Literature and Revolution, which, strangely enough, has only now first: been transiated into French, The discussion was organized by the Karl Marx Circle and attracted a crowd of some 250, composed mostly of students, members of literary circles, workers, and a good representation of the various colonial peoples to be found in Paris,
The: discussion was led by Maurice Nadeau, the well-known literary critic, who wrote a preface for the French edition of Trotsky's famous work, He noted that the evening's discussion dealt with. the same theme considered at a recent meeting sponsored by Clarté. and he expressed surprise that Jorge Semprun had failed to mention T Trotsky's book. there although the week before he had eriticized it in Nouvel Observateur.
Trotsky, said Nadeau, while writing in the “period of the great literary flowering that followed the October Revolution, had touched on problems and offered answers which ‘Stalinism, a little later, utterly discarded.
After Maurice Nadeau, Jean Schuster: spoke of. the faithfulness of the Surrealists to the positions stated in the manifesto issued by André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky which called for the formation of a federation favoring independent revolutionary art. He recalled the profound agreement in the analyses offered by the great revolutionist and the conceptions of the Surrealist group fight~ ing on the cultural front, particularly concerning the established defeat of "literature," in the-bad sense of the term, and the confident. call for a new poetic Agee
Michel Lequenne, who served as moderator, read a letter from Frangois Chatelet stressing what breadth. Trotsky gave to Marxist criticism, how far it was from the "reductive -schematism" of what is called “orthodox Marxism," Like Maurice Nadeau, he disagreed on the possibility of a “proletarian culture," and pointed to the perspective of a revolutionary art and literature,
‘Daniel Guerin then spoke about the.crisis in the field of fiction and the growing importance of essays and scientific works as "literature." This is shown, he said, by the success of "pocket books." He compared one of Trotsky's writings, not included in Literature and Revolution, with a paragraph ' written by Proudhon prophesying the end of poetry.
‘All these themes and others were then taken up for several hours: in a dialogue between these four and the audience, among whom. were recognized writers and artists, The possibility of a proletarian literature was argued for, Victor Serge and other working-class writers being cited, a ors
Maurice Nadeau maintained that contempt of the workers was shown more by those who insisted they could take up the profession of writing, and who pointed to what they wrote as noteworthy because they were workers, than those like Trotsky who, while struggling to make it possible for everybody to have wider access to culture, re-. fused to see a culture in products of- inferior quality which were: only tentative documents or at best _ Stages toward the art of: a classless: -society yet to be born. me :
The youth, who constituted the biggest part of the audience, participated in the discussion the most. vigorously. One of them wanted to know what the art and literature of the future would be like, a question none of the leaders of. the discussion attempted to answer, Another one scored the Zdhanov period in the Soviet Union. "a socialist leadership has no right to demand that writers serve them,."' Several argued that an order to create a socialist culture proved in itself the absence of a socialist infrastructure,-first because the socialist culture did not exist, and second because the order was “backward. "
This Started a discussion on the risk arising : ina period of constructing socialism; namely, a refusal by writers to bow to the needs of the times and to reject their role of participating in the defense in the field of writing.-
-Lequenne replied to ‘this that art ‘and literature register the tensions in society, and a leadership blind enough to want to domesticate them would thus break the thermostat which would enable the . tensions. to..become self-adjusting. wit Jean. Schuster was asked if Surrealism still has a. ‘role to play as a group and if the new literary currents haven't gone beyond it. He said that the Surrealists gave full attention to research in forms, such as the. "new novel," but that the group maintained its existence, conceived as a struggle, unwilling to disappear until a new wave should actually 6° beyond them. fe regretted that this had not yet occurred. .
A girl in the audience raised ‘the problem of. the alienation. of the vanguard writer or artist and the forces pulling them away from creativity and action. This led to an exchange showing that some in the audience were thinking of the profoundest problems: réla= ted to the complete transformation of :the world. In this context, the place of art and literature in our society, their relation. with revolutionary activity demand restudy, particularly since the break up of the massive encrustations of Stalinism,
Pierre Frank, who together with Claude Ligny translated Literature and Revolution into French, observed that it had taken forty years to have the book published in a country that .claimed to. be pre-eminent in culture, The book had been virtually buried by . those who yesterday bowed to the decrees about “socialist realism." -
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Today these same people only want to consider it a historic docu-.. >. ment.
Requests came from the audience that the evening's discussion, which was taken down on tape, should be published. It was promised that an attempt would be made to do this, although in view of the length of the discussion it would make a small book itself...
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