CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Selzhenitsyn Narberth, Pa. To the Editors: Of the many possible "meanings" of Solzhenitsyn, John Lukacs makes little contact with any that have. practical significance [Aug. 1]. In...
...Sponsored by George Meany, exploited by Senators Helms and Thurmond, and now interpreted by John Lukacs...
...For him all Communisms are homogeneous evil, and any negative allegations about them, such as the myth of the Hue massacre, he seizes upon with-out the slightest interest in weighing evidence...
...Contemptuously to dismiss Berlin as "a fat sleek sophist" bespeaks the sniveling manners of an envious provincial (which Professor Lukacs is surely not) sniping at his betters from a strongly fortified position (protected, that is, by the world's most generous, hospitable, indulgent editors-I speak gratefully but now also critically as a beneficiary of that generosity...
...GINO DALPIAZ, C.S...
...Lukacs is, himself, one of the toughs he analyzes so perceptively in the course of his article...
...Could they be using Solzhenitsyn for purposes that bode ill for the world...
...free of bolshe-vism only...
...The sentence should read: ". . . Isaiah Berlin, the sophist, wrote The Hedgehog and the Fox, which made him famous among American intellectuals...
...Tolstoy was a "rigid and obsessed" determinist, whereas Solzenitsyn is "a deep believer in free will" (not a "rigid and obsessed" one...
...which one would have thought unnecessary in addressing the keepers of the flame of "older standards of civilization" so often invoked by tones, royalists, legitimists- and in fact invoked by Mr...
...To the Editors: Poor Solzhenitsyn...
...Lukacs writes of these criminals as though they were irredeemable savages who find it "natural," whatever he means by that, to carry on a life of crime...
...I never realized until I read the article that we may be hearing one of the great prophetic voices of history...
...Then what is the "freedom" that he stands for...
...Why the qualifying adjective "black...
...that that "feebleminded" coterie of specters, the "New York liberal literati" writing in Partisan Review in 1945, were pitifully incompetent to read Stendhal or tell pre-modern from post-modern...
...or doesn't that matter...
...Berlin's "little book," as idiots, the feebleminded and academic intellectuals will continue despite that cheap shot to think, is a masterly essay in intellectual and cultural history by a distinguished historian which brought him richly deserved fame (or, rather, contributed significantly to an already imposing reputation...
...According to Lukacs, "Solzhenitsyn is a witness with a desperate will, a will to break through history...
...and I think his ab-surd overvaluation of the Russian atavist, divine-rightist and flat-earther who "left not only Stalinisin and Len-inism but Marx, Darwin, Tolstoy leagues behind," together with his other animadversions, is best forgotten...
...Berlin's is hardly a household name, nor does his essay occupy a conspicuous place among England's, or America's, favorite books...
...Solzhenitsyn is no mere "Cold War" warrior...
...I should not have written that Isaiah Berlin, a sleek fat sophist, wrote The Hedgehog and the Fox, which made him, in turn, famous and rich...
...Our Russian visitor has hardly been lucky in the circle of friends who surrounded him here...
...New York, N. Y. To the Editors: John Lukacs' remarks on Solzhenitsyn do not interest me but I do wish to express my dismay at the un-Christlan and racist views Mr...
...thus Solzhenitsyn's vigorous defense of the Chilean junta on Paris radio, and his support of Thieu...
...1] on Solzhenitsyn left me shaking with fear and awe...
...ARTHUR EVANS Reply Since I asked the editors of Commonweal to print my article without editorial changes, they are not in the least responsible for its language and contents...
...And though I have not re-cently been in touch with Sir Isaiah or with his bankers I think it safe to say that that learned, complex, subtle performance couldn't possibly have "made him rich" in the usual sense...
...In fact, Lukacs uses Solzhenitsyn for his own favorite obiter dicta and cold war obscurantism, and in the end leaves the reader with the impression that Solzhenitsyn is a wonder, "profound," and maybe a new "Light from the East," but by assertion only, with all important questions begged...
...As one who does voluntary remedial teaching of New York City "toughs," black and white, who are wards of the Probation Office, I can assure Mr...
...How can any man be held responsible for the motley crowd of his admirers...
...Mainly not for Solzhenitsyn, truly an "obsessed" man, so overwhelmed with his furious anti-Sovietism that this pure negative must be regarded as his central and virtually exclusive message...
...I wrote my article before Alexander Solzhenitsyn's visit to the United States...
...JOHN LUKACSAmerican intellectuals...
...In fact, Solzhenitsyn's writings show a profound knowledge only of Soviet prison conditions, censorship, and related matters-his knowledge of non-Soviet history seems minimal, and hit critical, capacities in evaluating any demerits of the West and positive aspects of Communism approach zero...
...In one of those paradoxes of history, a noble individual, with an exceedingly limited but powerful vision, has been converted by his own fury and naivete-and by the more calculated and rational manipulation of others-into something de-meaned, pathetic, and dangerously stok-ing the fires of irrationality...
...Are they supporters of and vehicles for a new world order based on something good...
...He is a "sign of contradiction" indeed...
...Would Christ have lectured under the sponsorship of the money changers...
...Although Lukacs asserts that his hero has left "Marx, Darwin, Tolstoy leagues behind," he offers no evidence that Solzhenitsyn has found anything but the most partial truth, or that his methods and knowledge of comparative history have any solid foundation...
...In writing of youngsters of New York and elsewhere who have been driven to crime by poverty, ignorance and the cruel indifference of society as though they are some subhuman species, Mr...
...If Lukacs was not being racist he would simply have written "The kid etc...
...To the Editors: John Lukacs' article [Aug...
...But enough of this: the piece is both fatuous and sordid from beginning (the portentous and vacuous distinction between the "idea" and a "man" Whose Time Has Come) to end (the lyric, risible evocation of Solzheri-itsyn as tree-deity in the pine forests of East Prussia...
...with what in its place...
...I shall make one correction...
...that the world's "idiots and academic intellectuals...
...And he made it plain this included criminals when he took a thief with him to paradise on the night of the Crucifixion...
...The man is a seer, and he's told us What he has seen...
...EDWABD S. HERMAN Roxbury,Ct To the Editors: Until John Lukacs con-descended from his lonely eminence to illumine the darkness in which we abide I hadn't realized that Solzenjtsyn, who seemed to me to have been entirely bypassed by the twentieth century, "is the surviving avant-garde, and not the intelligentsia in the West...
...My purpose in writing fall* short of polemic: I want to deliver a short lecture on manners and morals-on literary decorum...
...Lukacs that regardless of what crimes they have committed these "toughs" are not savages and they have all the potential of becoming good citizens if society will give them a chance...
...JOHN DUNN Atlanta, Ga...
...SAUL MALOFF Stone Park, 111...
...Lukacs betrays when he discusses what he calls a new feudalism of "toughs" "rising" in both the Soviet world and ours...
...His message and ibis voice seem to have a certain haunting, poignant quality that pierces to the very (Continued on page 478) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 451) marrow of the human soul...
...I shall not retract anything from it...
...For example, Tolstoy's interest in history "was astonishingly narrow-minded" in contrast with Solzhenitsyn's, but Lukacs never discusses explicitly the scope of the latter's historical vision, which is confined almost exclusively to Russian history during the last 60 years...
...that Tolstoy was a sort of hapless old duffer, ambitious but benighted, hopelessly en-trapped in the "limitations of what was essentially a nineteenth-century gaunt . . . a rigid and obsessed twentieth century determinist...
...A Manichean view of the world, an obsession with Communist evil, and a total absence of any analysis of historical process has made Solzhenitsyn a perfect tool of those who believe that, more arms, threats, tensions and force will bring about a better world...
...But that scurrilous remark about Isaiah Berlin must not be permitted to go un-rebuked...
...Lukacs tells us that Solzhenitsyn is "not a democrat," as if this is merely an interesting part of his great versatility of spirit...
...REV...
...Or do they and he see eye to eye...
...Lukacs never descends from the mysterious to such mundane matters...
...edited out" by the Commonweal Staff...
...JOHN LUKACS...
...Because Solzhenitsyn is a courageous victim and a distinguished writer it does not follow that he has a sensible view of past, present, or future...
...This is why he is so undiscriminating in choice of allies- "freedom" means free of or hostile to the interests of the Soviet Union or Communism-thus George Meany is a spokesman for freedom...
...His vague alternatives, rarely spelled out, are described in kindly terms by the Christian Science Monitor [July 24] as "a benevolent religious autocracy...
...Lukacs is being anything but Christian...
...I have now finally encountered Solzhenitsyn in John Lukacs' article, and I just can't seem 'to' be able shake his haunting, pursuing shadow out of my life anymore...
...Why were not such offensive remarks...
...Lukacs doesn't say, leaving this to mystical meanderings-the "Russian people will not be free" until they recognize the evils of bolshevism...
...Nay, they are snickering at him, as if he were a half-demented Rip Van Winkle fallen asleep in-the, 1940s under Stalin and waking up in* the balmy era of detente, still living in the past...
...And it scares me, because very few seem to be listening to...
...The "meaning" of Solzhenitsyn also may be inferred from his positive views, a matter on which Lukacs is exceedingly vague...
...I think I know how the hearers of Jeremiah the Prophet felt when he thundered at them and told them the aweful truth about themselves...
...Lukacs' racism emerges when He writes "The black kid mugging etc...
...But this is true of all true believers and zealots...
...Lukacs provides no indication of how this particular true believer will "break through history," and Lukacs' final message, that "Truly a single event in a single mind may change the world" (i.e., Solzhenitsyn's insight that Soviet Communism is very bad), stares at us as another unsupported mystical assertion...
...While there were some remarkable insights in the Lukacs piece, they were offset by the abusive tone he has adopted, and the absolutely thuggish epithets he applied to certain of our respected contemporary authors...
...In fact, his comments on the world, since leaving the Soviet Union have been vintage Jimmy Forrestal and early cold-war demagoguery...
...One real "meaning" of Solzenitsyn may be inferred from his sponsors and supporters...
...There are plenty of muggers of other ethnic groups, even Hungarians...
...When Jesus Christ promised redemption he promised it to all people...
...though I, for one, have long thought The Hedgehog and the Fox, property cast, imaginatively directed, and shot of course in gorgeous scarlets, crimsons and purples, might make an amusing movie...
...Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, George Meany, Henry Jackson and the entire stable of right-wing columnists have welcomed him with open arms, and he has not rejected them...
Vol. 102 • October 1975 • No. 15
