Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR 'AFTER THE FALL' In his review of After the Fall ("A View from the Brain," NL, February 3), Albert Bermel makes the point that Arthur Miller is writing a psychoanalytic play when he...
...I congratulate Mr...
...In my view, this policy is more likely to produce a general stabilization of the European scene than a recognition of East Germany...
...As I understand him, Ellison defends the concept that man's greatest freedom, his greatest victory, is to realize himself as a man and not a labelled group product...
...There is a more special reason why on the decisive issues of European politics the United States must try to act in consonance with Germay...
...the people at large have not yet understood that nuclear war would mean the end of their physical existence...
...Jobs and the Man," (NL, January 6), that the concept of governmental public works as the major means of stimulating our lagging economy should be replaced by that of governmental incentives for private enterprise investment in new productive capacity and new sources of employment, is parallel to the approach which I have long advocated in Congress...
...Matthew Arnold once told a critic who had rationalized Scott's "jerky" poetic rhythms in Marmion as being appropriate accompaniment of its subject: "The best art, having to represent the death of a hero, does not set about imitating his dying noises...
...In the present Congress, I have proposed an amendment to the Administration's omnibus transportation bill to make the resources and comprehensive planning of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) available to hard-pressed American railroads...
...In the first place, the strongest reason why the average German wants reunification is that he sees in it the only way to improve the lot of his parents, sisters, brothers and cousins living east of the Elbe river...
...After undergoing psychoanalysis he was freed of this onus and chose to return to the trenches, but this time as a conscious act on the part of a free man...
...Perhaps the Soviet Union will not see its way to give the necessary assurances...
...Newton Center, Mass...
...I welcome the signs that West Germany is seeking trade relations with Poland and other East European states...
...In trying to catch the quality and causes of Maggie's breakdown, the drama itself breaks up...
...In his review of Arthur Miller's new play, Albert Bermel suggests that the invisible "Listener" who hovers just above row A may be "the Great Analyst...
...Pretty dull stuff, but the blood and bones of everyone's life...
...Actually, I think neither of Brzezinski's two propositions does justice to the very complex situation to which he has addressed himself...
...As for Bermel's negative judgment on the play, I should agree...
...I also believe that much more can be done to harness the enormous vitality and ingenuity of the American free enterprise system in the public interest...
...A lot of nonsense has been uttered and The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...It's a credible hypothesis, but I have another...
...Miller cleverly sets these banal problems off against the world shaking problem of standing up to the HUAC and makes the domestic problem come off as the more exciting...
...what have you to confide to me...
...And though I am far less suspicious of West German motives than Brzezinski seems to be, I am especially doubtful about the wisdom of having Germany "participate in such common undertakings...
...Milton Hindus Professor of English Brandeis University RALPH ELLISON After reading Ralph Ellison's two New Leader essays ("The World and the Jug," December 9, 1963, and "A Rejoinder to Irving Howe," February 3), I must say that Ellison has cleared the air for me...
...Perhaps the fact that O'Neill's confessions, like Rousseau's, were produced posthumously, had something to do with persuading us of his sincerity...
...But it is clear that the Listener is above and beyond the human world to which the poet belongs...
...In fact, there has been strong opposition in Germany to the Kennedy policy of seeking a détente with the Soviet Nation, and to the continued discussions about the Berlin problem, as well as much suspicion about the efforts of the Administration to weaken Soviet control over Eastern Europe by means of economic and cultural penetration...
...for example, through the increased use of mixed public-private corporations like the Communications Satellite Corporation created by Congress in 1962...
...The necessity to obtain West German consent to some form of recognition of East Germany might be tantamount to a postulate of squaring the circle if it were not for two facts...
...tension with China and the disaffection of satellites as to be wholly incapable of waging war...
...JOBS AND THE MAN Irving Kristol*s conclusion in his article...
...Miller's Listener seems designed to play a similar role...
...Reading After the Fall, I thought that Miller, consciously or not, may have adopted the idea of his Listener from Whitman's Song of Myself...
...we must enact permanent, improved Federal standards of unemployment compensation...
...It was only recently, and particularly since the changes in the composition of the German government, that Bonn began to associate itself with the Kennedy position...
...On the other hand, experience of the last five years has demonstrated that no mutual accommodation with the Soviet Union can be found which would not involve some form of recognition for the statehood of the socalled German Democratic Republic...
...and the USSR would go on over the heads of the Europeans...
...In short, I believe we must have a full-scale economic program to deal with automation— both for workers and business and to avoid hardship for both in the transition—and governmental stimulation of the private economic system which has made our nation foremost in the world...
...Today's Germans hate and fear war, but too many of them think of the horrors of war in terms of their experience 1941-45...
...In any case, Miller's use of the subjective method in drama (putting aside for a moment the verdict of the box-office, which is irrelevant in the long run) has had less fortunate consequences...
...Manhood is not determined by the choice, but under what circumstances the choice was made...
...The recognition would formalize the division of Europe, therehy driving some Germans into the hands of de Gaulle and others, out of desperation, to seek a new Rapallo—in both cases undermining NATO and creating dangerous and perhaps even irresistible temptations for the USSR...
...in that event an agreement will be impossible...
...The last gasp of the naturalistic theater turns the stage, which historically has been the most objectifying of all influences upon literature, into a medium for autobiography...
...Secondly, the present stiff resistance of the Germans to any such agreement is predicated on illusions...
...Bermel complains that Miller does not confess much and that he has "committed nothing like a full-blooded transgression...
...and this, in my view, is the most appropriate and promising way to do it...
...written about the reasons why we must not, in our European policy, act contrary to German desires...
...Change the word hero to heroine, and this sentence pretty well sums what is wrong with Arthur Miller's new play...
...What Bermel apparently fails to see is that, since the characters are seen through Quentin's eyes, they cannot be whole and exist as anything more than what they are to Quentin...
...How grand it was to feel unweighted by the demands of others, demands which I succumbed to out of cowardice or convenience...
...Senator, New York...
...But the possibility of failure is no argument against an attemptLike Professor Brzezinski...
...that the USSR is so handicapped by economic difficulties...
...we must give labor the benefit of stock ownership and profitsharing...
...Whether Whitman's Listener is the God who has been mentioned in earlier sections of the poem or "the spotted hawk" who accuses the poet in the subsequent section and complains of his "gab and . . . loitering" is not quite clear...
...But I have my doubts about (to use Brzezinski's somewhat ambiguous language) the "increasing room in Eastern Europe for Western economic and political maneuvering...
...For example, I was among the first to recommend enactment of a tax incentive, now in the law, for investment in new plant and equipment to spur modernization, which the countries of Western Europe have done so much better than we...
...But leaving all that aside, it is of course desirable in any alliance, and especially in one exposed to a number of disruptive forces, to avoid hurting an ally's deep-rooted feelings...
...After some interest and restraint at the beginning, it seems to go to pieces...
...Quentin's crimes and troubles are ordinary—some problems of detachment and a penchant for marrying girls who are very much like his mother...
...After the Fall is probably not a great play, but as a psychoanalytic play it is by all odds the best yet written...
...Without knowing it, Bermel has here hit upon what greatness the play has...
...To be sure, it is being argued that we do not need an agreement to preserve peace...
...The hero in Arthur Koestler's Arrival and Departure was at first a revolutionary fighter against fascism because of a neurosis...
...and that I hope the American government will not conduct a policy that would make the avoidance of a nuclear holocaust dependent on the validity of these assumptions...
...Carl Landauer Zbigniew Brzezinski replies: I am not certain that I follow Carl Landauer's argument, but I take it to mean that he advocates the recognition of East Germany while suggesting that this is the only issue in American-Soviet relations that might give rise to vigorous West German opposition...
...Both on moral and political grounds, the recognition of an artificial regime imposed on one fourth of a country seems to me to be undesirable and not likely to promote the cause of peace...
...The third line of Section 51 of that poem reads: "Listener up there...
...Once these illusions are destroyed—and it should not be too difficult to destroy them—the receptiveness to an agreement that will secure peace will become much greater...
...In O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night this tendency resulted in the author's greatest aesthetic triumph...
...DEAR EDITOR 'AFTER THE FALL' In his review of After the Fall ("A View from the Brain," NL, February 3), Albert Bermel makes the point that Arthur Miller is writing a psychoanalytic play when he writes that "Quentin addresses himself to an invisible 'Listener' (the Great Analyst...
...The illusion inseparable from a living performance on the stage may mask its disintegration, but the words set down in cold type on paper reveal it...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...To free them and allow them to speak for themselves would destroy the play as an expression of Quentin's internal struggles...
...Jackson Heights, N.Y...
...Ellison tells us that one can demonstrate his human qualities as a civil-rights leader, a protester—and as a writer...
...Kristol and The New Leader for emphasizing this so cogently...
...A visitor to Germany can even hear the absurd idea that an all-out nuclear war—in contradistinction to a conventional war which would destroy German cities—would be worse for the United States than for Germany because the exchange of missiles between the U.S...
...we must further review depreciation schedules to reflect more current technological realities...
...I merely hope that these diplomatic feelers indicate a less rigid German attitude even on those points which are crucial for any understanding with the Soviet Union...
...He does not seem to realize that his stand on the second point deprives the first of the character of an issue, because the only acts of American foreign policy against which a German veto could conceivably be directed would occur in connection with an American recognition, or "upgrading," of East Germany...
...An agreement on Berlin and on the relations between the two parts of Germany, which will be needed if peace is to be achieved, must bear the signature of a German government: This is desirable from the American point of view and will be demanded by the Soviet Union, if its attitude so far is any guide to the stand it will take in future negotiations...
...And various impediments to the full growth of our free enterprise economy must be removed: In addition to the reduction of tax rates, we must update our antitrust laws to aid, rather than retard, productivity and the acquisition of foreign markets...
...and that it would even welcome a rigid attitude on our part because this would solidify the Communist front...
...New York City C. C. Dahlberg, M.D...
...I can only say that none of these arguments is sufficiently convincing to me...
...that our nuclear deterrent is enough...
...Washington, D. C. Jacob K. Javits U.S...
...Marvin Maurer THE GERMAN VOTE In his article, "The Danger of a German Veto" (NY, January 20), Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski defends two propositions: first, that the United States must not grant Germany a veto against acts of American foreign policy: secondly, that the United States must under no conditions recognize, formally or de facto, the present East German regime...
...Any real assurance of relaxation on the part of the East German regime—in addition to guarantees without loopholes for the safety of West Berlin—would go a long way to make an agreement tolerable for German public opinion, even if it involves a diplomatic upgrading of the Communist government...
Vol. 47 • February 1964 • No. 4
