MARXISM AND LITERATURE-- EDMUND WILSON--Criticism & Theory

MARXISM AND LITERATURE

EDMUND WILSON

Lecture notes for M.Phil scholars—S. Sreekumar

Please read the original for better comprehension

Edmund Wilson was deeply influenced by Marxism. In 1932, he started a work on the Russian Revolution—To the Finland station. When this work was in progress, Wilson became disillusioned with Marxism as it was preached and practised under the dictatorship of Stalin. This disillusionment is reflected in this essay.

Relationship between Art and society (Marxian principles)

è According to Marxism human society in any given country or epoch grows out of the means of production which prevailed at that place and time.

è Out of the relations between society and means of production arose a ‘super structure’.

è This ‘super structure’ is related to higher activities such as politics, law, religion, literature etc.

è These activities showed the mould of social configuration below them.

è  Each was trying to get away from its roots in the social classes and constitute a professional group with its own standards of value which cut across class lines.

è Art of a great period may reach a point of vitality where it can influence the life of the period down to its very economic foundations. Thus the interaction is reciprocal.

1.    Marx and Engels They never furnished socio-economic formulas to furnish the validity of art. Marx used to say that poets are originals and must be allowed to go their own way. Engels warned socialist novelists against ideologically committed literature.

2. Lenin. Lenin was an organizer and fighter. But even Lenin was fond of poetry, fiction and theatre.

Gorky said that one day he found Lenin with War and Peace lying on the table.

“You could not find a genuine ‘muzhik’ (The Russian peasant) in literature till this count cam upon the scene”, Lenin said of Tolstoy.

3. Trotsky

Trotsky was a literary man as Lenin never was.

In 1924, he published “Literature and Revolution”.

In this work he asserted that terms like ‘proletlit’ and ‘prolet culture’ are dangerous. These terms compress the culture of the future into the narrow limits of the present.

Trotsky said, “One can’t always go by the principles of Marxism in deciding whether to accept or reject a work of art”. A work “should be judged in the first place by its own law—that is by the law of art”.

Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky worked sincerely to keep literature free. Lenin died, Trotsky was exiled. Stalin unliterary and uncultivated himself, began to use literature as a means of manipulating the people 70 or 80 % of whom are illiterate. Thus genuine literature was replaced by dramatized exemplification of the latest “directives of Stalin”. social and political history were deliberately falsified. Every department of intellectual life was corrupted…Thus Marxism in Russia has run itself into a blind alley.

[A study of literature in its relation to society is as old as Herder (1744- 1803) and Vico (1668-1744). Taine was a master in this. But all these critics responded artistically to art. A man who applies Marxist principles without understanding literature would go horribly wrong. In works of highest order, the purpose is not a simple message but a complex vision of things which itself is not explicit but implicit.)

4. Granville Hicks—the American Marxist critic.

In “The Crisis in Criticism”, Granville Hicks, drew up a list of requirements for the ideal Marxist work of art.

1. The primary function of a work is to lead the proletarian reader to recognize his role in the class struggle.
2. It must directly or indirectly show the effects of the class struggle.
3. The author must be able to make the reader feel that he is participating in the lives described.
4. The author’s point of view must be that of the proletariat.

As there never existed such a writer, the American Marxists created an imaginary writer—John Dos Passos. This writer was “like a Gorky without a moustache”. The myth was maintained until the real Dos Passos started criticizing the events in Russia.

♣

ART IS A WEAPON”

Edmund Wilson then deals with the dogma—“art is a weapon”. He says that Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Shakespeare’s historical dramas are weapons. But they are weapons in the more general struggle of European man emerging from the middle ages, striving to understand his world and himself. Weapon is not the right word for this. The truth is that there is short range and long range literature. Long range literature sums up wide areas and long periods of human experience. Short range literature preaches, pamphleteers for immediate effect. The confusion in the leftist camp is because they are unable to find out whether they want short range or long range literature.

♣   Marxism is a new philosophical system which leads directly to programmes of action.

♣   It was a vision not of literary art but of actual social engineering. It is society itself, says Trotsky, which becomes the work of art under communism.

♣   Human imagination has come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society.

♣   Thus the Marxian approach is the first effort of the human spirit to transcend literature itself.

 S. Sreekumar--For MPhil students