. He partly Battle of Anghiari," in which he com­ grasped the concept of inertia, the pressed all his science of representing basis of the new physics of Galileo movement and emotion and all his and Newton, and related it to the hatred of the violence and horror of endless studies he made of guns, mor­ war. tars and missiles of all kinds. He lived But by now Leonardo was an age­ just at the time when the whole art ing man-he was beginning to be of war was ·being revolutionized by overshadowed by younger and more the first large-scale tise of field artil­ productive rivals such as Raphael and lery, itself made possible by improved Michelangelo. He retired from his techniques and the beginnings of native land and spent his last days concentrations of capital. as an honored pensioner of Fran cis I If war and its needs were to inspire -a living symbol of the Renaissance much of his work, it was also to de­ he was bringing to Franee. stroy it. The wealth of the Italian cities and their control by a parasitic EONARDO's life has impressed class that had forfeited the support of L succeeding generations by its con­ the·people who had created it, invited trast of great projects and unfinished foreign invasion. Milan was occupied performance. Some have said that he by the French. Leonardo's model for had allowed his science to interfere a great bronze horse was used as a with his art, not realizing how, to butt for archers. His only other posi­ him, art was a science. But although tive achievement, his fresco of the no human being in a short life could Last Supper, was left fading, unfin­ have ever achieved what he set out ished, on a damp monastery wall to to do, his later failure is as· much due be finally obliterated as the result of to the times in which he lived as was American bombing. his early success. From that time on he led an un­ The formative period of the Ren­ settled and happy life. He could still aissance had indeed come to an end produce masterpieces-the enigmatic in his lifetime. The modern world Mona Lisa belongs to this period. For was not to come straight out of a three years he was chief engineer to civilization devoted to knowledge and The Living Leonardo 23 beauty, but had to pass thr~ugh the could not follow exactly ·in his tracks, fires of war and the destructive politi­ they knew that there was a way to cal and religious crises of the Re­ knowledge through experience and formation and Counter-Reformation. so had the hope they needed in order The Italian Renaissance, built in the to find it for themselves. first burst of liberation of the bour­ Despite wars, despite the Counter­ geoisie, was on too narrow an eco­ Reformation, a school of Italian sci­ nomic base in a world still largely ence grew throughout all the 16th feudal. Its own inner contradictions century. Before it was damped by the were too ~uch for it-it could inject burning of Bruno and the condemna­ a leaven mto the rest of Europe, it tion of Galilee, it had sown the seed could not save itself. in the active commercial world of . M~ch .of Leonardo's work perished Northern Europe. Bacon and Des-. m hts hfetime-far more was lost cartes, Harvey, Huyghens and New­ after his death. As a painter his school ton, with their new instruments and carried on his manner but without their new organization-the scientific his inspiration or the science which societies-were to complete a scien­ was at the root of it. Nevertheless, tific revolution which Leonardo had all painting since his time bears his foreshadowed. mark. He had solved the basic prob­ lem of representation of space in BUT this is not all. Though Leon- pictures. It was for others to find out ardo's work, blended with that of how to use the solution. other men of his time great and In science there was no such means the small, has passed into the general tra­ of transmission. Leonardo buried all dition of Art and Science-it still his conclusions in no kind of order remains as fresh as when it was first in his voluminous notebooks and very made. The quality of greatness in few were ever able to see them or human achievement is that of per­ make use of them. But less was lost ennial life. A drawing of Leonardo than might appear. The work which can transmit to us directly, new de­ Leonardo set out to do in science lights, new understanding, new pur­ would in any case have had to be done poses. Through it we can know that again by many men with patience and the men who made these things are measurement and calculation. He had not dead, but live in our own work. arrived at, or near, many important And especially does that message generalizations by observation and ring in our time, also one of struggle intuition-the solutions needed to be and achievement. checked and proved before they could be use~. We need Leonardo to show us What really mattered was that he what a man can do and how he can had blazed the way. He had shown draw his strength from the living and what could be done. Even if others working tradition of the people. CARMEN CIT A

By JESUS COLON

My WIFE and I still remember spend a second night under the same · the day when Carmencita, my roof with you." mother-in-law, came from Puerto "Why?" Rico to live with us. "Because . . . you are a pagan, a She examined our apartment mi­ . . . materialist . . . and atheist . . . nutely but unobtrusively. The kitchen a-" and two bedrooms. The parlor with "How does she know all this," I in­ rows of books more or less neatly terrupted, "when we have hardly tucked in homemade bookcases. And spoken to each other?" the books. She read every title, her "She said she knows what you are myopic eyes very close to the bind­ because of your books, because there ings. is not an image of a saint in our After she finished her thorough whole apartment. My mother said examination, she went to one of the that a man with books like that front windows facing the street and should be named diablo instead of looked pensively down at the people Jesus like they named you." passing on the sidewalk a few stories As my wife went on with what her below. Carmencita stayed in that mother had said, I realized I had a position for a long time. Then she problem on my hands seriously af­ called my wife to the room we had fecting the future of our family. prepared for her and closed the door. What should I do? When my wife came out of their Carmencita, or Tita, as we all knew long conference, I was already in her since our early days in Puerto bed. She seemed preoccupied and Rico, was the living austere portrait nervous. . of a medieval Catholic woman. Faith "What is the matter?" I asked as was her only guide. I remember how she dropped the comb with which I used to tremble from head to foot she was fixing her hair. when she caught me staring at her "Carmencita," she said, "will not daughter, my childhood sweetheart, 24 Carmencita 25

who would look out at me from the Ten store and bought a framed pic­ small window of their home in ture of some fruits painted in very Puerto Rico. flashy colors. I threw the fruits away Carmencita was erect then, over and placed the image of Jesus in the fifty and of a firm and stub­ frame. Now it looked as if I had born character. Her profile had the bought both image and frame in the lines of Dante's familiar marble bust, same store. and she looked as if she wanted to send all infidels and such to the re­ J CAME home. My wife and motest depths of his Inferno. mother-in-law were in the kitchen. Carmencita's eyes were com­ I went in looking for the one-eared manding. Very seldom did she let her hammer that we had. I took a piece long, pale face reveal the slightest of thin wire, two small nails and a emotion. Her slim figure moved with big one and went to Carmencita's the sure steps of those who firmly room. At first Carmencita and her believe they are going straight to daughter heard my puttering and heaven when they die. But under that hammering without moving from the rigid composure and fierce, almost kitchen, but after a little while defiant saintliness, there was a world curiosity grew stronger than reserve. of sentiment and love for the down­ They came to the door just as I was trodden that took me years to dis­ hanging the picture on the wall at cover and really appreciate before the head of her bed. · she died. "How do you like it?" I asked The immediate problem was to blandly. convince Carmencita that people A faint glow of satisfaction ap­ owning and reading such "horrible" peared on Carmencita's face. Almost books as the ones she saw in the imperceptibly, her head nodded in parlor were not such bad people after approbation. ali-in fact that she could live under After supper we three took a walk the same roof with her daughter and around the neighborhood. I took myself for years and years. pains in pointing out to her places Early next morning I went to a and persons of interest, the customs Catholic religious store. I asked to and nationalities of the people in see an image of Jesus. I picked one New York. that seemed to be very human. From Came Sunday. I took Carmencita there I went to the nearest Five-and- to St. Patrick's Cathedral. We en­ tered through the right. I started ask­ JESUS COLON is a Puerto Rican writer ing her questions. "Who is that and organizer who has been active among saint?" And she started explaining his people in New York City for over 30 the causes and circumstances of his years. He is a teacher at the Jefferson or her sainthood. I noticed that her School of Social Science. brief biographical sketches coincided 26 Masses & Mainstream closely with the printed notes framed the hands of both men. When the in front of every saint. We went Rockefellers, the owners of Radio from right to left of the church with City, took notice of what Diego her lecturing a few minutes at every Rivera was painting, they paid him pedestal. I was patient and respect­ up in full and discharged him, re­ fully attentive to every word. As we moving what he had already done. went out, we were greeted by the "And who was this man Lenin that myriad peaceful doves on the wide the painter selected to be in the cen­ steps of the cathedral and the hustle ter?" and bustle of the Fifth Avenue traffic I explained as simply as I could. a few feet ahead. We kept on walking through the The great Prometheus in the main building until we reached the water fountain was looking calmly SiXth A venue entrance. at the semicircle of umbrella tables at the Radio City Cafe. IN THO~E .unemployment days of "If a couple of Negroes dared to · the Th1rt1es only an alley sepa­ sit at one of those tables, they would rated the Horne Relief office on not be served," I remarked, pointing Adams Street in Brooklyn and our at the cafe in the round circle below. apartment. "Why?" questioned Carmencita. The Workers Alliance used to or­ "Because Negroes are looked upon ganize demonstrations and sit-down as inferiors in this country and are strikes inside the relief offices. Some­ not given the same rights as the times their members would stay in­ whites. And that goes for us Puerto side the relief offices all night, refus­ Ricans, too." ing to be ousted from the premises. "Strange," she said, "I thought Joe Hecht, one of the leaders of this was a very democratic country." the Workers Alliance in Brooklyn, I did not press the point. I rather used to come to our apartment to let it rest and watched for any effect prepare coffee and sandwiches for my words might have on Carmencita. the sit-down strikers and talk of After I pointed out casually that the their rights to relief and better con­ Puerto Rican flag was not among the ditions generally. Joe knew a little many adorning the Radio City Plaza, Spanish and he and · my mother-in­ we went into the main building to law grew to know each other pretty see the frescoes. well. I explained to Carrnencita that Carmencita could not conceive how originally a Mexican painter named a "judio" could spend so much time Diego Rivera was contracted to do and risk jail and perhaps a beating the frescoes. He started by painting trying to get help for the Puerto a Negro and a white worker clasping Rican people. Joe and I sat down hands and the figure of Lenin in the with Carrnencita to explain that middle, with Lenin's hands touching there was something greater than Carmencita 27 nationality and so-called "race"­ mother-in-law that the police were and that is the conscious feeling and only the instruments through which understanding of belonging to a class the capitalists operated to crush the that unites us regardless of color and rising consciousness and demands of nationality, without belittling the the workers. contributions and positive qualities Carmencita had a great admiration of our particular nationality. Joe for Joe. She admired him more when Hecht, the Jewish-American, and the he joined the Abraham Lincoln Puerto Rican looking for help at Brigade and left for Spain to fight the relief offices, belonged to the against fascism. same class: the working class. I will say that Joe's leaving for Another thing that my mother-in­ Spain had something to do with in­ low could not understand was how ducing Carmencita to take part in it was that a very intelligent and the pilgrimage to Washington in capable fellow like Joe could be which over a thousand women from working for eight dollars a week­ New York alone went to protest the and not always that-for the Work­ arms embargo against Republican ers Alliance, when he .could very Spain. She joined in picketing the easily be earning :five times as much White House together with hundreds working in his own trade. Joe ex­ of other women. When she came plained this to her in his modest back, she gave us a comprehensive way. I helped him with his Spanish report in Spanish of everything she whenever he could not find the right saw and heard. She added a very words. sound criticism of a few errors made After Joe finished one of his ex­ on this historical trip to Washing­ planations, Carmencita used to sit ton. by the window and reflect for a long It was a happy · day in our apart­ time while the voices from the picket ment when Joe Hecht returned from line in front of the relief offices con­ Spain, bald and thin, but with a tinued chanting the demands of the fluent mastery of Spanish and, of day. course, a greater clarity and under­ For two or three weeks, Joe did standing of the whole fight against not come to chat with us. We learned war and fascism. Carmencita received that he had received a terrible beat­ him as she would her own son. ing on a picket line. That upset Car­ It was a day of great sorrow in mencita and all of us very much. our home, years later, when we got Then one day Joe came with his head the news that Joe Hecht was killed all bandaged. When Carmencita saw attacking a Nazi machine-gun nest his condition she let go with her scant during the Second World War. arsenal of nasty words in Spanish against the police who had beaten WE HAVE a custom in regard to Joe so badly. Joe explained to my . the dead. For nine consecutive 28 Ma&&es & Mainstream days after the funeral, prayers or revered customs and traditions of "rosarios" are conducted in the home the people. of the deceased's family. The rosario Carmencita received further proof is a long and repetitious prayer full that our criticism of present-day of Latin passages and needing a con­ society was correct when she went ductor who has, through long ex­ with her honor diplomas, fraternal perience, mastered the consecutive degrees and credentials to a world­ order of the rosary and the Latin wide fraternal organization to which interpolations. Most of the . rosario she had dedicated many years of her conductors do not know what they life in Puerto Rico. First she was in­ are saying in Latin. · formed that this organization, preach­ In Puerto Rico it would be highly ing equality and brotherhood all over insulting to one of these prayer lead­ the world, was divided between ers if a person even insinuated that whites and Negroes here in the land she or he should accept payment for of democracy. Therefore she, being a the services. These last rites are sup­ Puerto Rican, would have to belong posed to be a strictly pious act, free to some special lodge. from any taint of money or presents. With all her written letters and Carmencita was an expert on ro­ honors attesting to her many years sario conducting. And she always of sacrifice and hard work for the paid her own carfare and other ex­ chapters of this fraternal order in penses to the place where the rosari6 Puerto Rico, the powers that be had was going to be held. divided her concept of the brother­ Thus, when she was invited to con­ hood of man into white and black. duct some rosario and she was in­ She was treated more or less like a formed that this whole tradition had naive old woman who had insane been commercialized here (the prayer notions of equality and who might leader being brought back and forth eventually become another burden in a· taxi or automobile and dined to the organization because of her and wined before or after each night age. of praying, besides receiving payment Around this time she really started or a small "gratification"), she drop­ doubting the sanctity and disinte­ ped it all and refused to conduct any restedness of the organized church. more rosarios as long as she remained She went to one of the best known in the United States. She also ob­ Spanish Catholic churches and found . jected very strenuously to the fiesta out that you have to practically pay character that has developed in New as you go in, just like in a movie York around this religious ceremony. house. This to be followed by money We pointed out to her the influence collections for various purposes, of the money-concept of life and cul­ sometimes two or three times during ture that those who control every­ the religious services. thing have forced on even the most She also found out that it was Carmencita 29 customary to hold bingo games in drink, smoke or swear" could stay the church basements, and that in away from church. She even began some of the "capillas" (chapels) to stay home herself, giving the ex­ without ample basement facilides, cuse· of her rheumatism. the priest just covered the saints and Finally she developed the theory held dances at which "refreshments" dlat since "Dios esta en todas partes" were sold. They even had the addi­ (God is everywhere), she might as tiona! -convenience that these dances well remain at home or go and visit were never bothered by the police on a sick friend or do some other superficial excuses, as were the socials humanitarian act. held to raise the rent in the small Though she remained deeply te­ halls of the Workers Alliance. Danc­ ligious, or more exactly, religiously ing in the church was unbelievable dedicated to do good and to "ayudar to her until she saw it with her own al caido" (help the downtrodden), eyes. she rarely went to church in her later years. We could say that for the HER thinking on this subject and last years of her life she translated the subtle changes that were her Catholic tenets into terms of taking place in her could be seen in practice and tangible love and help her treatment of Father Pedro, a tall for her fellow human beings. young priest who used to come to visit her when she was sick or when THE book The Soviet Power, by she took one of her long "vacations" the Dean of Canterbury, was from going to church on Sundays. published in English. We thought it During the first year with ui, Car­ would be a great idea to issue several mencita got up as soon as the Father thousanra copies in Spanish. I was came in and she would not sit until given the honor of publishing it in he did, a mark of high deference and our language. This required long respect among the Puerto Ricans. hours of work, far into the night. But after she had observed the bingo Many a night Carmencita double­ games and dances in the church, she checked the galleys for me, while I remained seated when the priest came read the English original, before to visit her. She told the young priest turning it over to the :final proof­ in the most forceful and direct man­ reader. ner what she thought of these goings­ To Carmencita the reading of The on. Soviet Power in galley form was a When she first came from Puerto revelation. I remember how she used Rico she would look cross at me to read and reread the galleys of the when Slllnday came and I chose to chapter on Soviet women. At first remain at home reading the papers. she used to tell me she was rereadin~ Later she did not wonder any more that chapter because she did not ;want how a fellow like me "who did not any misspelled words to appear ia .30 : Masses & Mainstream the final copy. But in one of her un­ patient about the news of the day. I .guarded moments, after once again noticed that she kept on praying late reading the chapter on women, she into the night when the Nazis placed the galleys face down on the reached the outskirts of Moscow. ,table and exlaimed, almost inaudibly, Sometimes when I came home from "UnbeJievable!" meetings and assignments in the It was a great emotional experi­ early hours of the morning, I would .ence for all of us when the first half­ find her still praying. I noticed that -dozen copies were delivered from the every once in a while she would push binders. Carmencita pressed a book a pin into a small cushion while she to her breast and smiled. A long, continued praying. ~ignificant smile. "What do you do that for?" I once Then I knew that at last we were inquired mildly . .beginning to understand each other. We never failed to tell her of the "I do not want to lose count," she new editions of "our" book that were replied. "This prayer, in order to be :being issued all over Latin America. effective, has got to be said eleven The Soviet Power was being serial­ thousand times. It is called 'La ized in dailies, weeklies, and printed Oracion de las Once Mil Virgenes' by the thousands in inexpensive edi­ (The Prayer of the Eleven Thousand ,tions throughout the Spanish-speak­ Virgins). ing world. We told Carmencita of "I started it a few months ago," .these and all other editions in almost she went on, "and I hope to finish .every known language. She rejoiced it''during the next few days." in her nice quiet way. When we "And what are you asking now talked of more thousands of copies with this long prayer?" I said. being printed in far off corners of the earth, she used to say as if she "I am asking the Lord that nothing were meditating aloud, "It seems the will ever happen to Stalin," she world is moving." answered simply and modestly. Carmencita, I reflected, has travel­ AS THE Hitler hordes marched led quite a bit since that day she deeper and deeper inside the So­ came into our home from Puerto -viet Union, Carmencita got very im- Rico. BighT FaCe

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose "In a casual description of the Board of Estimate, City Council President Rudolph Halley said: 'We sit there like a bunch of boobs trying to pass on bills because the proper facts are not presented.' Mr. Halley said that when a decision on a cloudy issue had to be made a coin was sometimes tossed. Often, he added, he had leaned over to the Mayor at a Board session, handed him a coin and said, 'Here, toss mine.' "-Report of a speech at Freedom House m New York. fln·Ameriean Word Dept. ncommunists have so perverted such fine words as rdemocracy,' rpeace/ rfreedom,' ryouth,' and rmother' that any organization using these words in a slogan today should be suspect until you know who is behind it.''-From a booklet issued by the Western Electric Corporation.

Happy Holiday "Leopoldville, seat of this Belgian colony, is alive and happy.... Here, in what is frankly a colonial world, there is no trace of the sharpest of all frictions between black and white-the friction of political rights-because here nobody votes, and that goes for whites, and everyone simply looks to Brussels for political guidance. A permanent holiday from the highest responsibilities.... "­ William S. W bite reporting from the Belgian Congo to the New York Times.

The Meanies! "PARIS--Eric ] ohnston, spokesman for the Htollywood movie in­ dustry, said today that 'France is the most restricted film market outside of the Iron Curtain countries.' In addition to limiting Amer­ ican movies to 121 a year, Mr. johnston said, France requires every movie house to show French films five weeks out of every thirteen." -An Associated Press dispatch.

We invite readers' contributions to this department. Original clippings are requested. 31 The Relation of ART to REALITY

By G. NEDOSHIVIN

JF THE basic problem which di- duce objects observed in real life. vides philosophers into two camps The entire history of the multiform is the problem of the relation of world of art, from century to century, thought to being, the basic problem gives us a picture of· how objective of esthetics as a science may be de­ reality has been reflected in the mind fined as the relation of art to reality. of man and then recorded and fixed The solution of all other problems in artistic images. True, this reflec­ of esthetics depends in the last analy­ tion did not always, by any means, sis upon the manner in which this approximate reality as closely as it problem is resolved. might. Medieval art created symboli­ Art is a form of social conscious­ cal pictures far removed from the ness. J. V. Stalin has said, ". . . the concrete, real appearance of things · material life of society is an objective and phenomena. And yet even they reality existing independently of the represent a certain idea of the world, will pf men, while the spiritual life although in a fantastic form. of society is a reflection of this ob­ El Greco's mystical visionary art jective reality, a reflection of being." shows us phantom-like beings exist­ (History of the Communist Party of ing somewhere in a . kind of de­ the Soviet Union.) Thus art is one tached, imaginary void. But concrete of the forms through which the hu­ analysis discovers to us the earthly man mind reflects social being. foundations of even this art, which At all stages of the development stands so far from realism. This dis­ of mankind, from the beginnings of torted ". . . consciousness must be the primitive communal system to explained ... from the contradictions our own time, art has always been one of material life. . .." 1 of the forms in which man has ap- · Basic to art as one of the forms of prehended reality, or, to use Marx's human consciousness is its ability to expression, the artistic-practical mode reflect reality objectively. "For the of apprehending the world. Even the materialist," says Lenin, "sensations primitive cliff drawings of animals 1 Marx-A Contribution to the Critique represent early man's attempts to ex­ of Political Economy, Selected Works, press his idea of the world, to repro- Vol. I. 32 The Relation. of Art to Reality 33 are images of the . ultimate and sole Thus, artistic consciousness is a re­ objective reality."2 Marxism-Leninism flection of reality, and a reflection teaches us that objective reality is which more or less objectively repro­ knowable, that the mind of man re­ duces the essence, content, qualities flects, or, to be more exact, can re­ and characteristics of reality. flect with greater or lesser profundity These general premises must be matter existing outside and indepen­ taken as our point of departure in dently of us. analyzing the form of human con­ "Human thought, then, by its na­ sciousness with which we are here ture is capable of giving, and does concerned, that is, the artistic form. give, absolute truth, which is com­ pounded of a sum total of relative OUR efforts to define the essence truths," is how Lenin stressed this JN may proceed from basic principle of dialectical-material­ of art,· we istic epistemology. This general prin­ Belinsky's formula, first welcomed to ciple is also applicable to art, which, Marxist literature by Plekhanov, that like science, is a reflection of reality, "art is . . . thinking in images/' Ac­ since reality fundamentally contains cordingly, while art and science are nothing that does not allow of its be­ equally forms of apprehending real- ing reflected. : ity, art apprehends ,reality in images, Man's consciousness is empty and whereas science apprehends it in devoid of content until with the help conceptions. of experience it comes into contact Let us examine this question in with the real world. Art loses all . greater detail. meaning as soon as it divorces itself Science, starting from observations from reality. Modern formalism clear­ of individual facts of life, generalizes ly bears this out. Abstract cubistic these individual observations, arrives combinations of forms do not con­ at general conceptions, discovers the tain a grain of the real content of laws governing one or another group objective reality; this makes them of phenomena. Concrete descriptive absolutely empty, meaningless, devoid material is of primary importance to of the least objective value. all the sciences, forming the necessary In other words, reality existing out­ basis for generalization, the basis side of us is primary and its artisti~ without which a scientific conception reflection is secondary. "The existence is an empty abstraction. of matter does not depend on sensa­ Description of concrete facts alone tion. Matter is primary. Sensa- . is not the final goal of science, how­ tion, thought, consciousness are the ever. That goal is to elucidate the supreme product of matter organized laws governing given phenomena. in a particular way," wrote Lenin. G. NEDOSHIVIN is a distinguished So­ 2 Lenin-Materialism and Empirio-Criti­ cism. viet critic. 34 Masses & Mainstream

Knowledge of these laws then serves scientist, on the other hand, typical man as the basis of his practical ac­ phenomena are the material on the tivity. For example, knowledge of the basis of which he discovers the laws laws of heredity and variability dis­ governing phenomena. The artist, covered and investigated by Michurin thus, . does not seek to discover the and Lysenko arms agricultural work­ laws of phenomena; nevertheless, he ers for their practical work of re­ depicts the phenomena which are fashioning nature. essential from his point of view, and Not so in the case of art. In art, the which do illustrate general laws. results of cognition always express Of course, the dividing line be­ themselves not in the abstract form tween scientific and artistic thinking of conceptions, but in the concrete, is not absolute. In War and Peace, perceptual form of an image. What­ Leo Tolstoy devotes many pages to ever generalization a work of art the presentation of his philosophico­ may contain, this is always embodied historical views, which, strictly speak­ in it as a single, concrete fact, phe­ ing, belong to the domain of science nomenon or person. In literature, and philosophy, for all that they have concrete people act and definite been woven into the fabric of a bril­ events take place. liant work of art. The famous begin­ Eugene Onegin is a typical char­ ning of The Communist Manifesto acter for landlord Russia; he is the presents a powerful and vivid artistic fruit of Pushkin's profound generali­ image. The scientist often resorts to zation of the real facts of life. But artistic imagery as his method of ex­ he is also a particular person with pression; no less often does the artist his own personal fate, who lives indulge in purely scientific generali­ through events that, while--again­ zations. being typical, represent the facts of Art, like science, apprehends the the life of ·Eugene Onegin alone. world, generalizes particular observa­ Repin's Volga Boatmen is also the tions, seeks the typical, the law gov­ fruit of a profound knowledge of erned. But general conceptions, ideas, life, and entails serious generaliza­ are embodied in art in a concretely tions. But in the painting we are sensory and directly individual form. shown concrete people: Kanin, Larka Whereas in science the particular is and the retired soldier moving along presented in the form of the general, a definite part of the Volga shore at in art the general appears in the form a definite time of a hot summer day. of the particular, of that which can Therefore, the generalization of be perceived by the sense organs, as reality takes different forms in sci­ a definite and inimitable phenome­ ence and in art. The artist does not non. formulate laws, although he must be able to discern typical events and THE point of departure for all cog­ characters of the real world. For the nition of reality is sensation. The Relation of Art to Reality 35

"Matter," writes Lenin, "is · a philo­ vivid perception of the sensuous sophical category designating the ob­ beauty of the world. The power of jective reality which is given to man Velasquez and Repin derives in great by his sensations, and which is cop­ measure from the fact that these bril­ ied, photographed and reflected by liant masters were able to convey the our sensations, while existing inde­ remarkable impact of their sensory pendently of them." (Materialism perception of reality. and Empirio-Criticism.) Thus sen­ Nevertheless, the sensuous aspect sation is the source of all of man's of art is only a necessary condition knowledge of the world. It is also the for the existence of the work of art; source of our artistic cognition of it is not the essence of that work of the world. · art. When the impressionists, for ex­ It would be a mistake, however, to ample Degas, made their sensuous limit the essence of art to merely per­ perception of the world a goal in it­ ceptual-to visual or auditory-sen­ self, they gave sensation as such a sation, to the primary, sensory per­ crude, animal character. Race horses ception of the world. The claim that and ballerinas served as equal sources the difference between art and science of esthetic emotion. For sensuousness is that the content of the former is to play the significant role it should sensation or the world of feeling, and in art, it must rise above such primi­ of the latter-ideas or the world of tive sensuousness. Sensuousness must reason, is an utterly erroneous one. become, as Marx said, human sensu­ Reactionary formalistic criticism ousness. has repeatedly revived the thesis that Although cognition begins with thought is not essential to art, that contemplation of the world, it does art does not need idea content. But not stop there, for, in itself, this is the purpose of this teaching of the not as yet the objective reflection of purely sensuous nature of art is quite reality. Nor should the transition obvious: it is meant to deprive artis­ from sensation to "abstract thought" tic creation of cognitive value and be understood as a departure from the confine it to the elementary sensory rich world of living phenomena to perceptions. the sphere of dry and empty abstrac­ Formalistic art has in practice tions. It is a transition from the taken that very road. Even impres­ single to the particular and from the sionism tried to negate the signifi­ particular to the general. cance of profound ideas in art and reduce it to the mere fixation or reg­ THIS brings us to the elucidation istration of sensations. of one of the central conceptions Unquestionably, sensation is highly of the theory of the essence of art­ important, both in the creative proc­ the conception of the image. ess and in the work of art itself. To restate in other words the defi­ Every great work of art gives us a nition· given above, it may ·be said 36 Masses & Mainstream that art embodies the results of our everything fortuitous and untypical cognition of reality, not in the form is swept aside, while everything char­ of concepts, as does science, but in acteristic and ·typical is accentuated. the form of images, of the concrete, In Yoganson's painting Interroga­ sensuous, inimitably individual re­ tion of the Communists every detail production of reality. is consistently individual, and yet The image is not simply the fixa­ each character in the canvas is more tion of the sensuous perception of a than a particular person; he is the given phenomenon or object. When personification of the characteristic the artist observes a certain phenome­ traits of a great many people. In fact, non, say, a knife lying on a table, a powerful and profound generalization "picture" of the knife is fixed on in a work of art is far from being the retina of his eye. This does not antagonistic to individualization; on mean that even the most elementary the contrary, it reaches its greatest artistic task can be reduced to a re­ height only when the individual is production of that which is perceived made as vivid and convincing as as a result of external stimulation of possible. the retina. In art, the general becomes truly .In preparing to paint a still-life, the convincing when it is invested with artist places a number of objects be­ the p>roperties of the characteristic. A fore himself, and it may seem that definite, typical mood is conveyed his purpose is to reproduce on canvas through portrayal of the emotional only that which his retina fixates. But state of the given person. such, of course, is not the case. The Thus, the artistic image is to a Dutch painters of still-lifes, who en­ certain extent an abstraction, divested deavored to portray the appearance of of some of the untypical and fortui­ objects with the maximum precision, tous details which the artist finds in at the same time presented in their reality. The artist's idea as such is paintings complete "philosophical" identical with the idea of the scien­ speculations concerning those objects. tist, but receives different final ex­ For that end to be attained, the artist pression, as it is now my purpose to must apprehend what he sees. show. The salient feature of cognition The idea-the result of generaliza­ in the form of images lies in that the tion-forms the basic content of art. resuhs of intricate generalization~ Truly objective kaowledge of reality are embodied in what appear as par­ makes for clarity and depth of the ticular objects or phenomena. But idea. Absente of a clear goal is al­ in the artistic image, provided it is ways the result of superficial artistic the result of profound objective cognition of the world. The idea of know.ledge, in other words, provided the work is the artist's understanding it corresponds to the true content of the essence and meaning of things. of the ob;ect being apprehended, The demand for idea content that we The Relation of Art to Reality 37 make of our artists is therefore, in were opposed to tendentiousness in this light, a demand for the fullest art in general. Such a view would be and profoundest comprehension of most untrue. Marx, and especially the essence of the real world. Engels, on many occasions empha­ In art the idea is expressed in the sized the militant tendentiousness of form of images. The idea of the one artist or another. As if he had a courage and staunchness of the revo­ premonition that he might be mis­ lutionary is given perceptual embodi­ interpreted, Engels wrote: ment by Repin in his picture of the dialogue between the condemned "I am not at all an opponent of ten­ dentious poetry as such. The father of fighter against autocracy and the tragedy, Aeschylus, and the father of priest who has come to receive his comedy, Aristophanes, were both decidedly last confession (Repin's Rejection of tendentious poets, just as were Dante and the Confessional). The ideas of the Cervantes; and the main merit of Schiller's Craft and Love is that it is the first Ger­ alliance of workers and peasants in man political propaganda drama. The the U.S.S.R. and the Soviet people's modern Russians and Norwegians, who are progress to a new future have been writing splendid novels, are all tenden­ embodied by sculptor Mukhina in the tious." image of The Worker and the Collec­ Marx admired the indomitable mili­ tive-Farm Woman, striding forward tant spirit of Dante's poetry. It goes in powerful and surging rhythm. without saying that the founders of Marxism could not have regarded an WORD about the problem of so­ artist's avowed struggle for his ideals A called "tendentiousness" is in as a fault. To think otherwise is to place here. As you know, Engels re­ understand nothing of the revolution­ peatedly criticized "tendentiousness" ary import of their teaching. Propa­ in art, particularly as it manifested it­ ganda of definite ideas and their self in the socialist novel of the end courageous defense were always con­ of the century. He wrot~ Margaret sidered by Marx and Engels, as later Harkness: by Lenin an~ Stalin to be the highest "I am far from finding fault with your merit of a work of art. not having written a purely socialist story, In their famous dispute with Las­ a Tendenzroman, as we Germans call it, to glorify the social and political views of salle, Marx and Engels, contrasting the author. That is not at all what I mean. Shakespeare to Schiller, pronounced The more the author's views are concealed, themselves in favor of the former. 3 the better for the work of art." Marx wrote Lassalle that he consid­ However, it does not follow from ered the latter's rrschille-rism .. making this that the founders of Marxism individuals the mere mouthpieces of the spirit of the times" his main fault. 3 See Marx and Engels, Literature and Engels voiced the demand that ". . . Arl (Selections from their Writings) , In­ ternational Publishers, N. Y. the realistic should not be overlooked 38 Masses & Mainstream because of the intellectual elements, poses discovery of the laws of de­ Shakespeare should not be forgotten velopment and consequently includes for Schiller.... " In other words, Marx the element of judgment concerning and Engels held that the idea does not the object depicted . . . is to forget always receive an adequate image that the idea is the kernel of every form of expression in the works of true work of art. Schiller. Engels protested specifically against While criticizing "tendentiousness," those instances in which the image is Marx and Engels by no means identi­ not the organic expression of the fied it with partisanship, and it need idea, that is, when it is not in itself hardly be emphasized that they were "tendentious" and the idea is me­ not advocating non-partisan objec­ chaniCally "added on" in the form of tivism in art. When Marx objected an outer tendency. to the abstractness of Lassalle's cha-r­ acters, he wrote that ". . . I do not coNTINUING our analysis of the find any characteristic traits in your structure of the artistic image as characters"; Engels reproached Minna one of the forms through which real­ Kautsky because ". . . in Arnold ity is reflected, we come now to an­ (one of the characters of her novel­ other important aspect of the ques­ G. N.) personality is entirely dis­ tion. solved in principle." Creating his artistic image on the Marx and Engels thus maintained basis of his observations and study of that in art the general and essential the material, which he has pondered must take the form of the particular. and re-lived, the artist forms in his They were opposed to the idea, the mind what Lenin called the "reflec­ "tendency," existing divorced from tion" or "copy" of reality. The image the image, that is, as an addendum to form of cognition of the world d~m­ it. onstrates to us with great clarity, and One can put this even· more defi­ what might be called elementary sen­ nitely-they were therefore defending sibility, the approximate correspond­ the tendentiousness of the artistic im­ ence which exists between the par­ age itself, demanding that it contain ticular thing as the object of cogni­ a clear-cut and lucidly expressed idea. tion and its subjective reflection in It follows from this that it is wrong the human mind. to look upon the artistic image simply But so long as the image exists as a mirror of reality, or, to be more only in the artist's mind, it is not exact, simply as its passive reflection. complete as yet and art has not been To reduce the artistic image to mere created. Art begins when the work reproduction of that which is, is to of art is created. The artistic image forget the most important feature of must be given substantial embodi­ the image form of cognition of the ment. It must be objectivized. Varied world-generalization, which presup- as the forms of such embodiment may The Relation of Art to Reality 39 be, they have this in common, that a specific, concretely sensuous-in in each case the image which has other words-image form. He must subjectively matured in the artist's create the illusion of life, of reality, mind is objectivized in the material and present it as our sense organs form of an actual work of art. perceive it. Of course, the work of art does not In this regard there are definite · in any degree cease thereby to be a bounds between the different forms phenomenon of the mind, of ide­ of art. It is not absolutely necessary ology; but it is easy to see that in for the novelist dealing with a definite order to make his image compre­ event to know how the people who hensible to other people, the artist participated in it were dressed, yet must create a work of art. this is absolutely necessary to the The creation of the work of art­ painter; in most cases it is not im­ the process of giving "embodiment" portant for the sculptor to know the to the subjective image-is not un­ color of his subject's necktie, or his concerned with the content of that manner of speaking. image. The latter takes its final form These bounds are not absolute, and only in the course of the creative in most cases they can be crossed, but process. One can hardly imagine a in art it is always necessary to take painter first conceiving and com­ into consideration, to recreate, to re­ pletely experiencing his work in his produce a host of circumstances which mind alone, and only then proceeding the scientist can easily ignore. In­ to paint his picture. The idea, the asmuch as the image realized in a image most often receives its final work of art reproduces not the origi­ shape in the actual process of work. nal sensation (which registers every­ Individual images may change, ac­ thing that presents itself to the senses quiring a more vivid character; the more or less· equally without distin­ entire composition of the work may guishing between the essential and be altered. The objectivization of the the fortuitous) , the artist has to create image, its transformation into a work for his generalization the likeness of of art, is a tremendous creative proc­ the individual in all its palpable and ess during which the subjective idea living truth. receives its final realization. The In the novel, an entire system of painter thinks with his brush in hand, events is built up from the fates of the sculptor as he molds the clay or many people, each of whom has a wax, the poet as he creates his rhyth­ definite character, recreated by the mic lines. intelligence, imagination and feelings \ of the artist, since in most cases these E ARE now approaching the characters never had actual existence. W very core of our problem. Even in his time Aristotle saw the Every artist seeks to reproduce the difference between science and art in results of his cognidon of reality in the fact that the former speaks of AUGUST BONDI, JEWISH ABOLITIONIST, WELCOMES FUGITIVE SLAVES: by Stanley Levine The Relation of Art to Reality 41 that which is, while the latter deals an imaginary way; he presents a re­ with what might have been in all flection of the real world in concep­ probability and likelihood. tions. The world created by the artist Actually, the historian who does will, of course, also be a reflection not know what Kutuzov was think­ of reality, but it must take the form ing about on the day of the battle of of a concretely existing world of peo­ Borodino either remains silent on that ple, phenomena and events. score or puts forward what he con­ As it is one of the forms by which siders a likely hypothesis. Ignorance we come to know reality, the work of some individual fact is not an of art acts directly on reality through obstacle to his process of generali­ the minds of the people who par­ zation. The artist cannot follow his take of art. example. He is obliged to create what is lacking in his factual knowledge, T IHUS we have come to the second but in such a way, naturally, that it important aspect of the essence corresponds to "the probability and of art, which we may call the prob­ likelihood." That is exactly what Leo lem of the idea-content of art. Tolstoy did in his War and Peace. This problem is the basic, cardinal When the scientist reaches the re­ problem of Soviet esthetics. Socialist sults of his cognition, he deals with idea-content is the life-giving founda­ general premises, deductions, concep­ tion of our art. The forcefulness and tions which are not given him significance of every major work of through the senses in real life. The Soviet artistic culture is measured by investigator may support a definite the degree to which it is permeated psychological law with a number of with the ideas of Communism, the examples (taken directly from real­ ideas of the Bolshevik Party. The ity), but this law itself will be ex­ more deeply and richly it gives ex­ pressed in general terms. The artist pression to its idea content, the more depicts this same psychological l~w significant it is. in the concrete image of a man acting The great Lenin was the author of in accordance with it. the principie that art must be pard­ The scientist registers what exists san; this was one of the elements of in reality and draws his conclusions his theory of the partisanship of ide­ from that; the artist must impart ology generally in antagonistic class life to his characters. Paraphrasing societies. Mercilessly exposing reac­ Heine, one might say that the scien­ tionaries of all hues and shades, Lenin tist extracts its spirit from the body showed that their assertions that art of a phenomenon, whereas the artist is independent of life screened their has to endow this spirit with a body. defense of the interests of the ex­ He has, however illusorily, to "create" ploiting classes. Lenin developed this his hero; he is the maker. The scien­ brilliant principle of the partisanship tist does not create his world, even in of art in struggle against the th_eory 42 Masses & Mainstream of "art for art's sake," against all social struggle, of the class struggle. spokesmen of reaction. Therefore, it is always a direct or in­ At the height of the revolution of direct, conscious or unconscious ex­ 1905, Lenin wrote his famous article pression of the practical interests of Party Organization and Party Litera­ definite social groups. In other words, ture, in which he comprehensively art always expresses in its images the set forth the principle of the Party ideas, aspirations, thoughts and feel­ spirit of art. Counterposing the false ings of one class or another, of one "freedom" of bourgeois art to the social group or another. tasks of the art which links its des­ Does this premise contradict the tinies with the emancipation move­ thesis presented above that art is the ment of the working class, he said in reflection of reality, that it is a form this article: of cognition of the world? Of course not. "In contrast to bourgeois customs, in "The superstructure," Stalin teaches contrast to the bourgeois privately-owned us, "is a product of the foundation, and commercialized press, in contrast to bourgeois literary careerism and individu­ but this does not mean that it merely alism, 'aristocratic anarchism' and rapacity reflects the foundation, that it is pas­ -the Socialist proletariat must advance sive, neutral, indifferent to the fate the principle of Party literatMe, must de­ of its foundation, to the fate of classes, velop this principle and put it into effect as fully and completely as possible." to the ch~racter of the system. On the contrary, having come into being, This principle of the Party spirit it becomes an immense active force, of art constitutes the foundation of actively assisting its foundation to the theory of the development of art take shape and consolidate itself, and under the conditions of the socialist doing everything it can to help the revolutionary movement. It brings to new system finish off and eliminate light the fact that under the condi­ the old foundation and the old tions of class struggle ideology takes classes." (Concerning Marxism in the form of partisanship. Linguistics.) Lenin defined the essence of the principle that art must have a signifi­ XAMINATION of the thesis that cant idea content and be inseparably E art must have idea content leads linked with the practical tasks of the us to the underlying principles of revolutionary transformation of life Lenin's theory of reflection. Lenin as follows: "literary activity must pointed out that mind not only re­ become part of the general pro­ flects the world, but also creates it. letarian cause.... " Lenin demanded In order to influence reality in prac­ that art be openly linked with the tice, man must know what the results people and their vital practical in­ of one or another action of his will terests. be. Reflecting reality, the mind also Like all ideology, art is a weapon of creates for itself the possibility of The Relation of Art to Reality 43 intervening in reality practically. On objective qualities of things and becoming cognizant of the properties phenomena and learns to utilize them of .fire, primitive man also apprehends for his own purposes. The stone that the possibility of its practical appli­ the hand of man has reworked does cation; on ascertaining the properties not disappear but acquires new of stone, he realizes that it is possible qualities, or more precisely, discloses to change its forms in order to adapt its objective properties. The wid~r,. it to his own needs. richer, more intricate is his activity, The activity of man is purposeful the more profoundly does the mind activity: before beginning some prac­ of man penetrate the essence of tical action, man builds up in his things, the more fully does man ap­ mind a plan by which he is guided. prehend the world; and the fuller Marx writes in Capital: this cognition is, the greater are the opportunities that open up for !?an's "A spider conducts operations that re ~ creative activity. semble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the con­ Transformation of the world by struction of her cells. But what distin­ man depends upon the knowledge of guishes the worst architect from the best the laws of reality which he has his of bees is this, that the architect raises gained in the course of his practical structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor­ activities. From this standpoint, we process, we get a result that already existed may say that man's creative activities in the imagination of the laborer at its do not imply the destruction of objec­ commencement. He not only effects a tively existing things, but rather the change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of contrary process, the process of bring­ his own that gives the law to his modus ing them to life. operandi, and to which he must subordi­ The precious stone which is dull nate his will." and formless in its natural state, This is the sense in which the springs to beauty after being worked human mind is capable of creating upon by the skilful hand of the cut­ reality. It goes without saying that ter. Metallic ores, friable, crumbling, it must not be understood idealistic­ useless when discovered, are turned ally. "Ideals in general cannot do into a durable, pliable, valuable sub­ anything," wrote Marx and Engels in stance in the furnace, of which even The Holy Family. "To carry out ideas, the primitive blacksmith (whom there must be people who have to folklore for reasons we can well un­ exert practical force." But man's la­ derstand called a "magician") could bor and practical activities to change fashion many wonderful things. the world presuppose an "ideal" goal Knowledge of the properties of which is the result of knowledge of objects, of the laws governing nature, reality previously gained in practice, and the ability to utilize these laws, in experience. to call to life the "dormant" forces In labor, man comes to know the of reality and "tame" them-in short, 44 Masses & Mainstream

the ability to control the object of mands the acceptance of this most his activity and dominate over it­ important thesis, in which is revealed such is the foundation on which the distinction between dialectical man's creative activity in all spheres materialism and all the pre-Marxian operates. forms of materialism. In brief, man's mind is a power­ In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx ful weapon in his struggle with his wrote: "The chief defect of all environment, a means of creating hitherto existing materialism-that reality, for it plans, directs, corrects of Feuerbach included-is that the and perfects his practical activities. thing ( Gegenstand), reality, sen­ suousness, is conceived only in the WE HAVE been borrowing ex- form of the object ( Objekt) or of amples from the early history contemplation (Anschauung) but of mankind. But in all epochs, · the not as human sensuous activity, prac­ mind exercises an active force, in­ tice, not subjectively." fluencing and transforming reality Philosophers have only interpreted through practical activities. This is the world in various ways, while the being brought out with the greatest point is to change it, stressed Marx. clarity in our own times, in the Mind does not of itself create reality socialist society, where development by virtue of the immanent laws of is governed not by the spontaneous thinking; it is · part of that reality, laws of social evolution, as under cap­ destroying some things and creating italism, but by a plan, by intelligent others. This is effected with the help direction based on the most advanced of material practice, of the real sc.ientific theory, on Marxism-Lenin­ transformation of the world through ism. Direction of this social develop­ labor, through creation. ment is effected by the Bolshevik Struggle with the environment in Party, whose theory and practice order to adapt it to our own needs embody the highest wisdom of the and remove whatever obstructs our epoch, combining profound study of progress, the evocation of the new the laws of history with their daring and fruitful-such is the revolution­ and revolutionary application. ary spirit of human practice guided The claim that the mind can by human consciousness. change the world does not in the This eternal struggle, this inces­ least imply, as we have already noted, sant and insatiable creation, this tire­ any degree of compromise with less forward movement in the creative idealistic conceptions; it in no way activity going on about us spells the assumes that mind is primary and highest meaning and the highest being secondary; it merely notes the poetry of human life. To transform dialectical interaction between the this subjective striving into a real, two. Indeed, the consistent develop­ objectively existing fact, to win in ment of materialistic principles de- the struggle in order to draw new The Relation o/ Art to Reality 45 strength from victory for new plans ART plays an active transforming and new accomplishments which role in society. make man M~tn>--such is the highest Stalin's brilliant definition of the beauty of human life. artist as an engiaeer of the human Social consciousness has always soul reveals the innermost kernel of served human society as a weapon this aspect of the problem. The artist of struggle with nature, as a weapon apprehends reality and embodies the of social struggle, forming the basis result of his cognition in the work of of practice and acting as its conscious art. This work, acting on the mind, expression. And art has been just the feelings and will of people, shapes such a weapon from the very first their consciousness and, what is more, days of its existence, remaining such does so in a definite direction. The to the present. very selection of certain facts of life and their interpretation is important In the hands of the progressive as implanting in man's mind a de­ classes it has been a powerful means finite view of the world, and thls of revolutionizing consciousness; reac­ "view of the world" in the .final ana­ tionary classes have exploited and are lysis determines his activity. still exploiting it as a brake on the Art educates the people, sprea-ding development of society. In the latter and popularizing definite ideas, de­ case, art loses its true content and finite views on life, adopting the significance, and generally ceases to position of a definite social group be art, as we see with modern reac­ and in this way serving as a weapon tionary imperialistic "artistic crea­ in the struggle of the classes, that is, tion." Art has reached its true heights becoming (consciously or unconsci­ only when it has performed its func­ ously) idea art, its aim being in one tion as a force revolutionizing society. way or another either to change Today, in the epoch when the reality in a definite direction, or, on world is split into two camps, the the contrary, to prevent such change. burden of the struggle lies in the What does it mean when we say clash between these camps. Art art educates the people? This means inevitably expresses primarily the that it arms them ideologically for iaterests of this struggle. . In Soviet activity of. a definite content anc art it does so -openly and directly, character. But, as appears from the for it serves the interests of progress, above, for his practical activity m&l of the people, of the highest and must be armed with a true knowledge finest ideals; in reactionary-bourgeois of reality, otherwise his activity is "art," it does so in a cowardly fashion, doomed in the last analysis to failure. hiding its real physiognomy behind For this reason realistic art pos­ the mask of "pure art," because it sesses the most revolutionaty power. serves the forces of obscurantism and This fact was emphasized in his day social evil. by Engels when he stressed the re- 46 Masses & Mainstream volutionizing significance of truthful This factor, which may be called portrayal of life in realistic literature. the factor of artistic idealization, is ". . . a socialist-biased novel," he of considerable importance in ex­ wrote to Minna Kautsky, "fully plaining the transforming role of art. achieves its purpose, in my view, if We are not speaking of esthetic by conscientiously describing the norms and canons, such as the norms mutual relations, breaking down con­ and canons of classicism, which con­ ventional illusions about them, it tradict reality. We are speaking of shatters the optimism of the bour­ the reciprocal relation between the geois world, instills doubt as to the real and the ideal, both of these ele­ eternal character of the existing or­ ments being inherent in man's end­ der. ..." lessly rich perceptual powers. This explains the power of such All great art contains that which works, for example, as Tolstoy's Re­ endows the image with particular im­ surrection, Balzac's Gobseck, Repin's portance, as the model to be achieved. Th-e V olga Boatmen or Daumier's Such superb images are found in the The Laundresses. That is why realistic art of the Renaissance, of Velasquez art possesses the most progressive, and Rembrandt, of Kiprensky and advanced content. The converse also Alexander Ivanov, Repin and Suri­ holds . . . the higher and more noble kov. the educational aims of art, the nearer it is, in the last analysis, to an · OGNITION invariably includes objective, realistic method of ap­ C the element of "idealization," prehending reality. the essence, so to say, of the subjec­ If art lacks rhe power of realistic tive idea which goes further than ex­ generalization, the work of art will tant practice and anticipates it, so as be powerless to implant anything in then to be embodied in it. Conscious­ the soul of man, to stimulate his ness as an active force which re­ thoughts and feelings, to direct his volutionizes reality must include the activity. Herein lies the fundamental factor of the vision, the dream. "We difference between naturalism and should dream! " exclaims Lenin. This realism, that naturalism is incapable is not the passive dream which car­ of generalizations that stimulate and ries us away from life and reality; it .advance man, that it lacks the re­ is the revolutionary dream which volutionary power of realism; this strives to be embodied in real life explains why naturalism is such an and can be so embodied. Lenin pas­ integral product of the bourgeois sionately insisted on this factor, as conscio~sness. against the Mensheviks' servility to Genuine realistic art, on the other "facts." 1 hand, always possesses this potent Much the same is to be observed .educational force which revolution­ in art. By making the image signifi­ izes ctmsciousness. cant, stressing the vital elements of Tile Relation of Art to Reality 47 life in it, the artist, as it were, trans­ progressive features of our people forms reality, directly or indirectly as the beautiful presenting definite images to be In art, the factor of artistic ideali­ emulated. Often in the works of the zation represents the dream, which great realist, people live more in­ sometimes and somewhat anticipates tensively, act with more concentrated the usual phenomena of life and, energy, show a strength of character discerning what is basic and most such as is not to be met with at all important in it, calls to progress, times in life. This by no means en­ stimulating people to transform life, tails heroic gestures, striking poses to struggle, to make a reality out of and so on. Outwardly everything may the perspicacious insight of the great be very modest and restrained, very realist artist. "ordinary," as in Repin's Unexpected. In the .final analysis, art as creation But innerly the higher meaning of lies precisely in showing life as it what is taking place is sure to be re­ should be according to our ideas (to vealed, and it is from that that art paraphrase Chernyshevsky) or, con­ derives its educational significance. versely, in condemning with the ut­ Generalizing and accenting what must passion what contradicts these is most essential, what is most pro­ ideas. gressive, the realistic artist formu­ The life-giving power of the idea lates his understanding of the beauti­ is the basis of the flowering of the ful. When the masters of the Renais­ art of socialist realism, which is ad­ sance, in their struggle against the vancing on the foundation of grow­ medieval idea of sin, extolled earthly ing ties between art and the struggle man, his earthly aspirations and the Soviet people are waging under earthly pleasures, they presented this the guidance of the Bolshevik Party, in their works as the beautiful con­ led in its historical creative work by tent of life. The most important task the genius of Lenin and the genius of Soviet artists is to present the best, of Stalin, to build Communism. Two Poems

0 GREAT GREEN WALL A-GROWING

We bow to your beauty honor to you, new men of China placing trees where the .field guns were planting peace at all borders

With letters of love blossoms we throw on strong sea currents to make slow landings on your long shore and, borne of the air, flowers to garland your rising sons

Steel we know you would meet with steel but love will you greet with quiet growing 0 great green wall of China!

Kao Kang has said it Mao has led it Si-lan, with your body you sang it: lay hands on New China then will the sword dance­ but speak love and the .fists will unfold in greeting

Listen: a lone sentry lifts his long rifle startled by a sound- it is green breaking ground and he smiles at ease knowing only the stars one night will surround our planet of peace

Take root, tap water, drink sun and air and turn away the wrath of the winds to gentle breathing with your soft answer Break old gods of flood, of the dry season and in the easy climb of years 1 make timber for the bell-toned blade the small ones in pacific slumber now will wake to wield and to withhold remembering heroes who made you your parti-colored shade your delicate and natural screen

0 great green wall uprising for Man's holy mansion we will our offspring and their sweet ascension.

-LEE}ENSON

GOOD MORNING

( Written by the exiled Greek poet to his little daughter whom he has not seen for over four years.)

Good morning .... Good morning lovely rose, somewhere richly fragrant. Good morning water somewhere flowing. Good morning woods somewhere singing. Good morning . . . good morning. Locusts, butterflies, birds, good morning. One who prays at dawn sends you his tears from a deserted isle-a cradle of the .sea. A tiny mouth is hungering to find you, two tiny hands hanging limp, a small embrace without her doll. 0 lovely rose and woods and water, let your fairy-tale unfold. Unfold it yonder, let it murmur around her cage. She will understand and laugh, she will clap her tiny hands and laugh, for she is not yet five.

-M.ENELAOS LOUDEMIS European: Portraits of American Life LITERATURE of the NEW RESISTANCE

By JOSEPH STAROBIN

Paris and only recently an exile in our ONE of the most significant Euro- own land. pean realities today is the growth Tarn's play describes an American of a literature about American life, jury, wrestling with the verdict in the written by men who are forming the case of a young man accused of mur­ New Resistance. In this new litera­ dering a woman in Central Park. One ture, it is not just a matter of char­ group of jurors, led by a school acters who encounter America in a teacher and a taxi driver, are con­ casual way, as in Pierre Gamarra's vinced of the man's innocence. But The Lilacs of St. Lazare, whose heroes an ambitious district attorney is (all living in one apartment house) count~ng on a guilty decision to ad­ discover a solidarity with each other vance his career. In the heated jury in the peace demonstrations against debates it is hinted that the murdered General Eisenhower on the Champs woman may have been a "Communist Elysees. spy"; even the accused, some say, had More interesting, at least for us, Communist connections. As the terror are those writers and books which try of McCarthyism grips the jury, pro­ to deal with Americans as such. There found issues of American life today is a clear need in Europe to under­ are vividly revealed. stand what makes these Americans And now Ilya Ehrenburg, in his tick. The deep rage against the U.S. new novel which is again set in threat to social advance and peace is France--The · Edge of the Razo1'­ finding its literary expression. makes one of his heroes an American In one sense, Konstantin Simonov savant who has to flee his native land pioneered this effort to portray the in order to work, and yet does not American in his own milieu with his escape the ravages on his happiness famous play, The Russian Question. and his career even in Paris. Last year, all Poland turned out for In France, two works appeared last the first play by Adam Tarn, a secre­ autumn-a novel called jimmy by tary of the Union of Polish Writers, Pierre Courtade, and a play entitled 50 Literature of the New Resistance 51

Colonel Foster Will Plead Guilty by Danger Number Two, coming from Roger Vailland. And in discussing the East, seems very remote, much these two I'd like to include the easier to prevent. Europe entertains widely discussed "Letter to Mr. Smith" no fears from that side. . . ." He by Charles Favre! in last November's writes: Catholic review, Esprit. Courtade, the foreign editor of "You will never know, I hope, what it means to be invaded, L'Hwmanite, is the author of two deported, sent to death-camps, to have your cities wiped out previous literary works: Elsineur, and your fields burned out by enemy raids. which novelized Hamlet and sought However, if you had seen your people's to show the rise of fascism in a flesh and mind aching with such pains, Shakespearian framework, you might feel closer to people's suffering; and Les you might understand Circonstances, our feelings better short stories of the and our reluctance. You might become a Resistance. Vailland is an essayist little more human. That, indeed, you and novelist of recognized talent, who Americans are not human is the sad truth has more and more been which I, an average Frenchman, feel approaching bound to confess. Marxism. Favre! is a leading journal­ . "You are not human, and you proved ist of the conservative Le Monde, it to a stunned and infuriated world by well-known for his coverage of Korea the ruthless, vicious, deliberately aloof and Indo-China. way you are waging the Korean war in which you are entangled." Thus we have a spectrum of ob­ servers, all of whom have been im­ And earlier, he cries out: "Yo~ pelled in this past year to examine · frighten us, Mr. Smith. Just like a America. spendthrift and wayward son who is stupid enough to waste the best A VREL'S is a political essay, ad­ things that Nature gave him. ..." Fdressed to the "average American" Here we have an estimate of the Mr. Smith of Kansas, whose farm is American from the upper-class Euro­ bisected by the 38th parallel. Favrel's pean. Favre! expresses the interesting impassioned indictment of American fact that the European upper-classes crimes in Korea is important for the are really more cynical about Amer­ evidence which it gives on the origins ica, and see it in a less differentiated of the war and the barbarity with way than the European Left. which it is being fought. It is also im­ portant for the way it debunks the JN VAILLAND'S play, these same myth that "Soviet aggression" is men­ themes are given dramatic expres­ acing western Europe. sion, but with a subtle depth and an But the essay in the Catholic maga­ excruciating sharpness. The setting is zine goes further than that, when .Korea. Colonel Harry Foster com­ Favre! cries out: "I wanted you to mands the headquarters in the town understand, Mr. Smith, why we con­ of Kaidon; the problem in this day's sider you the Number One danger. operations is to give protection to a 52 Masses & Mainstream group of 3,000 American soldiers re­ all, to live perhaps like the Mandarins treating across a river. The quarters in ancient Peking, with a mistress to are lodged in the home of a wealthy serve, to love. . . . Korean grain speculator, whose These garrulous proposals are in­ daughter Lya (educated in American terrupted by the news that the guer­ universities) has just asked for, and rillas have intercepted the plans for gotten, the job as Foster's secretary. the rescue mission. Not only have "We are not war criminals," 3,000 Americans been cut off but the Colonel Foster sternly tells the Ko­ outpost in Kaidon is endangered. rean speculator. No, Foster is a man "After all," says Lya as the news of the old school, of democratic in­ crashes down on Foster, "I prefer stincts, mind you. "When I entered Jimmy. He finds words more simple West Point," he says, "I never thought to say to a girl at a stop-over place this would oblige me some day to that he wants so much to spend the shoot peasants." He likes to believe night with her." that the American Army is not here There is a crisis in the headquart­ to save the speculator's grain, but to ers. There must be a spy in the place. give Korea freedom from "Commu­ The soldiers begin suspecting and nist aggression." He rebukes his sol­ accusing each other; the Korean spec­ diers, Jimmy and Joe, for their exces­ ulator who has managed to escape sive drinking and rousting-about; the with the help of his top-brass Amer­ Korean women must be left alone, ican friends comes to get his daugh­ says Foster. ter, but she refuses to join him. In And he is enchanted by the oppor­ the critical situation, Colonel Foster tunity to discuss Communism with issues orders to his subordinates to the worker-prisoner, Masan. For has shoot up the water-works, to destroy not the Colonel himself read Karl the ancient Confucian temple, · and, Marx? "It's the first time in my life of course, to murder the prisoner, that I see a Communist," he muses. Mas an. When Masan refuses to speak unless There is. a scene of great power in unchained, the Colonel orders the which Lya reveals that she has been chains removed. But the conversation the "spy." This daughter of the upper­ comes to nothing when Masan proud­ classes muses with the son of the ly refuses to talk until all invaders working class on what a wonderful have left his country's soil. country Korea will be after it has · Colonel Foster discourses .with the been freed, how it will be rebuilt beautiful Lya. He is not, he makes with the help of all the world's work­ clear, one of these young pigs like ers, how the girls will dance in the the soldier, Jimmy, who has tried to streets amid the flowers. "make" Lya. Foster has a Van Gogh In the final scene, the partisans in his parlor, he loves Picasso, and he. arrive, not in time to save Masan; wants so much to get away from it in time, however, to capture Colonel Literature of the New Re&istance 53

Foster. As he comes into the spotlight, forces, within American life. his crimes are recited from the wings, Jimmy Reeds is a Southerner who and when he is asked how he will has married Lucy Goldman of New plead in face of his dossier, he replies York. He is a junior executive in a with only these words: "Colonel Fos­ life insurance company, the father of ter will plead guilty." two kids, the owner (when the mort­ Unlike Favrel's Mr. Smith, for gage has been paid) of a home in whom the correspondent of Le Monde Queens. And he is the candidate for really has no feeling at all, Vailland the manager of the Albany branch of has tried to understand the American the firm, which his chief, Mr. White officer and the American GI; he has -the Legionnaire who hates Jews, drawn on his own experience with Negroes and Communists-has just them in crossing the Rhine, in the offered him. capture of the Remagen bridge six But Jimmy is uncertain that he years ago. Yet his indictment is all wants to live just for the obituaries the more majestic for its severity. in the Albany Times thirty years The American can only plead guilty. hence. In fact, Jimmy is not sure of There is a double meaning, how­ anything. He is not sure of his love ever, if I understand this author. for Lucy, not sure of his way of life. To make no defense after having His indecision is indicated partly by ravaged another people's land is the a ludicrous promenade with his sec­ abyss of cynicism; at the same time, retary to a Harlem night-dub, where it is an approach to expiation. There he leaves her in a drunken daze when is a depth of barbarism in Foster's he finds her racism intolerable. last hollow words. Here was a man Then comes Peekskill: Lucy has who said he knew better. And what been persuaded by friends to attend did he do with his knowledge? Noth­ a concert the following Sunday. It has ing. Yet the beginning of regenera­ been a long time since they've seen tion also lies in admitting this guilt, Paul Robeson (not since Emperor the guilt of that ultimate betrayal, ]ones) and a trip into the late sum­ not only of the rest of humanity but mer countryside is such an excellent of the best in America itself. idea. Courtade, the journalist, is in con­ ND this brings us to Courtade's stant struggle throughout the book A Jimmy. For Courtade, the Com­ with Courtade, the novelist-but his munist, has gone deeper than Favre! perception of what happened at Peek­ or even Vailland. Indeed his book is skill, how it happened and what it one of the most ambitious essays meant is certainly a masterpiece for a on the contemporary American that man who visited our country so have yet been published in Europe. briefly. What Courtade has seen most clearly The portrait of our own great is the contradiction, the conflict of Robeson is majestic. The pigmy dis- 54 Masses & Mainstream

trict attorney, the intrigues with Gov­ oirs of the Hitler thug, Skorzeny, ernor Dewey, the way the fascists while ind

Plan soon interrogates him and threat­ resist bringing his hero before the ens him with the loss of the GI Bill investigating commission, and of of Rights subsidy unless he turns in­ course, the district attorney has been former on other Americans in Paris. informed of his stay in Paris. And Thus, whereas he could not face when, in the fantastic farce of it all, the challenge to his integrity at home, they ask him whether it was not he he faces it in Paris. In this, Courtade who brought secret messages from is expressing a certain paternalism Duclos and Togliatti, he tells them which some people of Europe's Left to go to hell. feel toward American progressives. It is clear that in Courtade's Jimmy, And now Jimmy knows he must re­ we have a hero different from Vail­ turn home. He knows, as the author land's Colonel Foster. Nor can one says, that "one cannot be a man of address the same letter to Jimmy no country, a man of thirty-six loves." Reeds as to Mr. Smith of Kansas. He must go because he has come to It would not be true to say that understand that France is not the St. Courtade is overly kind to Jimmy Germain des Pres, where tired busi­ and it is the measure of how much nessmen from Kansas sit in existen­ Courtade has in common with Vail­ tialist cafes listening to bad versions land and Favre! that his hero only of songs from Kansas. He must go .finds himself by experiencing the because he feels the roots of his own anguish of France. homeland pulling. But Colonel Foster was damned The friends who were at Peekskill and doomed by his own hypocrisy; are now in difficulties. One of them there is only the glimmering of re­ has been framed-up in an "atomic demption for him, or rather for his spy scare." The commission to in­ kind. In Jimmy there is hope-a hope vestigate the Peekskill affair is of that is properly placed like all other course investigating the progressives. aspects of the novel in the social Jimmy really has little to tell his wife reality of American contradictions about Paris, for the problems do not and the American struggle. lie there at all. "Sooner or later, the There is hope if the America of world has to concern itself with us," Jimmy Reeds will .find itself in time, he says one night. "There is no choice will .find itself in its own native roots, .. . even if misfortune hits us, I will give battle for its own sake as don't want it to be said that I did well as for that of all humanity; nothing to prevent it. Obviously, I there is hope if Americans will "go can't do very much by myself ... home" before it is too late. alone.... " And so it is to others that Jimmy THIS literary trend in France has turns, the men and women who in­ received fresh impetus with the vi ted him to listen to songs one appearance of two volumes of a tril­ Sunday afternoon. Courtade cannot ogy by Andre Stil, Le Premier Choc 56 Masses & Main&tream and Le Coup de Canon. Stil has just highway where the military trucks won the Stalin Prize for his novel roll. Paulette, busy with the baby, about the dock workers who refused awaits her husband, Henri, on his to unload American munitions. It was bicycle ... he's the Communist section the first time a writer of a capitalist organizer, out all hours of the night. country had won such a high honor, In one stormy scene, the members and an impressive mass meeting at . of the Party branch debate the mean­ the Vel d'Hiver was held last month ing of the Political Committee's latest in tribute to the author. statement; Robert; the trade union Andre Stil at 31 is the author of leader, is bluntly criticized for failing four books, executive editor of L'Hu­ to see that resisting the American manite, member of the Communist occupation is the way to fight against Central Committee. Born in the mine­ the rearmament of western Germany; fields of northern France, he got his he can't take it, and stalks out with­ diploma in philosophy, became pro­ out saying as much as goodby. fessor at Quesnoy after several years And there is Mme. Duquesne, 60 as a teacher of miners' children. Stil years now, her husband a de Gaullist is not an intellectual who has to "go and former officer of the merchant out to the workers." He is one of marine. For her the war days center them. on the Nazi officer who occupied a The first book of his new trilogy room in the house; she remembers to appears at first as series of vignettes. this day the horrible photos she found The seaport in Charentes had felt the in his room of atrocities on the So­ last war heavily: the Americans had viet front. Imagine her emotion then bombed indiscriminately - workers' when an American captain arrives homes, civilian factories, Nazi sub­ one day and asks the same room for marine bases. A docker like Guitton, his chauffeur ... who turns out to be who had adopted a war orphan, finds the Nazi, now working on the U.S. no place to live other than an aban­ submarine base. Mme. Duquesne in­ doned block-house; at least this keeps sists on testifying before a court to out the rain. Unemployment has the point of defying her husband, quieted the docks, but the workers facing the divorce. feel the eyes of France are on them; they must keep munitions from land­ The first volume concludes as the ing; the U.S. Army is taking ov~r committee for the defense of people's airfields, evicting people from the1~ hom~s has been formed; the towns­ hovels, even menacing the farmers people threatened with eviction take crops. . . over an unused building which the The characters emerge m a senes Germans left intact and which the of incidents of daily life. Old Leon, Americans have not yet occupied. whose wife is an invalid, justifies his Here they defend their Christmas to­ existence by helping kids across the gether from the cops. Literature of the New Resistance 57

JN Le Coup de Ctmon1 the action ican, thinks Paulette. becomes swifter. The problem is In the final scenes, it turns out that to move the whole town in such a a cannon has been hidden way down way as to'_ prevent unloading those in the hold of a ship of grain. When munitions when the next ship arrives. it comes up on the crane, somehow The conflict mounts. The committee the grip slips and the cannon hurtles has united people who rarely talked into the harbor, striking the bodies to each other before. The railway of old Andreani and his wife, who workers debate how to help, which had disappeared mysteriously two is not easy since these men do not days before. They c6uld not face the ·see their immediate interests affected. battle, these two gentle old folk, with The local doctor, who has his reserva­ only their wedding rings left to their tions about Communist tactics in the name.... peace movement, joins in the action Two features distinguish Stil's ap­ nonetheless. proach. Undoubtedly, they indicate Meanwhile, the police commis­ the main direction of the literature sioner is not inactive. He is out to of the French Left. These are books frame Henri, with the help of a cer­ ·about current, urgent realities, con­ tain renegade, one of those who has temporary issues which agitate the been putting up provocative slogans nation, indeed life and death issues. that suggest Americans ought to be Secondly, Stil has peopled his books picked off one by one, by terror; the with a new type of hero, the work­ plot is exposed, for the walls have ingman and workingwoman out of ears in these small French villages. the details of whose daily lives And there is Gisele, the daughter emerges a struggle of political mean­ of the local butcher who has grown ing, of decisive national destiny. rich serving the Germans · and was These are not marginal observers, now catering to the Americans; Gisele studying their own torments as others was a girlhood friend of Henri's wife, do the battling. Neither is this a deli­ Paulette, but she didn't marry a dock­ cate tapestry of an entire society, with er. She lets herself be taken up in a the old order in full decay and the plane by the American pilots, and new merely suggested. then a wild ride in a launch out on There is nothing mechanical in the bay. Stricken with shame be­ Stil' s method. His characters are not fore the night is over, she bars her in the least self-consciously assembled, door to her irate father as the clock for the author knows them intimately strikes five. What can Paulette say -the dock-workers, the doctor on when Gisele spills the whole story their side, the retired pensioners, the out? It is so typical, thinks Paulette neighboring farmers, and their an­ to herself, that Gisele is mortified tagonists-the police, the butcher, the that she has been violated by a man new collaborators. His heroes, as Ara­ . . . she doesn't see him as an Amer- gon points out in Les Lettres Fran- 58 Masses & Mainstream caises, are men of whom one does not in Jimmy for what makes the Amer­ ask what is the color of their eyes. ican tick. Stil himself has said that he has de­ But his very significant ,books un­ liberately tried to portray his Party, questionably are part of the growing the Communist Party, in ·its life and literature of France whi ~h deals in work; he has shown how the gen­ one way or another with the problem eral line of the Party looks when it of the United States. It further high­ is· translated into the concrete activity lights a phenomenon of the times­ of the ordinary folk who compose it. the fact that in Fran~e one writer Stil hardly portrays the American after another is dealing with themes soldier or officer against whose ac­ which reflect the struggle against U.S. tivity this whole town in Charentes imperialism, the great and central has been mobilized; he does not have preoccupation of the French people the same concern as Pierre Courtade today.

EUROPEAN: "Hey, Ike, how about taking these guys with you?" (From Vie Nuove, Rome.) boo/as in r@view I-----

A.-Bomb, Inc. the mmmg of uranium (especially in Canada and Africa) through the ATOMIC IMPERIALISM, by James S. Allen. International Publishers. $2.90. production of plutonium, the sup­ plying of electronics and other es­ N THE day following the Nevada sential equipment, the development .O army maneuvers, Marquis Childs of atomic power for airplanes and wrote in his syndicated column that submarines, the building of new these field trials with atomic weapons projects, and down to the actual meant "the almost inevitable aban­ manufacture of the weapons. donment of any hope of international But the "struggle of the titans," control to prevent atomic warfare." as Allen calls it, between the Mor­ One is not required to share gan-du Pont group and the Mellon­ Childs' hopelessness in orde~ to rec­ Rockefeller group has continued in ognize the extreme danger which the atomic industry as on other bat­ confronts our world. In Atomic Im­ tle grounds of the American econ­ perialism James S. Allen has pro­ omy. Union Carbide and Carbon duced one of the most important Corporation, which "holds the most books of our times because he has important secondary position in the gotten down to the fundamentals of atomic enterprise" and which oper­ that danger and has given his readers ates Oak Ridge, is not visibly under an understanding which will aid Mellon-Rockefeller control, Allen them immeasurably in fighting it. says, but its history and associations For many it will no doubt come as suggest that it is mainly through a surprise that the largest industry this chemical trust that the group is in the United States is the atomic making a stand for a share in the rich industry and that it is engaged al­ prizes of the atomic industry. most exclusively in the manufacture Allen has traced the interweaving of weapons. interests of the top monopoly groups That industry has been trustified through the maze of the highly com­ and monopolized even more than the plicated corporate structure of Amer­ steel and chemical industries, and by ican finance and industry. the same peak groups of finance capi­ He shows how these financial tal. The Morgan-du Pont interests groups have dominated every com­ dominate the atomic industry from mission or committee set up by the 59 60 Masses & Maimtream .government for the purpose of di­ for the du Fonts. And Byrnes him­ recting the U.S. atomic enterprise. self turned up, after leaving the gov­ Their officers have figured largely in ernment, as· a director of the New­ every agency dealing with interna­ mont Mining Co., the Morgan-con­ tional control. In the very first com­ trolled corporation with interests in mittee named by the then Secretary uranium and other metals in Africa. of State James Byrnes to draw up The technical advisory committee proposals for international control, which drew up what we now know there were Vannevar Bush and as the "Baruch plan" for interna­ James Conant of M.I.T. and Harvard tional control of atomic energy in­ respectively, both institutions tra­ cludes a vice president of General ditionally dominated by Morgan; Electric (Morgan), president of Maj. Gen. Leslie Grove who has con­ New York Bell (Morgan) and a vice sistently protected du Pont interests; president of Monsanto Chemicals John J. McCloy, an attorney for (Morgan). Chase National Bank (Rockefeller) , The Atomic Energy Commission and Dean Acheson, who between which theoretically owns all fission­ Cabinet jobs has served as attorney able material and facilities for pro­ duction has included at one time or other such men as Sumner T. Pike who participated with Morgan in­ ttThe Indispensable Magazine for the terests in the development of Rhode­ Progressive Jew" sian copper mines; the retired ad­ JUNE CONTENTS miral, Lewis L. Strauss, formerly of PET GENERAL OF BIG BUSINESS Kuhn, Loeb and now ' by Arthur Dlugoff an officer of MEDICAL FREEDOM UNDER THE KNIFE Rockefeller Brothers; T. Keith Glen­ by Richard Levy THE BOND DRIVE AND AID TO ISRAEL nan of Western Electric and General by Louis Harap THE W ORKING WOMAN IN ISRAEL Aniline; and Thomas E. Murray of by Dvora Yaffe Union Carbide. JOIN HANDS TO REPEAL THE SMITH ACT by Alvin Wilder The A.E.C. works with 17 perma­ HIRSH LECKERT: WORKER HERO by Morris U. Schappes nent advisory committees and four ECONOMIC FIRST AID IN MOSCOW by Hershl Hartman boards, not to mention additional POLAND PAYS DEBT TO THE GHETTO by Jozef Winiewicz temporary advisory groups. Their JEWISH YOUNG FOLK SINGERS CON­ composition CERT reviewed by Ruth Rubin is similar, with Morgan­ JEWISH HISTORY IN LINOLEUM CUTS, du Pont men in a majority and a review with NAVAL REFORMER, a review by Morris U. Mellon-Rockefeller substantially rep­ Schappes ALSO Off the Press ..., editorials, news resented. SUBSCRIBE NOW! For the corporations which these Subscription rates: $2.00 a year in U.S. and men represent, the atomic industry Possessions; Elsewhere $2.50. has been highly profitable, although ]EWISH LIFE, 22 E. 17th St., Rm. 601, New York 3, N . Y. so much secrecy surrounds its opera­ tion that any accurate estimate is im- Books in Review 61 possible. Without spending a penny the ruthless exploitation of the natu­ for research or construction, these ral and human resources of the conti­ corporations possess the exclusive nent. right to exploit an industry in which The Canadian enterp.Qise is "prac­ the U.S. government had sunk more tically a branch of the American than five billion dollars up to the end atomic industry," Allen points out,. of 1950 and on which vast new bil­ but the British might prove a serious lions are in the process of being contender if Vickers and Imperial spent. Chemicals were to take full advan­ Allen has devoted considerable at­ tage of their share in the trusts con­ tention to this so-called partnership trolling African and Canadian pitch­ of government and industry, a part­ blende. Accordingly, the U.S. atomic nership in which one partner puts up industry decided to take these poten­ all the money, while not only the tial rivals into the world cartel the right to present and future profits but better to control them. the power to make policy resides in The Atomic Energy Commission the other. It is "the most thorough­ of the U.S., the A.E.C. of the United going fusion of the state into a cor­ Nations, and the Anglo-Canadian­ porate structure," Allen says, and has American "combined policy commit­ an especially evil connotation for tee" have all proved useful agencies American political life. in establishing and operating the "The nuclear weapons state-mo­ cartel. The Baruch plan proposed by nopoly cartel is the furthest organic the U.S. and subserviently defended advance of the fascist tendency, the by Britain, Canada and France is one closest approach in the United States which not only retains U.S. domi­ to the corporate state of fascism," he nance in the field, but, if accepted by warns. the U.S.S.R., would give to the cartel Allen's study of the control exer­ ownership of the Soviet atomic in­ cised in Canada by the peak monopoly dustry. groups of the United States is a valu­ However, it is obvious that the able contribution to anyone concerned U.S. government, acting for the U.S. with understanding American impe­ atomic trust, has never sincerely rialism. Specifically, this chapter re­ sought a genuine agreement for inter­ veals the pattern of conquest by U.S. national control and will not do so finance capital of the uranium re­ unless popular pressure for such an sources of our northern neighbor. agreement becomes irresistible. Allen has also followed the "ura­ In this volume, which further en­ nium rush" to the Belgian Congo and hances Allen's already high standing the African mining empire where the as a Marxist scholar, there is a wealth Morgan group, International Nickel, of meaningful information which will Imperial Chemicals, Ltd., and smaller feed that pressure. Belgian interests are all involved in RoB F. HALL 62 Masses & Mainstream

The Deep Pit mercia! reviewers matches that of the panting millionaire. INVISIBLE MAN, by Ralph Ellison. Ran­ Strangely, there is much truth in dom House. $3.50. their shouts of acclaim: "It is a sensational and feverishly emotional ((WHENCE all this passion tcr book. It will shock and sicken some ward conformity?" asks Ralph readers . . . the hero is a symbol of Ellison at the end of his novel, In­ doubt, perplexity, betrayal and defeat visible Man. He should know, be­ ... tough, brutal and [again] sensa­ cause his whole book conforms ex­ tional," says Orville Prescott in the actly to the formula for literary suc­ New York Times about "the most in today's market. Despite the cess impre~sive work of .fiction by an murkiness of his avant-garde symbol­ American Negro which I have ever ism, the pattern is clear and may be read." charted as precisely as a publisher's "Here," writes Daniel James in the quarterly sales report. war-mongering New Leader, "the au­ 1: A 12-page scene of Chapter thor establishes, in new terms, the _performance of sadism (a command commonness of every human's fate: 10 Negro youths savagely beating nothingness." the Bourbons' reward each other for "Authentic air of unreality," exults of scattered coins) , sex (a dance by the reviewer in the Sunday Times, with a "small Amer­ a naked whore about the part dealing with the ican flag tattooed upon her belly"), "Brotherhood" (Ellison's euphemism the and shDck (literally applied to for the Communist Party) . an electrically charged performers by The Sunday New York Herald rug). Tribune man knows what he likes Chapter 2: Featuring a 14-page too: scene in which a poor Negro farmer tells a white millionaire in great de­ "For a grand finale there's the hot, dry tail how he committed incest with August night of the big riot when the his daughter; and the millionaire, hungry looted, when Ras the destroyer­ of white appeasers-alone was out for who burns to do the same to his own blood; when Sybil, the chestnut-haired daughter, rewards the narrator with nymphomaniac, was raped by Santa Claus, a hundred-dollar bill. and when the Invisible Man, still clutch­ And so on, to the central design ing his briefcase, fell through an open grill into a coal cellar-and stayed there of American Century literature­ to write a book.... " anti-Communism. Author Ellison will reap more than The Saturday Review of Literature scattered change or a crumpled bill is also impressed with this work that for his performance. Invisible Man is is as " 'unreal' as a surrealist painting. already visible on the best-seller lists. ... It is unlikely that Invisible Man The quivering excitement of the com- is intended to be a realistic novel, Book8 in Review 63 although the detail is as real as the peeling paint on an old house." At this point a reviewer in M&M might very well say "Amen!" and leave the unpleasant subject. But the commercial claque does more than Have a Joy-filled extol Ellison's "surrealist horror," VACATION "well-ordered dissonance," "Dostoy­ Social staff and Entertainment: Martha Scblamme, Les Pines, evskianism," and thrill to "Harlem's Leon Bibb, Joyce Mordecai, Tinia Tassman, Joe Sargent, slough of despond." We see that the Ellie Pine, Mary Carver, Allan Tresser and his band. All sports. same Saturday Review critic who is Low Rates prevail /Of' June. happily certain that this is not a For Reservations: N. Y. Office, 250 W. 26 St., WA 4-6600. realistic novel insists that "... here, for the first time, is the whole truth about the Negro in America." The mind reels before a statement With the Strength of Knowledge such as that, compounded as it is of The Fight for Freedom Can Be Wonll an ignorance so stupendous that it Enroll now for a Summer Course at the can only be matched by its arrogance. Jefferson School Ostensibly set in Negro life, the Of Special Interest to Out of Town novel is profoundly anti-Negro and Visitors to New Y~rk it is this quality which moved several One-week 5 session morning courses of the chauvinist critics to say that its BEGINNING JULY 7th author has "transcended race" and Also "writes as well as a white man"­ Regular 5-session and I 0-session evening courses meeting once or twice weekly the highest accolade they can bestow! and Here, as in James Jones' whine INSTITUTE OF MARXIST STUDIES From Here to Eternity, is the one­ Mon. thru Fri. mornings for six weeks man-against-the-world theme, a theme July 7 - Aug. 15 which cannot tell the "whole truth" Catalogs available in office or any part of the truth about the THE JEFFERSON SCHOOL OF Negro people in America or about SOCIAL SCIENCE any other people anywhere. 575 Ave of the Americas, NYC Ellison's narrator-hero is a shadowy WA 9-1600 concept, lacking even the identity of a name, who tells of his Odyssey through a Negro college in the South, MIMEOS and then to Harlem where he is hired by the Communists as their. mass leader Mimeo SUPPLIES , ("How would you like to be the new GENSUP STATIONERY COMPANY Booker T. Washington?") for $300 41 East l ... th St. • GR. 7-7211-7212 cash advance and the munificent, 64 Maues & Mainstream depression-period pay of $60 per 'Eliot said something to my sensibili­ week; he is quickly disillusioned .and, ties that I coulcln't find in Negro battered in body and soul, finds refuge poets who wrote of experiences I down a man-hole from whence to myself had gone thrqugh.' " wdte a book about it all. Indeed, there is nothing in common . It would not be in order . here to between the wailing eunuchs of de­ speak of responsibility, for the writer cay on the one hand, and the passion­ has anticipated and answered that ate strength and beauty of Negro objection in the prologue: "I can hear poetry on the other. One can only you say, 'What a horrible, irresponsi­ speculate as to what it was in Elli­ ble bastard!' And you're right. I leap son's "sensibilities" that drew him to to agree with you. I am one of the Eliot and away .from his people-and most irresponsible beings that ever away from all people. But the result lived." of the infection is a tragedy: the first­ Nor will I here attempt to refute born of a talented young Negro the particular variations of the anti­ writer enters the world with no other Communist lie that Ellison tells. Some life than its maggots. ··· idea of his writing on this subject Ellison is also a disci pie of can be gained when we see even the the Richard Wright-Chester Himes New Leader, second to none in Red­ school and shares with these writers baiting viciousness, complaining that their bitter alienation from the Negro "Ellison's Communists are hard to people, their hatred and contempt believe, they are so unrelievedly hu­ of the Negro working masses, their morless, cynical ·and degenerate (in­ renegades' malice-and their servility cluding the black Communists) ." to the masters. Cut off from the surg­ And the Nation's reviewer-who says ing mainstream of Negro life and he is "ready to believe" the worst struggle and creativity, they stagnate about "Harlem Stalinists"-grumbles: in Paris, wander on lonely crusades, "The trouble with such caricature is . or spit out at the world from a hole that it undermines the intention be­ in the ground. hind it." (Nevertheless he finds the But against them and their inspir­ book "exalted.") ers is the growing renaissance of the And just as the author makes his Negro people's culture-writers, play­ irresponsibility undebatable, so does wrights, poets, singers, musicians, he help establish the fact that his dancers, artists and actors, who are work is alien to the Negro people linked with their people, who love and has its source in upper-class cor­ their people and who sing with the ruption. According to an interview Negro poet of long ago: in the Saturday Review it was "T. S. "Lord, I don't want to be like Judas Eliot's 'The Wasteland' which In my heart. ..." changed the direction of his life: LLOYD L. BROWN READY SOON!

H ISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST P ARTY OF THE UNITED STATES By WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

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