true that in the twenties the literary emphasis was more on technique and
less on subject matter than it is now.
The leading figures in this group are Auden, Spender, Day Lewis,
MacNeice, and there is a long string of writers of more or less the same
tendency, Isherwood, John Lehmann, Arthur Calder-Marshall, Edward Upward,
Alee Brown, Philip Henderson, and many others. As before, I am lumping
them together simply according to tendency. Obviously there are very
great variations in talent. But when one compares these writers with the
Joyce-Eliot generation, the immediately striking thing is how much easier
it is to form them into a group. Technically they are closer together,
politically they are almost indistinguishable, and their criticisms of
one another's work have always been (to put it mildly) good-natured. The
outstanding writers of the twenties were of very varied origins, few of
them had passed through the ordinary English educational mill
(incidentally, the best of them, barring Lawrence, were not Englishmen),
and most of them had had at some time to struggle against poverty,
neglect, and even downright persecution. On the other hand, nearly all
the younger writers fit easily into the public-school-university-Bloomsbury
pattern. The few who are of proletarian origin are of the kind that is
declassed early in life, first by means of scholarships and then by the
bleaching-tub of London 'culture'. It is significant that several of the
writers in this group have been not only boys but, subsequently, masters
at public schools. Some years ago I described Auden as 'a sort of
gutless Kipling'. As criticism this was quite unworthy, indeed it was
merely a spiteful remark, but it is a fact that in Auden's work,
especially his earlier work, an atmosphere of uplift--something rather
like Kipling's If or Newbolt's Play up, Play up, and Play the Game!--never
seems to be very far away. Take, for instance, a poem like 'You're
leaving now, and it's up to you boys'. It is pure scoutmaster, the exact
note of the ten-minutes' straight talk on the dangers of self-abuse.
No doubt there is an element of parody that he intends, but there is also
a deeper resemblance that he does not intend. And of course the rather
priggish note that is common to most of these writers is a symptom,
of release. By throwing 'pure art' overboard they have freed themselves
from the fear of being laughed at and vastly enlarged their scope.
The prophetic side of Marxism, for example, is new material for poetry
and has great possibilities.
We are nothing
We have fallen
Into the dark and shall be destroyed.
Think though, that in this darkness
We hold the secret hub of an idea
Whose living sunlit wheel revolves in future years outside.
(Spender, TRIAL OF A JUDGE)
But at the same time, by being Marxized literature has moved no nearer to
the masses. Even allowing for the time-lag, Auden and Spender are
somewhat farther from being popular writers than Joyce and Eliot, let
alone Lawrence. As before, there are many contemporary writers who are
outside the current, but there is not much doubt about what is the
current. For the middle and late thirties, Auden Spender & Co. ARE 'the
movement', just as Joyce, Eliot & Co. were for the twenties. And the
movement is in the direction of some rather ill-defined thing called
Communism. As early as 1934 or 1935 it was considered eccentric in
literary circles not to be more or less 'left', and in another year or
two there had grown up a left-wing orthodoxy that made a certain set of
opinions absolutely DE RIGUEUR on certain subjects, The idea had begun to
gain ground (VIDE Edward Upward and others) that a writer must either be
actively 'left' or write badly. Between 1935 and 1939 the Communist
Party had an almost irresistible fascination for any writer under
forty. It became as normal to hear that so-and-so had 'joined' as
it had been a few years earlier, when Roman Catholicism was fashionable,
to hear that So-and-so had 'been received'. For about three years, in
fact, the central stream of English literature was more or less directly
under Communist control. How was it possible for such a thing to happen?
And at the same time, what is meant by 'Communism'? It is better to
answer the second question first.
The Communist movement in Western Europe began, as a movement for the
violent overthrow of capitalism, and degenerated within a few years into
an instrument of Russian foreign policy. This was probably inevitable
when this revolutionary ferment that followed the Great War had died
down. So far as I know, the only comprehensive history of this subject in
English is Franz Borkenau's book, THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL. What
Borkenau's facts even more than his deductions make clear is that
Communism could never have developed along its present lines if any
revolutionary feeling had existed in the industrialized countries. In
England, for instance, it is obvious that no such feeling has existed for
years past. The pathetic membership figures of all extremist parties show
this clearly. It is, only natural, therefore, that the English Communist
movement should be controlled by people who are mentally subservient to
Russia and have no real aim except to manipulate British foreign policy
in the Russian interest. Of course such an aim cannot be openly admitted,
and it is this fact that gives the Communist Party its very peculiar
character. The more vocal kind of Communist is in effect a Russian
publicity agent posing as an international socialist. It is a pose that
is easily kept up at normal times, but becomes difficult in moments of
crisis, because of the fact that the U.S.S.R. is no more scrupulous in
its foreign policy than the rest of the Great Powers. Alliances, changes
of front etc., which only make sense as part of the game of power
politics have to be explained and justified in terms of international
socialism. Every time Stalin swaps partners, 'Marxism' has to be hammered
into a new shape. This entails sudden and violent changes of 'line',
purges, denunciations, systematic destruction of party literature, etc.,
etc. Every Communist is in fact liable at any moment to have to alter his
most fundamental convictions, or leave the party. The unquestionable
dogma of Monday may become the damnable heresy of Tuesday, and so on.
This has happened at least three times during the past ten years. It
follows that in any Western country a Communist Party is always unstable
and usually very small. Its long-term membership really consists of an
inner ring of intellectuals who have identified with the Russian
bureaucracy, and a slightly larger body of working-class people who feel
a loyalty towards Soviet Russia without necessarily understanding its
policies. Otherwise there is only a shifting membership, one lot coming
and another going with each change of 'line'.
In 1930 the English Communist Party was a tiny, barely legal organization
whose main activity was libelling the Labour Party. But by 1935 the face
of Europe had changed, and left-wing politics changed with it. Hitler had
risen to power and begun to rearm, the Russian five-year plans had
succeeded, Russia had reappeared as a great military power. As Hitler's
three targets of attack were, to all appearances, Great Britain, France,
and the U.S.S.R., the three countries were forced into a sort of uneasy
RAPPROCHEMENT. This meant that the English or French Communist was
obliged to become a good patriot and imperialist--that is, to defend the
very things he had been attacking for the past fifteen years. The
Comintern slogans suddenly faded from red to pink. 'World revolution' and
'Social-Fascism' gave way to 'Defence of democracy' and 'Stop Hitler'.
The years 1935-9 were the period of anti-Fascism and the Popular Front,
the heyday of the Left Book Club, when red Duchesses and 'broadminded'
deans toured the battlefields of the Spanish war and Winston Churchill
was the blue-eyed boy of the DAILY WORKER. Since then, of course, there
has been yet another change of 'line'. But what is important for my
purpose is that it was during the 'anti-Fascist' phase that the younger
English writers gravitated towards Communism.
The Fascism-democracy dogfight was no doubt an attraction in itself, but
in any case their conversion was due at about that date. It was obvious
that LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism was finished and that there had got to be
some kind of reconstruction; in the world of 1935 it was hardly possible
to remain politically indifferent. But why did these young men turn
towards anything so alien as Russian Communism? Why should WRITERS be
attracted by a form of socialism that makes mental honesty impossible?
The explanation really lies in something that had already made itself
felt before the slump and before Hitler: middle-class unemployment.
Unemployment is not merely a matter of not having a job. Most people can
get a job of sorts, even at the worst of times. The trouble was that by
about 1930 there was no activity, except perhaps scientific research, the
The debunking of Western civilization had reached its Climax and
'disillusionment' was immensely widespread. Who now could take it for
granted to go through life in the ordinary middle-class way, as a
soldier, a clergyman, a stockbroker, an Indian Civil Servant, or
what-not? And how many of the values by which our grandfathers lived
could not be taken seriously? Patriotism, religion, the Empire, the
family, the sanctity of marriage, the Old School Tie, birth, breeding,
honour, discipline--anyone of ordinary education could turn the whole
lot of them inside out in three minutes. But what do you achieve, after
all, by getting rid of such primal things as patriotism and religion? You
have not necessarily got rid of the need for SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN.
There had been a sort of false dawn a few years earlier when numbers of
young intellectuals, including several quite gifted writers (Evelyn
Waugh, Christopher Hollis, and others), had fled into the Catholic
Church. It is significant that these people went almost invariably to the
Roman Church and not, for instance, to the C. of E., the Greek Church, or
the Protestants sects. They went, that is, to the Church with a
world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with
power and prestige behind it. Perhaps it is even worth noticing that the
only latter-day convert of really first-rate gifts, Eliot, has embraced
not Romanism but Anglo-Catholicism, the ecclesiastical equivalent of
Trotskyism. But I do not think one need look farther than this for the
reason why the young writers of the thirties flocked into or towards the
Communist Party. If was simply something to believe in. Here was a
Church, an army, an orthodoxy, a discipline. Here was a Fatherland
and--at any rate since 1935 or thereabouts--a Fuehrer. All the loyalties
and superstitions that the intellect had seemingly banished could come
rushing back under the thinnest of disguises. Patriotism, religion,
empire, military glory--all in one word, Russia. Father, king, leader,
hero, saviour--all in one word, Stalin. God--Stalin. The devil--Hitler.
Heaven--Moscow. Hell--Berlin. All the gaps were filled up. So, after
all, the 'Communism' of the English intellectual is something explicable
enough. It is the patriotism of the deracinated.
But there is one other thing that undoubtedly contributed to the cult of
Russia among the English intelligentsia during these years, and that is
the softness and security of life in England itself. With all its
injustices, England is still the land of habeas corpus, and the
over-whelming majority of English people have no experience of violence
or illegality. If you have grown up in that sort of atmosphere it is not
at all easy to imagine what a despotic r�gime is like. Nearly all the
dominant writers of the thirties belonged to the soft-boiled emancipated
middle class and were too young to have effective memories of the Great
War. To people of that kind such things as purges, secret police, summary
executions, imprisonment without trial etc., etc., are too remote to be
terrifying. They can swallow totalitarianism BECAUSE they have no
experience of anything except liberalism. Look, for instance, at this
extract from Mr Auden's poem 'Spain' (incidentally this poem is one of
the few decent things that have been written about the Spanish war):
To-morrow for the young, the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.
To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.
The second stanza is intended as a sort of thumb-nail sketch of a day in
the life of a 'good party man'. In the-morning a couple of political
murders, a ten-minutes' interlude to stifle 'bourgeois' remorse, and then
a hurried luncheon and a busy afternoon and evening chalking walls and
distributing leaflets. All very edifying. But notice the phrase
'necessary murder'. It could only be written by a person to whom murder
is at most a WORD. Personally I would not speak so lightly of murder. It
so happens that I have seen the bodies of numbers of murdered men--I
don't mean killed in battle, I mean murdered. Therefore I have some
conception of what murder means--the terror, the hatred, the howling
something to be avoided. So it is to any ordinary person. The Hitlers and
Stalins find murder necessary, but they don't advertise their
callousness, and they don't speak of it as murder; it is 'liquidation',
'elimination', or some other soothing phrase. Mr Auden's brand of
amoralism is only possible, if you are the kind of person who is always
somewhere else when the trigger is pulled. So much of left-wing thought
is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is
hot. The warmongering to which the English intelligentsia gave themselves
up in the period 1935-9 was largely based on a sense of personal
immunity. The attitude was very different in France, where the military
service is hard to dodge and even literary men know the weight of a pack.
Towards the end of Mr Cyril Connolly's recent book, ENEMIES OF PROMISE,
there occurs an interesting and revealing passage. The first part of the
book, is, more or less, an evaluation of present-day literature. Mr
Connolly belongs exactly to the generation of the writers of 'the
movement', and with not many reservations their values are his values. It
is interesting to notice that among prose-writers her admires chiefly
those specialising in violence--the would-be tough American school,
Hemingway, etc. The latter part of the book, however, is autobiographical
and consists of an account, fascinatingly accurate, of life at a
preparatory school and Eton in the years 1910-20. Mr Connolly ends by
remarking:
Were I to deduce anything from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be
called THE THEORY OF PERMANENT ADOLESCENCE. It is the theory that the
experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools are so intense
as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development.
When you read the second sentence in this passage, your natural impulse
is to look for the misprint. Presumably there is a 'not' left out, or
something. But no, not a bit of it! He means it! And what is more, he is
merely speaking the truth, in an inverted fashion. 'Cultured'
middle-class life has reached a depth of softness at which a
public-school education--five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery--can
actually be looked back upon as an eventful period. To nearly all the
writers who have counted during the thirties, what more has ever happened
than Mr Connolly records in ENEMIES OF PROMISE? It is the same pattern
all the time; public school, university, a few trips abroad, then London.
Hunger, hardship, solitude, exile, war, prison, persecution, manual
labour--hardly even words. No wonder that the huge tribe known as 'the
right left people' found it so easy to condone the purge-and-trap side of
the Russian r�gime and the horrors of the first Five-Year Plan. They were
so gloriously incapable of understanding what it all meant.
By 1937 the whole of the intelligentsia was mentally at war. Left-wing
thought had narrowed down to 'anti-Fascism', i.e. to a negative, and a
torrent of hate-literature directed against Germany and the politicians
supposedly friendly to Germany was pouring from the Press. The thing
that, to me, was truly frightening about the war in Spain was not such
violence as I witnessed, nor even the party feuds behind the lines, but
the immediate reappearance in left-wing circles of the mental atmosphere
of the Great War. The very people who for twenty years had sniggered over
their own superiority to war hysteria were the ones who rushed straight
back into the mental slum of 1915. All the familiar wartime idiocies,
spy-hunting, orthodoxy-sniffing (Sniff, sniff. Are you a good
anti-Fascist?), the retailing of atrocity stories, came back into vogue
as though the intervening years had never happened. Before the end of the
Spanish war, and even before Munich, some of the better of the left-wing
writers were beginning to squirm. Neither Auden nor, on the whole,
Spender wrote about the Spanish war in quite the vein that was expected
of them. Since then there has been a change of feeling and much dismay
and confusion, because the actual course of events has made nonsense of
the left-wing orthodoxy of the last few years. But then it did not need
very great acuteness to see that much of it was nonsense from the start.
There is no certainty, therefore, that the next orthodoxy to emerge will
be any better than the last.