Ihave occasionally wondered why certain essays by Georg Lukács, although they contain so much valuable material, nevertheless have something unsatisfying about them. He bases himself on a sound principle, and yet one cannot help feeling that he is somewhat remote from reality. He investigates the decline of the bourgeois novel from the heights it occupied when the bourgeoisie was still a progressive class. However courteous he is in his treatment of contemporary novelists, in so far as they follow the example of the classic models of the bourgeois novel and write in at least a formally realistic manner, he cannot help seeing in them too a process of decline. He is quite unable to find in them a realism equal to that of the classical novelists in depth, breadth and attack. But how could they be expected to rise above their class in this respect? They inevitably testify, too, to a decay in the technique of the novel. There is no less technical skill about; it is merely that technique has acquired a curious technicality—a kind of tyranny if you like. A formalistic quality insinuates itself even into realistic types of construction on the classical model. Some of the details here are curious. Even those writers who are conscious of the fact that capitalism impoverishes, dehumanizes, mechanizes human beings, and who fight against it, seem to partake of the same process of impoverishment: for they too, in their writing, appear to be less concerned with elevating man, they rush him through events, treat his inner life as a quantité negligeable and so on. They too rationalize, as it were. They fall into line with the 'progress' of physics. They abandon strict causality and switch to statistical causality, by abandoning the individual man as a causal nexus and making statements only about large groups. They even—in their own way—adopt Schrödinger's uncertainty principle. They deprive the observer of his authority and credit and mobilize the reader against himself, presenting him with purely subjective propositions, which actually characterize only those who make them (Gide, Joyce, Döblin). footnote1 One can follow Lukács in all these observations and subscribe to his protests. But then we come to the positive and constructive postulates of Lukács's conception. With a wave of his hand he sweeps away 'inhuman' technique. He turns back to our forefathers and implores their degenerate descendants to emulate them. Are writers confronted by a dehumanized man? Is his inner life arid? Is he driven through existence at an intolerable pace? Are his logical capacities weakened? Is the connection between things no longer so visible? Then writers must simply retain the old patterns, produce a rich life of the spirit, hold back the pace of events by a slow narrative, advance the individual to the centre of the stage by their art, and so on. Here specific instructions dwindle into an indistinct murmur. That his proposals are impractical is obvious. No one who believes Lukács's basic principle to be correct, can be surprised at this. Is there no solution then? There is. The new ascendant class shows it. It is not a way back. It is not linked to the good old days but to the bad new ones. It does not involve undoing techniques but developing them. Man does not become man again by stepping forth from the masses but by sinking deeper into them. The masses cast off their loss of humanity and thereby men become men again—but not the same men as before. This is the path that literature must take in our time when the masses are beginning to attract to themselves everything valuable and human, when they are mobilizing people against the dehumanization produced by capitalism in its fascist phase. It is the element of capitulation, of withdrawal, of utopian idealism which still lurks in Lukács's essays and which he will undoubtedly overcome, that makes his work, which otherwise contains so much of value, unsatisfactory; for it gives the impression that what concerns him is enjoyment alone, not struggle, a way of escape, rather than a march forward.
The formalistic nature of the theory of realism is demonstrated by the fact that not only is it exclusively based on the form of a few bourgeois novels of the previous century (more recent novels are merely cited in so far as they exemplify the same form), but also exclusively on the particular genre of the novel. But what about realism in lyric poetry, or in drama? These are two literary genres which—especially in Germany—have achieved a high standard.
I shall continue in a personal vein so as to provide concrete material for my argument. My activity is, as I see it myself, much more diverse than our theorists of realism believe. They give a totally one-sided picture of me. At the present time I am working on two novels, a play and a collection of poems. One of the novels is historical and requires extensive study in the field of Roman history. It is satirical. Now the novel is the territory of our theorists. But I am not being malicious if I say that I am unable to get the slightest hint from them for my work on this novel: The Affairs of Herr Julius Caesar. The procedure borrowed from the bourgeois novel of the last century of massing all manner of personal conflicts in long, broadly depicted scenes with interior settings, is of no use to me. For large sections I use the diary form. It has proved necessary for me to change the point of view for other sections. The montage of the points of view of the two fictitious authors incorporates my point of view. I suppose that it is possible that this sort of thing might not have proved necessary. At any rate, it certainly does not fit a preordained scheme. But this technique has proved to be necessary for a good insight into reality, and I had purely realistic motives in adopting it. My play, on the other hand, is a cycle of scenes which deals with life under the Brown dictatorship. So far I have written 27 separate scenes. Some of them fit roughly into the 'realistic' pattern X, if one shuts one eye. Others don't, absurdly enough, because they are very short. The whole work doesn't fit into it at all. I consider it to be a realistic play. I learnt more for it from the paintings of the peasant Breughel than from the treatises on realism. I scarcely dare to speak about the second novel, on which I have been working for a long time, so complicated are the problems involved and so primitive is the vocabulary which the aesthetic of realism—in its present state—offers me. The formal difficulties are enormous; I have constantly to construct models. Anyone who saw me at work would think I was only interested in questions of form. I make these models because I would like to represent reality. As far as lyric poetry goes, there too a realistic point of view exists. But I feel that one would have to proceed with extreme caution if one wished to write about it. On the other hand, there would be a great deal to be learnt about realism in the novel and drama.
While I am looking through a stack of historical tomes (they are written in four languages, in addition to translations from two ancient languages) and attempting to verify a particular fact, full of scepticism, rubbing the sand from my eyes the whole time, I have vague notions of colours at the back of my mind, impressions of particular seasons of the year; I hear inflections without words, see gestures without meaning; think of desirable groupings of unnamed figures, and so on. The images are extremely undefined, in no way exciting, rather superficial, or so it seems to me. But they are there. The 'formalist' in me is at work. While the significance of Clodius's funeral-benefit associations slowly dawns on me and I experience a certain pleasure in the discovery, I think: 'If one could only write a very long, transparent, autumnal, crystal-clear chapter, with an irregular curve, a kind of red wave-form running through it! The City puts its democrat Cicero into the consulate; he bans the democratically armed street clubs; they turn into peaceful funeral-benefit associations; the leaves are golden in the autumn. An unemployed man's funeral costs ten dollars; you pay a subscription; if you are too long in dying, it is a bad bargain. But we have the wave-form: often there suddenly appear weapons in these associations; Cicero is driven from the city; he has losses; his villa is burnt down; it cost millions; how many? Let us look it up—no—it's not relevant here; where were the street clubs on 9 November 91 BC? 'Gentlemen, I cannot give any guarantees' (Caesar).
I am at an early stage of my work.