The Ear

For Communists a writer is a suspect on principle. Even if his conduct is irreproachable a Communist intellectual suffers from this inalterable defect: namely that he entered the party of his own free will. What has led him to take this decision is a careful reading of Das Kapital, a critical examination of the historic situation, an acute sense of social justice, generosity, a taste for solidarity. All this reveals an independence of mind which has not a very good smell [for the Communist nose]. This man has entered the party as the result of a free choice: therefore he may leave it in the same way. He joined the party because he disagreed with the politics of the class to which he belonged; consequently he might criticize the politics of his adopted class. Thus in the very act by which he voluntarily elects to start a new life, a curse is put upon him which will weigh him down during the whole of his new life. From the very moment of his ordination, as Communist, a long trial will begin for him similar to that described by Kafka (in Das Prozess), in which the judges are unknown and the nature of the charge never revealed, where the only part of the proceeding which is clear is the sentence. It is not a question of his invisible accusers offering, as is customary, proofs of his crime: it is for him to prove his innocence [without knowing what is the nature of his crime]. * * * Since everything that he writes can be held against him as evidence – and of this he is perfectly aware – each of his works will necessarily display an ambiguous character, as being at the same time a public brief for the Communist party, and a secret brief for himself. What appears to the public to be a chain of peremptory affirmations, appears inside the party – in the eyes of his judges – to be a humble and clumsy attempt at self-justification. When he seems for us the most brilliant and convincing, it is perhaps then that he is in reality the most culpable. It seems to us at times – and perhaps it also seems to him, that he is rising in the party hierarchy and that he has become its mouthpiece. But this is a test merely, or a trick. The steps of the ladder are so constructed, that when he believes himself approaching the top he is in fact still down at the bottom. Read what he writes a hundred times, never will you be able to decide what is its exact value. . . The Communist writer is expected to display wit, lucidity, invention, to be mordant. But at the same time that one requires of him these gifts, one blames him for their possession, because in themselves they imply criminal leanings.* Wyndham Lewis, An Author in Search of a Public