Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Houglande-mail: thefantompowa@fantompowa.org
The economic plight of Europe
four years after V-E Day is slowly being resolved, thanks in
part to the generosity of American aid - but what is one to
say of the intellectual dilemma of thinking men and women
from Great Britain to the countries behind the Iron Curtain?
I have traveled extensively throughout Europe since the end
of the war, talking to artists, scholars, celebrities, and
bright young men on either side of the Iron Curtain. They
are a baffled insecure group, these European intellectuals,
divided and torn not only by the diplomatic struggle between
Russia and the United States, but also by the war of ideas
raging throughout the Continent. What are the European
intellectuals thinking in the spring of 1949? What are they
to believe, especially those interested in a genuine
exchange of ideas, after reading of the strange goings-on at
last March's conferences of opposing intellectuals in New
York - the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace
and Americans for Intellectual Freedom? In the spring of 1949 the
European intellectuals consider their inherited ideas
questionable or irrelevant. So many slogans, once inspiring,
now have a hollow ring. The European air reverberates with
false credos, contradictory arguments, violent accusations.
Many voices are heard in Paris and London, in Prague and
Brussels and Copenhagen, but there is no coordinated
discussion to give the mass of intellectuals a basis for
harmonious belief and action. The extreme leftists shout for
the total socialization of the means of production; the
fiery nationalists beat their breasts, believing their own
countries could save the world if they had the opportunity;
the apostles of science point to technical progress as the
means of salvation, while the enemies of science oppose it
as the archenemy of culture; the ardent Catholics point to
Rome and its spiritual leadership as the answer; and the
defenders of American doctrines clash with the Stalinist
supporters almost daily, solving nothing, adding to the
mental confusion which the traveler from America sees in
every face on the European streets. Many frightened and disturbed
Europeans look for comfort in the ancient documents of
Hinduism, in the writings of Lenin, in the Bible, in the
existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Others quote
the latest pronouncements of the Rumanian Communist leader
Ana Pauker, or Einstein or General de Gaulle or that current
European phenomenon, the American-born world-citizen Garry
Davis. Still others find their solutions in the philosophy
of Heidegger or Jung, or they quote with self-pitying
satisfaction the great European Paul Valéry, who
proclaimed, "L'Europe est finie." As in America, the Europeans
talk at great length about Kafka and sex and war and nuclear
chain reactions. But unlike Americans, who have enough to
eat and keep busy with their hustling optimism, the
Europeans also talk about despair, "the Sickness unto
Death," as Kierkegaard has called it. What if the European
intellectuals are too weak and dispirited to meet their
ordeal? What if they fail, if they betray their mission ?
One of them, the French writer Julien Benda, has accused his
own guild of high treason. And the European intellectuals
remember Benda's inexorable formula, La Trahison des
Clercs. The French word "clerc,"
like the archaic English word "clerk," can mean a clergyman
as well as a layman charged with minor ecclesiastical
duties, or a scholar, or simply a person able to read and
write. By his use of the term "les clercs," the
French author clearly suggests that the intellectual's
position in our modern world may be compared to one formerly
held by the priesthood. In times of undisputed
religious authority the intellectual has DO function, no
raison d'etre It is only when the priests lose
control that the independent, critical minds take over. That
is what happened in Hellas and Rome after the dethronement
of the Olympian gods (Socrates, the great question-asker and
dialectician was an intellectual in the most exacting, most
sublime sense of the word). It happened again at the time of
the Renaissance following the Dark Ages; and the Humanists
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, consciously and
proudly free from clerical tutelage, may be regarded as the
founding fathers of our modern intelligentsia. Today's intellectual, then, is
something in the nature of a layman priest inasmuch as he,
too, is primarily interested in spiritual values, not in
material success. The intellectual, like the priest, is
supposed to judge life and society according to certain
ideals, rather than from a purely utilitarian or "realistic"
point of view. But while the priest may rely on a given
ethical and metaphysical system, the intellectual -
belonging to a race of explorers and nonconformists - has to
discover his own moral code, his own truth and gospel. The
real intellectual takes nothing for granted. He questions
everything. His main characteristic is an infinite
curiosity. He is in love with novel ideas and hazardous
experiences. In contrast to the priest who enjoys the
guidance and protection of a powerful hierarchy, the
intellectual leads a vagrant, uncertain life - every day a
new adventure and experiment, a new ordeal. But however independent the
ideal intellectual may be, he must remain loyal to certain
voluntarily accepted basic standards and supreme principles
The true leaders of European thought, from Erasmus to
Voltaire, from Montaigne and Spinoza to Heinrich Heine and
Victor Hugo, were not only great skeptics and iconoclasts
but also great believers. They believed in the Divine, the
Good, the Beautiful, in Man's intrinsic nobility, in the
superiority of culture over barbarism. They believed in
Progress Without this confidence the European intellectuals
could not have prepared and initiated such enormous events
as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the French
Revolution. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, however, the intellectual captains began
to lose their sense of measure and direction. Nietzsche's
frantic attacks on Christianity, his insane self-deification
and self-destruction; Kierkegaard's abysmal guilt complex,
his desperate striving for "Purity of Heart"; Baudelaire's
diabolical grimaces and blasphemous paradoxes ("The man of
letters," he said, "is the enemy of the world"); Tolstoi's
denunciation of art and his rigid asceticism; Dostoevski's
pathological ecstasies and remorse's; Oscar Wilde's defiance
of bourgeois hypocrisy, resulting in his spectacular
ostracism and scandalous martyrdom; Strindberg's fierce
misanthropy and persecution mania; Richard Wagner's ruthless
ambition; Tchaikovsky's morbid nostalgia; Flaubett's
withdrawal into the icy realm of detached aestheticism;
Verlaine's deadly intoxication with prayers and absinthe;
Rimbaud's flight to the African wilderness, his abdication
as a poet, the terrible message of his silence; Van Gogh's
escape into madness - all these individual tragedies
foreshadowed the general crisis now shaking our
civilization. THE intellectuals delved too
daringly into the secrets of the human soul, of society, of
nature. What they brought to light from the depths was as
dreadful as that gorgonian face whose glance is said to turn
the beholder to stone. Was there nothing safe or sacred any
more? The bold experiment and
speculations of modern physicists - particularly Einstein's
theory of relativity&emdash; revolutionized not only
practical science but also man's vision of the universe, his
fundamental ideas about the character of time, space, matter
and energy. Karl Marx discovered the class struggle as the
predominant motive behind all historical and ideologic
developments. Another great intellectual, Sigmund Freud,
explored the shadowy recesses of our unconscious, which he
found teeming with the specters of inhibited desires, the
evil ghosts of patricidal and incestuous
impulses. Western man, the Homo
Occidentalis, who had thought of himself as a basically
rational creature, turned out, much to his own horrified
surprise, to be still possessed by demons, driven by
irrational, savage forces. The most sinister forebodings,
the most gory fantasies of nineteenth-century pessimists
were surpassed by the appalling reality of the twentieth.
The Antichrist, whose gestures and accents Nietzsche had
once sacrilegiously aped, now came into actual existence and
proved his devastating power. Gas chambers and high
explosives, venomous propaganda and organized exploitation,
the outrages of the totalitarian regimes and the fiendish
tastelessness of commercial entertainment, the cynicism of
the ruling cliques and the stupidity of the misguided
masses, the cult of high-ranking murderers and money makers,
the triumph of vulgarity and bigotry, the terror of
ignorance - these are the weapons and methods the Evil One
uses. With them he seeks to subjugate the human race, to
establish his reign over our accursed species. As civilization tumbles under
the assault of streamlined barbarism, what can the
intellectuals, the artists do but echo the general anxiety
and anguish? Who can describe or rationalize a nightmarish
world of Auschwitz and the comic strips, of Hollywood films
and bacteriological warfare? The images of our poets and
painters disintegrate along with our social order. Picasso's
genius evokes the flashes and thunderbolts of apocalyptic
tempests. Franz Kafka reveals, with uncanny insight and
accuracy, our innermost apprehension. James Joyce invents a
new idiom to vocalize the unspeakable. The masters of the
word stammer. "I can connect - Nothing with nothing," admits
T. S. Eliot, visualizing the decay and doom of a polluted
creation. The poet, the artist, the
intellectual no longer pretends to understand. He shudders,
whimpering over the "falling towers" of the great cities of
the world. The ordeal, having increased in magnitude and
momentum ever since the beginning of the first world war, is
now approaching its final, decisive stage. The current crisis - or, to be
more precise, the permanent crisis of this century - is not
limited to any particular continent or any particular social
class. In this shrunken world of ours, all nations and all
classes have to face the same problems and dangers. But if
it is true that an intellectual is more keenly aware of the
critical world situation than, say, a baseball champion or a
chorus girl, it is also true that the European intellectuals
are more directly, more vitally affected than their
colleagues in Brazil or Australia or the United States. For
it is one thing to meditate on the possible breakdown of
civilization; it is an entirely different matter to see it
happen. Certain apocalyptic events which may seem almost
incredible to the student of philosophy in Kansas City or
the poet in Johannesburg, ate only too familiar to the
people of Berlin, Warsaw, Dresden, Rotterdam. In Vienna,
Athens and London, the "falling towers" which T. S. Eliot
saw in The Waste Land are not just poetic symbol any
more. In the midst of ruins, in view of crippled me' and
starving children, no adult, clear-sighted person can
overlook or belittle the deadly seriousness of the permanent
crisis. No wonder, then, that the
European intellectuals an today the most crisis-conscious
people in the world. Also they are more consciously
intellectual than their fellow in other continents;
and they have become more emphatic ally European than
they were prior to World War 11 Common suffering has the
power to unify. In spite of national and ideologic conflicts
there is in Europe soda, (especially among intellectuals) a
certain sense of continental solidarity. If the Czech
patriot hates his Hungarian neighbor, if the Belgian cannot
bring himself to forgive the German, they still belong to
the same tragic but proud and distinguished clan. I met many
European' who spoke contemptuously of both the United States
and the Soviet Union - the two colossi endowed with material
wealth and military power, but lacking wisdom, refinement
and cultural tradition. It is the same melancholy arrogance,
the same weary disdain, with which the sophisticated
literati of decadent Hellas may have referred to the vulgar
toughness and efficiency of the Roman conquerors. Even the English, once so
haughtily detached and insular, seem to have renounced their
splendid isolation. They, too, have suffered; they, too, are
poor' and face an uncertain future. Why should they not join
at last the proud and pathetic brotherhood of crisis-ridden
Europeans ? A well-known young English
composer said to me, after a concert in Amsterdam: "I've
only just come back from America where I had to spend a few
weeks. It was all right, it was interesting; but I don't
think I'd be happy there, in the long run. No intellectual
tension! No awareness of the great issues and problems!
People are too well-off. Preoccupied with their new cars and
television sets, they seem to miss the real drama of our
time." HOW do the European
intellectuals meet and master these great problems
dominating the drama of our time? I found most of my
intellectual friends high-strung and irritable One bright
young man told me, "We don't know what to believe. We're all
mixed up." And a venerable professor said at the end of a
conversation, "We're all mixed up. We don't know what to
teach." The grand old men are scarce in
Europe today. There are not many left of the powerful
generation which produced Anatole France and Freud, Bergson
and H. C. Wells, Maxim Gorki and Paul Valery. As for the
survivors, some of them, like Einstein, Stravinsky,
Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, have migrated to the other side
of the Atlantic. Of course, there is always
Shaw, pouring out bon mots and paradoxes with
indefatigable gusto. But for all his courage and sagacity,
old C. B. S. has ceased to influence the intellectual
vanguard. Since he considers it his privilege to ridicule
any serious cause, people no longer take him very
seriously. Somerset Maugham,, while
gradually assuming the role of an illustrious old-timer,
hardly aspires to moral or intellectual leadership. Nor does
E. M. Forster, even though his great prestige would entitle
him to such ambitions. There can be no doubt that the author
of A Passage to India enjoys more respect and
authority than any other living English novelist since the
death of Virginia Woolf But his fame is of a purely
literary, almost esoteric, nature, and is limited to the
English-speaking countries. In Germany, France, Spain and
Italy, not even the professional men of letters are
acquainted with that exquisite critic and
narrator. Bertrand Russell certainly
deserves the rank of an intellectual leader, although his
somewhat noncommittal agnosticism and unimaginative common
sense may not be particularly attractive to some of the more
fastidious minds. Benedetto Croce, the great scholar and
upright liberal, is admired far beyond the frontiers of his
native Italy. But when visiting him in Naples, some time
ago, I felt myself in the presence of a magnificent relic, a
live memorial of past exploits and forgotten principles.
Ortega y Gasset, the outstanding philosopher of modern Spain
- living today in Madrid as an exile in his own country - is
more deeply versed in the crucial questions of our time. His
brilliant speculations in the Revolt of the Masses
have helped clarify the tumultuous events of the past
decades. But however significant such shrewd comments may
be, the perplexed youth of Europe want more. They want
guidance and comfort, new ideals and hopes. "Whenever young people come to
me for advice, I feel so shamefully incompetent, so
helpless, so embarrassed!" So declared Andre Gide, the
greatest writer living in Europe today, after I had a long
talk with him. "They keep asking me whether there is a way
out of the present crisis," he said, "and whether there is
any logic and purpose, any sense behind the turmoil. But who
am I to tell them? I don't know myself." He, for one, offers something
more precious than mere advice: the splendid gift of a
durable lifework, and the example of a complex, yet serenely
balanced and bravely consistent personality. NOT many intellectuals have the
faith and fortitude, the uncompromising integrity and
obstinate independence of Gide and Croce. German writers
were not the only ones to accept the atrocities and
anti-Semitism of Nazi Fascist control. In France, the
triumph of barbarism was applauded by literary celebrities
like Céline, Paul Morand, and Henry de Montherlant.
In occupied Norway. that nation's outstanding novelist, Knut
Hamsun, became a traitor to his country and to
civilization. And those who collaborate now
with the Russians, who preach and propagate the Communist
gospel - are they, too, "traitors"? Some of them -
especially in the Iron Curtain countries, including the
Soviet-occupied parts of Germany - may have become Marxists
out of opportunism and cowardice. Others, however, are of
unquestionable sincerity and good faith. A man like Louis
Aragon&emdash; formerly a leading surrealist, now the "Red
Pope" of French letters - does not think of himself as a
traitor but as a gallant patriot, a stout-hearted champion
of peace and progress. Nor can an earnest and generous woman
like Madame Irene Joliot-Curie, or a truly inspired poet
like Paul Eluard, be labeled simply as "Bolshevist agents"
or "fifth-columnists." It would be a grave mistake to
underrate the determination of the pro-Soviet intelligentsia
in western Europe today. There are, all over the Continent,
men and women of stature, who firmly believe that a world
revolution is both inevitable and desirable. To them the
Soviet Union is the mighty rock of freedom and enlightenment
in the midst of capitalistic darkness and decay. In Copenhagen I talked to the
white-maned dean of contemporary Danish literature, Martin
Andersen-Nexoe whose novel Pelle, the Conqueror has
long been an international favorite. The aged master assured
me, gently but positively: "The future belongs to Communism.
Communism is peace. Communism is prosperity. Communism is
culture. Whoever fails to see those basic truths must be
blind or bribed by American warmongers " In Berlin the famous German
writer Anna Seghers, author of The Seventh Cross and
other successful books, described to me her recent visit to
the Soviet Union as "a wonderful time." No, she maintained,
there wasn't any censorship. Soviet artists and scientists
enjoyed perfect freedom, as long as they respected the
fundamental principles of truly popular, truly Socialist
culture. I talked to intellectual
advocates of Stalinism in Prague, Vienna, Budapest,
Brussels, Paris and Milan, who said, "What's all that
excitement about reprimanding Shostakovich, Prokofiev and
Khachaturian? If the Russian people don't care for atonalism
and cacophony, then those gentlemen have to produce more
understandable, more appealing stuff! That's simple enough,
isn't it?" In the company of my Marxist
friends I was often reminded of those angels who, according
to William Blake, "have the vanity to speak of themselves as
the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence
sprouting from systematic reasoning." Some of them seemed a
little uneasy, though. A talented young writer I interviewed
in Prague, even while professing his ardent faith in
Communism, could not quite conceal his apprehension. "Of
course, the case of Shostakovich and his friends has rather
. . . disquieting implications," he said, with a furtive
glance about the room. "If the same kind of regimentation
were to be imposed on the intellectuals in Czechoslovakia -
well, that wouldn't be so good! Naturally, I have the
greatest respect for the Soviet Union, and I do
believe in Popular Democracy. But I'm not particularly fond
of goose-stepping you know . . ." Discreet complaints and ominous
intimations were voiced by the German novelist Theodor
Plivier, whose Stalingrad is generally regarded as
one of the major contributions to the literature of the
second world war. At the time I went to see hind in Weimar,
in the Russian-controlled zone of Germany, he seemed to be
on excellent terms with the Communists. In fact, Plivier,
with Anna Seghers and two or three otter writers,
represented the crème de la crème of
party-line intelligentsia. Considering the opulence of his
home and the grandeur of his social position, 1 assumed he
was pleased and satisfied. But when I congratulated him on
his good fortune, he shrugged and mumbled: "I have plenty to
eat, all right. But, believe me, it's no fun to live as a
prisoner - even if it's a golden cage they keep you in . .
." A few months later, Theodor Plivier escaped from the
Russian zone and was given refuge by the
Americans. If the Communist intellectuals
dislike all non-Communists they really loathe the deserters
and apostates who were their former comrades. This violent
animosity on the part of the Stalinists is understandable
when one considers the renegade's natural tendency to vilify
the cause he once embraced. Among the many shrill,
hysterical voices heard in Europe today, none is more
offensive than that of the ax-radicals who have turned into
fanatical red-baiters. In their eagerness to prove the
sincerity of their conversion they resort to the most absurd
and infamous practices Even Arthur Koestler has alienated
many of his admirers by the violence of his anti-Russian
obsession. Another prominent ax-Communist, Andre Malraux
once a fighter for the freedom of the Spanish people, has
now become the prophet and propagandist of General de Gaulle
who, if he came to power, might well deprive the French of
their democratic constitution and their
liberties. And so the Communists shout
"Traitor!" at men like Malraux and Koestler, and the ex- or
anti-Communists scream back at men like Aragon, Picasso,
Eluard, Bertolt Brecht, Martin Andersen-Nexoe: "Filthy
agents of the Kremlin! " Thus the accusations and
counter-accusations are hurled to and fro, throughout the
tormented Continent. As East and West threateningly face one
another, the battle of ideas claims and absorbs the finest
European minds. Detachment, wisdom and objectivity arc
considered high treason. l he intellectuals must take sides.
'l hey must become partisans and fight as
soldiers. IS there no "Third Force"
mediating between the two hostile camps? Certain writers may
try to maintain an "unpolitical" attitude. One of them, Jean
Cocteau, told me recently that politics to to him is "de
la blague" - a distasteful joke, a gory carnival, not to
be taken seriously. Cocteau's most recent book, La
Difficulté d'etre, a collection of charming
autobiographic notes and brilliant aperçus
deals with such subjects as Beauty, Death, Youth, Style,
Language, the meaning of dreams, the infinite attraction of
certain landscapes, poems and human faces. There are those among the
European intellectuals who seem impressed with Aldous
Huxley's admonition: "It is only by deliberately
concentrating on eternal things that we can prevent time
from making diabolical foolishness of all we do." The trend toward religious
mysticism is one of the most striking features of
intellectual life in postwar Europe. Even some of the
authors formerly connected with left-wing, atheistic
movements are now indulging in pious moods and metaphysical
speculations. For instance, Ignazio Silone - first a
Communist, then a militant Social Democrat&emdash;seems to
be more and more preoccupied with "eternal things." The same
is true of another repatriated exile, Alfred Doeblin, the
German novelist, who, after some years in the United States,
has returned to his homeland and is now working for the
French Centre de l'education at Baden-Baden. Revoking
his earlier Marxist views, Herr Doeblin, a highly talented,
if somewhat unreliable thinker of Jewish origin, now
proclaims: "A new era of religion and metaphysics has
started. The world, hitherto overly clear from our
positivist It and scientific standpoint, has once more
shrouded itself in mystery " As for mystery-conscious Herr
Doeblin, he has found peace and illumination in the Catholic
Church. The Catholic influence is
steadily increasing among European intellectuals outside of
the Iron-Curtain countries, although modern Italian letters
seem comparatively free from papal authority partly due to
Benedetto Croce's uncompromising secularism. The Holy See,
however, boasts powerful literary supporters in France. Paul
Claudel, François Mauriac, and Jacques Maritain are
remarkably effective servants of the Vatican. Even the
much-discussed existentialist movement has its Catholic
wing, represented by the highly respected philosopher
Gabriel Marcel Of the two German thinkers who
arc generally regarded as the initiators of existentialism
in its present form, one, Karl Jaspers (formerly professor
of philosophy in Heidelberg, now active in Switzerland), is
definitely religious minded, which is why the Marcel group
claim him as their patron saint; the other, Martin
Heidegger, without coming out openly for atheism; maintains
that God is "absent," too remote from His creation, too
incomprehensible to be counted on. The conception of utter
"absence," the idea of total nonexistence (if such a thing
or state can be imagined, seems indeed the very crux and
basis of Heidegger's philosophy To him, Nothingness means
almost what Tao does to the Chinese. It is the Primal Cause
of all phenomena, the perfect and eternal Source -
indefinable, unchanging inexhaustible, existing and
non-existing. Heidegger has been called a "mystic of
Nothingness," an idolater of the Nihil. No wonder,
then,that he was rather pleased with the "Revolution of
Nihilism" - National Socialism. This same philosopher who,
until 1945, was one of the intellectual pillars of Hitler's
Third Reich is now exalted by the French literary vanguard
Jean Paul Sartre considers himself a disciple of Heidegger,
although the German philosopher repeatedly, and rather
bluntly, has disclaimed all responsibility for
existentialism à la Sartre. Equally accomplished and
successful as a novelist, playwright and essayist, Jean-Paul
Sartre is the most conspicuous literary figure in postwar
Europe.- It is true that certain critics consider his early
work - especially his sad, saturnine novel, La
Nausée - more original and significant than his
recent writings Many European critics with whom I spoke feel
that Sartre AS: narrator, cannot compete with his fellow
existentialist, Albert Camus, whose symbolic tale, The
Plague, has been an international sensation. However, it
is Sartre, not Camus, through whom existentialism (the
leftist, atheistic branch of the movement) could become a
major force in European intellectual life. Yet the meaning
of existentialism as taught by the Sartre group, is
difficult to define, for this remarkably unsystematic
philosophical system seems to consist of inconsistencies. A
haphazard, if provocative mixture of incongruous elements,
Sartre's teachings have been shrugged off by academic French
sages as "une confusion des plus
fâcheuses." Is Sartre a pessimist? Does he
think life a crazy, ghastly mess? The tendency he shows, as
an artist, for sordid situations and vile characters
suggests a disillusioned, nihilistic viewpoint. But Sartre
does not like to be called a "nihilist." Even while speaking
of the universe as a "totalité
désintégrée" and of God as a
misshaped human invention - a "Dieu manque"&emdash;
Sartre accepts, and praises ethical principles. Without
explaining the origin or authorization of his moral code, he
wants us to believe that certain things are evil, certain
other things good; that it behooves us to choose between
those two alternatives; and that, by doing so, we decide
upon the salvation or condemnation of our soul. Since there
is no God to guide or judge us, it is up to ourselves to
determine our plight here below and our status in a rather
vague, metaphysical future. Our actions, our behavior, are
all that matters. Every man is what he makes of
himself. Like Marx, Sartre admonishes
the intellectuals not to content themselves with
understanding the world: they are urged to help in
changing social and economic conditions The term
engagement - meaning "commitment," or the definite
stand we are supposed to take in regard to the controversial
issues of our time - plays a predominant role in Sartre's
thinking. In contrast to the orthodox Marxists, who find the
historical process determined by economic factors, the
existentialists stress the importance of individual decision
in the face of a universe which, in itself, is devoid of any
aim or logic. An outspoken individualist and believer in the
primacy of spiritual values, but simultaneously an active
fighter for social progress, Sartre tried to reconcile the
two traditional schools of thought - idealism and
materialism. As he preaches a kind of
radical middle way, politically and philosophically, he is
frowned upon by all the major parties. To the Catholic
Church, Sartre's views are a particularly objectionable form
of paganism. Arthur Koestler and others have denounced the
existentialist leader as a Stalinist in transparent
disguise, while the official spokesmen of Marxism reproach
him for his "pro-Fascist" leanings. At the Tenth
International Congress of Philosophy, held last year in
Amsterdam, the Czech delegate, Arnost Kolman, referred to
existentialism as "a variety of sly apology for
capitalism." And the quarrelsome battle of
ideas goes on. They quarreled in Amsterdam,
where seven hundred professional thinkers from twenty-five
countries assembled to exchange ideas. "When you go back to
Prague," Professor Bertrand Russell sneered at his learned
colleague, Professor Arnost Kolman, "tell your employers
that the next time we have an international congress we'd
prefer that they send someone not so crude." Another
emissary from Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Rieger, continued to
defend militant Marxism as a "new humanism,'' whereupon a
German sage, Walter Brugger, hissed: "I see no difference
between the Marxist philosophy and the philosophy of
Nazism." Finally the venerable Dutch scholar, Hugo Pos,
chairman of the congress, came to the sad conclusion: "Our
discussions revealed the general diffuseness of post war
thinking." They quarreled at Wroclaw
(formerly Breslau), where intellectuals from all over the
world met under Communist auspices to look for a common
platform. Soviet writer Ilya Enhrenburg tried to promote
international understanding by calling Anglo-American
literature "a flood of mental opium", which caused an
English delegate Professor A. J. P. Taylor of Oxford to
state bitterly: "This Congress has not served the purpose of
bringing people together". A representative of India, Mulha
Raj Anand, suggested in the end that the way for delegates
to help the cause of peace was to "fast like
Gandhi". Is there no other hope
? The touching enthusiasm with
which the European intellectuals, along with the American
masses, responded to the bold gesture of the American-born
"world citizen", Garry Davis, is indicative of the general
anxiety, the widespread, intense desire to find a way out of
the present deadlock, but will the initiative of a
powerless, isolated young man be sufficient ? Even while
Davis is congregating a little troop of well-meaning,
spirited men and women, among them some literary
celebrities, like Gide, Camus, and Sartre; even while
millions of frightened people are longing and praying for
peace, the ominous preparations for war continue, the fatal
rift between two world powers, two philosophers, is
deepening from day to day. A weak, dissonant chorus, the
voices of the European intellectuals accompany the
prodigious drama. I have heard many voices on my travels,
some aggressive and arrogant, others gentle or flippant,
passionate or sentimental. I have yet to hear the harmony of
coordinated sounds, the concert of reconciled or peacefully
competing forces. "There is no hope. Whether we
intellectuals are traitors or whether we are victims, in any
case we'd better recognize the utter hopelessness of our
situation. Why fool ourselves ? We're done for ! We're
licked !" These words were uttered by a
young student of philosophy and literature l met in the
ancient university town of Uppsala, Sweden. What he had to
say was certainly characteristic, and l believe his words
echo the beliefs of your intellectuals in all parts of
Europe. He continued: "we're licked,
we're through. Why not admit it at last ? The struggle
between two great anti-spiritual powers - American money and
Russian fanaticism - does not leave any room in the world
for intellectual integrity or independence. We are compelled
to take sides and, by doing so, to betray everything we
should defend and cherish. Koestler is wrong when asserting
that one side is a little better than the other - not quite
black, just gray. In reality, neither side is good enough -
which is to say that both are bad, both are
black". He said a new movement should
be launched by European intellectuals, "the movement of
despair, the rebellion of the hopeless ones. Instead of
trying to appease the powers that be, instead of vindicating
the machinations of greedy bankers or the outrages of
tyrannical bureaucrats, we ought to go on record with our
protest, with an unequivocal expression of our bitterness,
our horror. Things have reached a point where only the most
dramatic, most radical gesture has a chance to be noticed,
to awake the conscience of the blinded hypnotized masses.
I'd like to see hundreds, thousands of intellectuals follow
the examples of Virginia Woolf, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig,
Jan Masaryk. A suicide wave among the world's most
distinguished minds would shock the peoples out of the
lethargy, would make them realize the extreme gravity of the
ordeal man has bought upon himself by his folly and
selfishness". In a trembling voice, he said
to me, "Let's sign ourselves to absolute despondency. It's
the only sincere attitude, and the only one that can be of
any help". While l thought of the black
future the young men and women of Europe must visualize for
themselves, the university student added, very softly, while
a faint, timid smile was lightening his pensive young voice:
"Do you remember what that great Kierkegaard has told us ?
The infinite resignation is the last stage prior to faith
. . . Therefore faith hopes also in this life, but . . . by
virtue of the absurd, not by virtue of the human
understanding". First published
in Tomorrow, Vol VIII, No 10, June 1949
