![]() In his brilliant novel about the French Revolution, Les dieux ont soif, Anatole France recounts the career of the revolutionary painter Évariste Gamelin. In the decades since, what Steiner regarded as a “hideous misprision” has haunted my political life, and colored my view of radical events and movements.Ĭould it be that all radical movements fail, not just because of the false consciousness of the oppressed, or the failings of leftist leaders, but rather because socialists simply misjudge what humanity is capable of? Can human beings maintain the moral fervor required to change society over a lengthy period? The present collapse of Marxist-Leninist despotisms marks the vengeful termination of a compliment to man-probably illusory-but positive none the less. The bookstores displayed Lessing and Goethe and Tolstoy, but Archer and Collins were dreamed of. The theatres in East Berlin performed the classics when heavy metal and American musicals were wanted. But the source of the hideous misprision is not ignoble (as was that of Nazi racism): it lies in a terrible overestimate of man’s capacities for altruism, for purity, for intellectual-philosophic sustenance. The lifting of that yoke is cause for utter gratitude and relief. The variant on Judaic-messianic idealism, on the prophetic vision of a kingdom of justice on earth, which we call Marxism, brought intolerable bestiality, suffering and practical failure to hundreds of millions of men and women. The great Franco-American polymath and public intellectual George Steiner, unlike most analysts of the time, viewed the sudden collapse of socialism with ambivalence. A year later, when the quarterly Granta published a special issue on the theme of “What Happened?,” I finally found what remains to me as the most profound words ever spoken, not only about the events of the late eighties and early nineties, but more importantly, about socialism. In late 1989, when the avowedly Marxist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe began their collapse, the event was often celebrated in the West as the victory of good over evil. Image credit: National Archives and Records Administration ![]() Hod carriers move bricks up for the construction of the Tea Neck High School, in New Jersey (PWA).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |