literature, society and the concept of revolt

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1975 5: 395European History QuarterlyR. Batchelor

Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt

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395

Literature, Society and theConcept of Revolt

R. Batchelor

Most critics would readily agree that any assessment of contemporarythought, whether it involves politics, literature, philosophy or religion,must at some point deal with the theme of revolt. It is an undeniablefact that, from the evocative and highly expressive date of 1789, whichserves conveniently and appropriately as the great watershed of modemEuropean history, separating the old from the new, until current times,man has demonstrated a persistent preoccupation with a deep-seatedhostility towards the society that has nurtured him and the world atlarge. Indeed, the history of the past two hundred years obliges us tostate without reserve that revolt forms one of the essential dimensionsof modem man. This attitude of a thorough-going revolt which acts as arallying-point for countless thinkers and artists, centralizes man’s indi-vidualism in terms of protest against the rationalizing and inhibitingtendencies which external forces have always attempted to imposeupon him. Such people resent, with increasing vehemence, the intrusionof formal authority as expressed through the media of education,government or religion, into the manner in which they conduct them-selves as creative artists, seeking an antidote in the uncensured andoften unbridled display of their personal sentiments and aspirations. Italmost appears that the modem writer becomes a writer preciselybecause he senses an antagonistic environment, and a radical oppositionbetween what he assumes for himself and his observations in an alien

and inconsistent world.Little wonder, then, that contemporary Europe and indeed the

Americas, are convulsed by a fundamental restlessness which is acutelyconspicuous in the world of educational institutions. Berkeley, theLondon School of Economics and Nanterre, once uknown to thegeneral public, have become household names in virtue of the students’

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adamant refusal to accept the course of events as dictated by Universityauthorities. The upheaval in the classroom and the lecture theatreillustrates clearly the adolescent’s resistance to conforming a priori toopinions and judgements advocated by his elders, a phenomenonespecially apparent in the relatively new fields of sociological andpolitical theory, where the student’s viewpoint acquires the same

validity as the teacher’s, and in many cases overrides it. Undoubtedly,the basic point at issue is quite simply the concept of authority,increasingly contested by a younger generation which can no longerunderstand any final justification for its existence.

At its deepest level, the concept of revolt may be interpreted in ametaphysical context, at least in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-turies. The genius of Western culture lies in the defiant attitude towardsauthority, and significantly that of God, rather than in a specific denialof the existence of that authority. This defiant attitude is metaphysicalbecause it calls into question the whole purpose of man and creationand may be described as ’le mouvement par lequel un homme se dressecontre sa condition et la creation tout entiere.’1 Whereas the

seventeenth-century rationalist would argue, along with Descartes,’Cogito ergo sum’, and the eighteenth-century materialist and empiricistwould state ’I observe, therefore I am’, the metaphysical rebel defineshis being in terms of universal protest and refusal. He opposes anemphatic ’No’ to God, unable to construct a system of thought on whatinfinitely surpasses him. This categorical ’No’ finally fragments itself,invading all the various areas of the modem existence of the West.

Now, we may quite legitimately ask ourselves what have educationaland religious values to do with art. The answer seems to be twofold.Firstly, it is quite evident that, by widening one’s considerations uponthe notion of revolt and stressing its diffusion and historical import-ance, one may speak of a tradition of revolt, however paradoxical thismay appear. Thus, the term ’traditional’ may no longer be applied soeasily to conventional ideologies since the points of reference for theseideologies are rapidly losing their significance. In contrast, references tothe concept of revolt are growing daily. Art forms part of this traditionof revolt, investing it with a challenging reality, which leads to thesecond point. Although one must view the profound transformationundergone by art within the general context of modern revolutionaryideologies, the most important factor to note is that, rather than beingset within this context, art has always tended to anticipate and predictthe changes to which society subsequently submits itself willy nilly.The artist has frequently regarded himself with pride as forming part of



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the vanguard of revolt, with the consequence that his major contribu-tion to modern thought is not simply his interpretation and restatementof the contemporary social and moral climate, but much more areaction to it. The artist maintains, with some justification, that heholds the key to future social and political developments, so that anexamination of the artist and his aims, in the rapidly evolving pattern ofsocial and political ideologies, allows us to see the theory and practiceof revolt at its most intense level. It may be very reasonably argued thatthe supreme contribution of a Dostoevsky or a Nietzsche to modernthought lies in their astonishing prophetic insight into the fascist

concentration-camp mentality, and the tyrannical ideology accompany-ing it.

It seems beyond doubt that the most striking feature of the modemthinker, and here we assume Romanticism as the historical and literarypoint of departure for the definition of the term ’modem’, is the illfeeling and antagonism existing between himself and society, the worldand finally God. In modem existentialist terms, the artist feels alien-ated, cut off. The number of expatriate writers in modern Europe andAmerica furnishes a very practical demonstration of this alienation. G.B. Shaw, Scott Fitzgerald, Miguel de Unamuno, Samuel Beckett,Eug6ne Ionesco, Thomas Mann and Juan Ram6n Jimenez are just a fewof the writers who chose to renounce their respective societies becausethey felt a radical incompatibility with them. This kind of self-imposedexile may be explained by a sense of depersonalization in a bewilderingand complex consumer society, the anonymous community built onmachine-like administration and mass production, and the basic impulseto resist the general tendency which some, including Nietzsche andCarlyle, would call the ’herd instinct’. One could, of course, maintainthat the artist deliberately alienates himself in virtue of his relativelyegocentric behaviour and psychology, and will therefore act differently,perhaps even on principle, from the rest of society. Furthermore, thethinkers who choose to live in another country feel less inhibited in a

strange country where they are not known and where they possess nomore than a ’foreigner’s licence’.

The modern recalcitrant artist frequently seeks self-realization in

solitude and even the ascetic life, eschewing the material ease andspiritual comfort dispensed by an indulgent Church. As a consequence,the exaggerated self-denial and puritanical austerity of Kierkegaard,Carlyle, Nietzsche and Unamuno stand as a permanent indictment ofspiritual slothfulness, for all the alleged irreligion of the latter three.They claim the right to express themselves against an impoverished



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community bereft of ideals, and it is exactly this individualism whichlinks so many disparate writers in a common literary and social stra-tegy. Revolt constitutes for the rebel artist, and here we must extendthe list to embrace Byron, Ibsen, Dostoevsky and the two Lawrences,not only a major intellectual and spiritual passion, but also a stimulusto participate actively and emphatically in the metamorphosis of theirrespective societies. This stimulus inheres in every individual gifted withthe creative impulse, with the result that there exists very often a truerelationship between the rebel, the artist and the leader of society, or inNietzschean language, the superior being, the Obennensch.

The contemporary artist defines himself, not so much by his ownideals, but against those of collective endeavour, and in this sense, he ismuch more Nietzschean than Marxist. The very paradoxical element inthe artist’s revolt is that, while the term ’revolt’ appears to suggest aMarxist concept, its true motivation lies in the fascist vision of life. TheNietzschean hero emphasizes the personal and individual revolt overagainst the collective revolt, the literature of which forms the basis ofTrotsky’s Literature and Revolution. The philosopher/artist does notyield his personal identity to the gregarious ideal which represents forhim no more than a sterile pursuit. He tends to propound the fascistviewpoint through the commital to the idea of a superior e’Iite, althoughin point of fact, he dissents from all political systems, just as he cleavesto social and religious unorthodoxy. The rebel artist prefers to adhereto an intensely personal attitude of rebellion which keeps him per-manently on the periphery of commununal existence.

In the strictly social context, the artist’s thirst for freedom and

individuality may be viewed in its most stark form as a radical antidoteto the mentality of the totalitarian state, heralded by Hegelian system-building, and to all the rationalist philosophies which cannot tolerateunorthodox behaviour and thought. The contemporary artist, and hereDostoevsky provides the supreme example, together with his mostfervent admirer Albert Camus, denounces the political and meta-

physical implications of the Hegelian absolutist state, precisely becauseit deprives the individual of what he cherishes above all else, that is hisfreedom. Dostoevsky’s The Devils and The Brothers Karamazocv, likeCamus’s La Peste and L’Homme Revolte, contain a prolonged indict-ment of the growing menace of the exclusive mentality because heneeded political and religious freedom as the ultimate condition forartistic creation. When the political revolutionary Shigalyov in TheDevils states: ’Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrived at unlimited

despotism’,2 he not only anticipates the principles of the Grand Inquisi-



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tor in The Brothers Karamazov, but also, and this aspect seems ofcrucial importance, he underscores the problem of social and politicaluniformity, to the ruthless exclusion of the individual’s aspirationscentralized in creative activity. This uniformity must finally and in-evitably open out on to social and political despotism which, by its verynature, cannot admit of unorthodoxy or deviation on the part of thecreative thinker. Shigalyov, the Grand Inquisitor, Hegel and Marx, aswell as more modern figures such as Camus’s character Caligula, all

point to the same levelling process of system-building in the name ofreason which, ironically enough, eliminates the individual’s capacity tothink independently. Such is the thesis that lies at the genesis ofCamus’s L’Homme Revolte, and it is precisely the antithesis of in-flexible authority and individualism which forms the vital link betweenDostoevsky and Camus.

In the politico-literary field, the rebellious artist wishes, like theanarchist revolutionary, to create a new society and a new order whichmust yield immediately to a fresh set of circumstances, in a process ofinfinite renewal and redevelopment. Such is the essence of freedom.This idea is contained in Rdgis Debray’s Revolution dans la Revolu-tion ? which suggests a surpassing of Marxist ideology and all traditionalleft-wing thinking, since it underlines the necessity for a permanentrevolution, an eternally renewable revolt. The act of revolt, whether itbe political or metaphysical, as in Ivan Karamazov’s case, loses its

significance if it leads to a static condition, and this is precisely whatattracts the most recent of political revolutionaries such as Che Guevaraand Fidel Castro. The metaphysics of political revolt posits an unendingand unchangeable rejection of things as they are and as they will be.

It is self-evident that the traditional Marxist ideology militates infavour of the transformation of society, and of progress towards a newset of social and even spiritual conditions. As far as the concept ofrevolution is concerned, Marx embarked on nothing unusual, althoughthe manner in which he proposed revolutionary activity should takeplace seems of overriding importance, for it underlines practical andeven creative activity, the virile subjugation of the world. As opposed toAristotle and the numerous Greek writers of the classical period whoadvocated domination of the world by increased knowledge, and scien-tific and philosophical discovery, Marx propounded the theory accord-ing to which the individual can change the world order, by sheer dint ofwill power and the sense of social indignation. It is exactly the creative,material aspect of the rebel that distinguishes him as a typically con-temporary figure, since, unable to tolerate anything but movement



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towards a new order, he feels obliged to reflect the modem obsessionwith revolution. Thus, although Marx never wrote a treatise onaesthetics or literature as a whole, he does suggest a radical associationbetween literature and the revolutionary aspects of society. Indeed, oneof his principal strictures related to capitalism is that it does not

promote the highest and fullest development of the artistic urge, and inmany cases it has expressed an overt hostility to artistic attitudes. Itmay be argued in Marx’s favour that many modem artists do, in pointof fact, write or paint as an act of protest and revolt against capitalistsociety. Arther Miller’s Death of a Salesman is an excellent case in

point. Yet, assent to Marx’s opinions terminates here. While capitalism,bourgeois complacency, mediocre and comforting judgements, help toengender the feeling of indignation in the individualistic writer, they doat least permit an expression of dissent. Marxist ideologists who havepronounced themselves on the relationship between literature and

society, such as Lenin, Trotsky and Sartre (Qu’est-ce que la Littera-ture ? ) have hardened the communist viewpoint on art into an inhibit-ing force. Lenin evoked the whole question of the communist party andits duty to orientate and foster particular types of ’social realism’,emphasizing that there does of social necessity exist a special kind ofreality which mirrors material progress. Trotsky carries Marxist logic toits ultimate conclusion in his analysis of literature (see Literature andRevolution), when he argues emphatically that literature must at allcosts serve the revolutionary cause at a purely political level. This

explains the vehement indictment that Malraux’s so-called revolution-ary novel Les Conquérants provoked in Trotsky whose article ’LaRevolution etranglee’3 insists upon the social contribution he expectsfrom art. In his reply ’Reponse a Trotsky’, published in the same issueof the Nouvelle Revue Française, Malraux declares that he wrote aboutthe 1927 revolution in Canton, and the general strike in Hong Kong,purely as an artist and an individual who happened to find himself insympathy with the communist cause at the time. While associatinghimself with certain dissident, extreme left-wing views, Malraux hasalways been at pains to stress his abstention from the image of the artistattempting to stir the social conscience of his readers. He describes

revolutionary situations, to be sure, but in terms of the individual, andthis is why Garine, the protagonist in Les Conquérants, proves so

enigmatic for Trotsky. Garine not only refuses to adhere to partydiscipline but even goes so far as to display anti-communist tendencies,despite the centrality of his post as leader of the communist propa-ganda machine. In other words, Garine, like his author, is ever ready to



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assist his fellow sufferers in armed struggle against the oppressor, butnot to the detriment of his own personality. The most striking featureof Garine is that he cloaks a very strong fascist lust for domination and

power by an unconvincing identification with communism. In short, heis anything but a communist. He remarks:

It is not the absence of justice in society which affects me, but somethingdeeper, the impossibility of giving my allegiance to a social form, whatever itis. I am a-social as I am an atheist, and in the same way.4 4

The plain fact is that, for all his communist sympathies, and hisdedicated opposition to fascism (he defended Dimitrov and Thalmannin the famous Reichstag fire trial in 1934), Malraux discovered a deepincompatibility between art and social revolution. That is to say, whilerevolutionary politics supply the tension and chaotic atmosphere forMalraux’s novels, the kind of revolution that he proposes is grounded inindividual regeneration over against all societies, norms and customs,however impractical this regeneration may be, since it is only byreference to the individual that the idea of artistic creation assumes itsfullest meaning.

It has now become a commonplace that many writers of a com-mitted communist persuasion, while initially channelling their com-passion for the oppressed and the disinherited through allegiance to theparty, cannot sustain the discipline that the party requires of them. Atthe same time a proper and recognizable identification with the socialistcause imparts to their thought a great density and ethical persuasive-ness. For example, Dostoevsky’s revolutionary spirit would never haveplumbed such unsuspected depths in the realm of metaphysics if he hadnot been involved in certain dissident political groups. Yet, his artistictemperament could only have flowered following the rupture withthese groups. Unamuno, Malraux, Andr6 Breton, Koestler, Alberti,Cemuda, Orwell and Berdyaev, as well as many others, evince ananalogous and even whole-hearted indebtedness to the communist causein their earlier years, but are significantly forced to renounce marxismwhen it intervenes in their personal choice in self-expression and self--recreation in art. The most curious quirk of fate is apparent in suchcountries as the Soviet Union where a most deeply rooted notion ofrevolution becomes entirely inconsistent with the concept of a con-tinued revolution at a personal and artistic level, hence the persecutionof writers of unquestionable merit such as Boris Pasternak and Alexan-der Solzhenitsin.



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Clearly, there are two kinds of revolution in the realm of art, andthey have to be distinguished carefully. The one concerns the authorwho, according to Trotsky in his Literature and Revolution, cannot butspeak of the political revolution as the centre of his literary impulse,either using it as part of the plot, or translating the new proletariatconsciousness of revolt arising from the revolution. The other kind ofrevolution which one should strictly call ’revolt’, possesses a much

greater depth and permanency, for it combines all the rebellious ele-ments contributing to creativity in man. In this second sense, Trotskyseems very wide of the mark when he remarks that ’there is no

revolutionary art as yet’.5 Art as a form of rebellion has always existedbut, of course, it has probably assumed its proper shape only in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. Revolution and revolt must ulti-

mately be defined as two antithetical notions, the incompatibility ofwhich is most conspicuous in the communist-fascist dialectic whichforms the basis of most of our twentieth-century thinking. Revoltimplies fascism as we see it in Nietzsche, the prototype of the dissentingartist who refuses to consent to the revolutionary spirit of communismbecause it devitalizes and depersonalizes man. There exists a major,undisputable dichotomy between the ideology of revolt and the charac-ter of political revolution, the former stressing personal expression andthe latter immersion in the collective, supine service of mankind.

The dichotomy becomes most patent if we consider Trotsky’s ideason the future of art under the aegis of the revolution which, he asserts,will finally eliminate the need for struggle, with the result that a kind ofperfect stylization in construction, and an intimate reflection of thematerial, will be the goals. Nothing can be further from the vision ofthe rebel/artist who, throughout the contemporary period, avoids for-mal art, relegating materialism to a secondary level, as he conquers it byprojecting his own idealist image onto the world. Trotsky is certainlycorrect when he affirms that the revolution cannot live with roman-

ticism, for if in some superficial manner they appear synonymousterms, fundamentally they are quite dissimilar. The intriguing feature inthe historical development of modern Europe is that the creative artist,while once able to identify himself with the socialist revolutionaryideal, has shifted his emphasis increasingly from a social or outer changeto an inner one. The revolution undergone by the nation state hasobviously produced a recoiling effect on the individual artist whocannot allow his personality to be contaminated by the gregariousmovement of plebeian society, characterized by the sole idea thatcollective man must be the sole master. It is significant that the artistic



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movement against socialist ideologies really assumed a well defined

shape in the nineteenth century, and that it served as a central rallying-point for many giants of European literature, including Dostoevsky,Carlyle, Nietzsche and Unamuno. They railed against the elevation ofthe herd instinct, in favour of a high and more aristocratic form ofprotest, and cannot be considered as bourgeois reactionaries, which isTrotsky’s interpretation. Indeed, the writers quoted above are, in manyways, classless writers, for they are not really concerned with whatbinds men together, but with what makes them great and unique.Revolt suggests differences and a superior mentality, while revolution islinked to uniformity and impatience, for all Trotsky’s contrary asser-tions. The Russian critic sees revolution as contributing to an essentiallynew biological type, rising up on a plane with Aristotle, Goethe andMarx, just as the French communist theoretician Roger Garaudy, nowdefected from the party due to the Soviet rape of Prague, saw theRussian industrial worker appreciating the delicate and fragile art ofPushkin, a view he expressed at a lecture in Besangon in 1958.

Trotsky maintains that the new proletariat will assume a ’beautiful’form so that it is possible to speak of an aesthetic of revolution, buthere again, this aesthetic involves dogmatic principles regarding literarycomposition and ideological formulae. An aesthetic of revolt is, on thecontrary, less easily definable, in so far as it arises from personaljudgements and perceptions, and assumes more extreme forms such asSurrealism and Absurd Theatre which escape rational definition alto-

gether.Of course, whether one distinguishes between revolution and revolt

matters little if we regard the modern era as one essentially afflicted bya loss of transcendence. For centuries, a benevolent deity had been feltto preside over the affairs and development of mankind, guaranteeingthe continuity of certain values such as honesty, love, decency and soon, maintaining the status quo, which left the populace irremediablydestitute and the aristocracy enjoying the fruits of privilege, a situationabruptly terminated by the revolutionary era. As Trotsky argued, whenthere is no other way out, we must have revolution. What occurred

during the French revolution heralded an unprecedented succession ofrevolts throughout Europe for the following sixty years. It is significantto note, however, that the French revolution was originally inspired bythe rational and temperate elements of the ancien rogime, and thatleaders such as Mirabeau and Mounier, keeping faith in the forces ofmoderation and reason, allowed themselves to be overtaken by mob-rule and a proletariat both starved and brutalized by neglect. The



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essential feature in the closing decades of the eighteenth century is themounting feeling of discontent which not only manifested itself in asocial and political context, but also in philosophy and literature. Thisdiscontent assumed the shape of a double-edged sword commonlyknown as Revolution and Romanticism. Whether political revolutionpreceded the romantic movement in literature or vice versa does notreally matter, for they are expressions of one and the same spirit ofrevolt, by which man realized he was essentially on his own, and had noone else to consult for bettering his lot. Political revolution and theromantic movement in literature go hand in hand, so that the lattermay even be explained in terms of revolutionary politics. Byron,Mickiewicz and his Polish compatriot Slovaki saw revolution as thepractical demonstration of the poetic ideal, with the result that theirpoetry is filled with social strife and conflict, national messianism, andthe urgent desire to deliver the oppressed in the grand, apocalypticmanner.

A consideration of the interaction between political revolt andliterature seems indispensable in the understanding of the culturaldevelopment of Europe during the opening decades of the nineteenthcentury. Indeed, it has become one of the principal leitmotifs in theliterature of the past two hundred years. For example, Byron, who wasprobably the first distinguished writer to seek permanent inspiration inrevolutionary politics, indulged in insurrectional activities to the detri-ment of his career as man of letters. The most salient feature of the

English poet’s verse and letters is precisely the constant urge to engagehimself in the social and political disturbances of his epoch. On his ownadmission, these disturbances exercised a determining and lasting in-fluence on his concept of the poet, whom he saw quickened by theideals of military heroism and sheer virility. After commenting uponthe political agitation in Ravenna where he played a major role in therevolt of that town, Byron wrote to his friend Mr Moore: ’And now letus be literary, a sad falling off, but it is always a consolation.’6 Byron’shonourable, if not glorious, death at Missolonghi, where he spent hislast months in support of the Greek cause of independence from theTurkish yoke, was interpreted by his fellow romantics as the highestand noblest of actions, and remained a challenge to all the liberal andrevolutionary thinkers of the nineteenth century.

The most arresting characteristic of Byron, as far as the presentstudy is concerned, resides in his genius for expressing the revolutionaryideal in literary terms. The impressive combination of military com-mander and poetical craftsman invests his life with an extraordinarily



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rich unity, for he sought to live what he wrote, and to write what helived. Byron created a lavish, new trend in literary endeavour, resentingthe sterile Voltairian belles-lettres that held sway in the eighteenth-century salon. Eschewing the wit and irony of effete classicism, hestrove after the dramatic and dangerous circumstance, consonant withhis notion of grandeur. Childe Harold, The Corsair, The Seige ofCorinth and Manfred were all born out of the fusion of the creative

impulse and political revolt, for they were composed during his years oftravel and political commitment. Yet, the art of poetry, and this seemsconspicuously relevant, enabled Byron to carry his awareness of rebel-lion beyond the local and the immediate, however real and pressing,because it entailed an allegory of representation in which the whole ofthe Western tradition of freedom is extolled. Revolution was elevated

by the English poet, through the alchemy of the imagination, into theinviolate realms of a sacred and perfect liberty. He established a newpattern of creative activity, emerging as a leader and prophet for thewhole of an aspirant continental Europe. The Polish poet Mickiewiczfollowed his example, supporting identical causes, struggling for theliberation of the Italian states from their Austrian oppressor, and finallysuccumbing to death in Constantinople in 1855, as he was attemptingto consolidate a Polish legion in the conflict with the Tsar.

Since Byron’s time the authors who have created literature under thestimulus of political revolt have become legion. Dostoevsky, T. E.Lawrence and Andr6 Malraux have all built their literary and philo-sophical preoccupations on the notion of political insurrection. Inparticular, Malraux, directly inspired by The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,has used the concept of revolt against civic authority as the centralforce in the composition of two of his novels, namely Les Conquerantsand La Condition Humaine. A communist fellow-traveller but intellec-

tually and artistically aloof, endowed with many of the traits associatedwith the romantic revolutionary, he describes the Chinese uprisings of1925 and 1927, so as to invest his novels with the tense atmosphere wehave now come to identify with the human condition. The revolu-tionary ideal forms the warp and woof of most of Malraux’s characters,their aspirations, conversations, and even the structural patterns in thenovels, because revolution shows men in an extreme situation wheredeath and suffering are likely to be imminent, which allows Malraux,for instance, to comment upon the human predicament in far moredramatic terms and imagery. The French novelist underlines the trau-matic experience of the ’lost generation’ following the First World War,seeing a Europe in ashes, deprived of all ideological impetus. He took an



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Eastern path in order to satisfy his passion for the transformation ofsociety, and more crucially, of man himself, not that he was particu-larly attracted to a communist form of government, as we have alreadynoted. Revolt became for Malraux the most convincing and authenticexpression of dissatisfaction, not only with the political uncertainties ofthe nineteen-twenties, in the wake of a fruitless carnage, but muchmore with the ’human condition’, a felicitous phrase he is alleged tohave coined as the watchword for the modem rebel, who sees in it thesuggestion of a bankrupt metaphysics and a sick society.

It would be appropriate, at this stage, to consider very briefly, in astrict historical context, the movement of political revolution, once ithad been set in motion by the dissolution of the old order in 1789. TheAustrian Prince Mettemich understood the real direction of this move-ment when he said of the year 1832, synthesizing the upheavals of theentire nineteenth century:

There is only one serious matter in Europe in 1832 and that is revolution ...social revolution which attacks the foundations of society.’ 7

Unfortunately, Metternich, like Talleyrand and Castlereigh, stressed areactionary policy in his Political Confession of Faith, holding that onlytotal obedience to the legitimate authority would contribute to thewell-being of Europe, and that compliance with the wishes of thepeople was an absurd thought. In other words, he perceived the radicalnature of political and social revolution, but invited disaster by refusingto prescribe a more liberal and democratic form of government. Thereis clearly no need to labour the point that this persistent autocraticmyopia was met with increasing violence, expressed by an unendingseries of uprisings in Europe.

Amid the turmoil of the early part of the nineteenth centuryoccurred a most extravagant and ambitious revolt that took place inRussia in 1825. It is significant because it anticipates the revolutionarytheories of Belinsky, Bakunin and Herzen, especially that of the latter,whose outlook was permeated by a nihilistic streak, and accounts forthe rebellious fervour gripping Dostoevsky’s characters, for instance.The Decembrist movement, as it is called, was led in Northern Russiaby a Colonel Muraviev whose modest intention was the establishmentof a constitutional monarchy. The other leader was Paul Pestel, inspiredby the dream of a democratic republic. Despite the idealism andgenerosity of their aims, the uprising was ruthlessly and characteristic-ally crushed by Nicholas I who pursued a policy of stagnation and



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oppression unrivalled by any regime after Peter the Great. The pur-suance of serfdom, and the maintenance of a rigid monarchy adamantlyneglectful of the needs of the peasantry, were only secured by therepression of the more liberal and enlightened elements in Russian

society, shattered by the nihilists who gained ground in Russia in thesecond half of the nineteenth century.

In the first half of the last century, then, revolution was in the air.The dissident spirit owed much to the rise to power of NapoleonBonaparte who, apart from the mythical dimension he achieved in hisown life-time, accomplished the very practical aim of carrying politicaldissent to every corner of Europe, albeit under French command. Inmany cases, revolution broke out in the form of a national insurrection,which has parallels in our own age, since each country took on thefeatures governing the temperament of that country. Greece, Franceand Belgium were all shaken by successful revolts in 1830, while thePolish revolt against the Tsar in the same year achieved little of

immediate benefit. The downfall of Louis Philippe, in the France of1848, provoked a further series of rebellions acquiring such far-reachingconsequences that this particular year has been justifiably called thegrand year of revolution. The flame of revolt spread speedily from Paristo Sicily, Naples, Rome, Turin, Leghorn, Pisa, Florence, Milan, Venice,Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Berlin. It was precisely during the 1848uprisings that the Italian patriot writer Guiseppe Mazzini began torealize the concept of Italian unity, by transforming Rome into arepublic, short-lived to be sure, and putting the Pope to flight, therebycontributing to the continued diminution in the papacy’s temporal, andby extension, spiritual authority. Significantly Karl Marx, the mostimportant figure in the nineteenth century, according to ProfessorIsaiah Berlin, published his Manifesto of the Communist Party just afew weeks before the Paris revolt of 1848, arriving in the French capitala day after its outbreak, only to be promptly expelled to Brussels, andfrom there to London.

The very precarious nature of nineteenth-century political thought isfurther illustrated by the severe repercussions felt in Central andSouthern America, where, strange to say, a number of nations accededto independence well before their European parents. Confronted with areactionary and non-national Europe, the Central and Southern Ameri-can states, animated by the precedent of their giant northern neigh-bour, threw off the yoke of their European masters. Gleefully bent onharassing their European rivals, the British intervened in support of thecause of South American independence. In consequence, an expedi-



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tionary force was sent to help in the Argentinian revolt of 1806.Furthermore, Cochrane liberated Peru and Brazil, while it fell upon theindigenous revolutionaries Bolivar and Iturbide to free Columbia andMexico respectively. When Bolivar died in 1830, the Southern part ofthe American continent was politically autonomous, largely due to theconnivance of the Anglo-Saxon peoples who already enjoyed a largemeasure of democratic government, and saw the possibility of increasedtrade with newly created states.

Although these details are especially familiar to the historian, theydo serve to underline the political trauma that new social pressures wereproducing at all levels of European civilization. The details, admittedlybrief and summary, demonstrate the breadth and depth of this traumawhich has persisted into the present century with the Russian revolu-tion, and that of numerous Asian, African and South American

countries. What is most relevant to the present study is that any writer

attempting to interpret and describe the passions and aspirations of hisage, will often and inevitably choose to express them through themedium of revolution and change, although this medium need not

necessarily possess a particular social or political connotation. More-over, it has now become traditional to expect the eminent artist toreact against the preceding or contemporary generation, as in Russiawhere the ’men of the sixties’ such as Chemyshevsky, profoundlycommitted to the socialist cause of man, denied the validity of aestheti-cism and romantic idealism which constituted the highest enthusiasmsof the ’men of the forties’, Herzen for instance. Turgenev’s Fathers andChildren, placing the nihilist Bazarov and his friend Arkady Kirsanov inopposition to the latter’s father, is a good literary case in point.Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground contains an analogous rejectionof the Schilleresque idealist values of the eighteen-forties which markthe highest cultural point in the first half of nineteenth-century Russia.The very obvious conclusion to be drawn from the Europe of thenineteenth century is that the revolutionary ferment represents, at a

political and social level, the most immediate and vivid expression of amuch wider phenomenon. The rise of the revolutionary ideologiesreceived its initial impetus from the rational dissolution affecting philo-sophical and literary developments, and from the pronounced declineof Christianity as a cultural and spiritual force. In short, revolutionforms an integral part of the nineteenth-century way of life, notwith-standing its outer veneer of Victorian respectability, and shows no realsigns of slackening its pace in the present day.

The political aspects of revolution in the nineteenth century have,



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until recently, received much more critical emphasis than the meta-physical malaise that first invaded Europe, in a comprehensive manner,in the romantic and post-romantic periods. Thus, political revolution isno more than a symptom of this malaise, although it has attractedmuch attention, independently of literary considerations, presumablybecause it tends to be more spectacular, and impresses more readily, inaddition to which man seems to have convinced himself that anypolitically stable situation is unsatisfactory. Ultimately, the motives forsocial reform and change lie in the attitudes of Kierkegaardian Angstand mal du siècle, a chronic anxiety accompanying the disappearance ofthe traditional ideologies, and the desire for an entirely fresh creation.The most radical form of revolt has evolved through the romantic artist,given to the quest for concepts which he senses a priori are deprived ofall firm bases. The romantic writers, according to Maurice Bowra in TheRomantic Imagination, gave utterance to a profound preoccupationwith the transcendent world, and the order it implies, but this worldwas far removed from the Christian notion of God and formal theology.What they did believe in is the creative imagination of the individualendowed with extra-sensory perception which provided them with anaccess to some indeterminate beyond. Byron was probably the soleexception to this, and may consequently be considered as one of thefirst nihilists proper, although nihilism was not advanced as a coherentideology until the eighteen-sixties in Russia. Bowra argues that Byron,while sharing many of the subjects and tastes of the romantics, deniedthe importance of the imagination in the establishment of a transcen-dent order. In very sharp contrast, Shelley, Lermontov, Kleist andEspronceda for instance, were united in their recognition of the meta-physical revolution that was taking place in Europe, and which hadbegun by the rationalists’ attack upon the Church, led by the Frenchsceptical ’philosophes’, Diderot, D’Holbach and D’Alembert. The

romantics carried this attack much further in that, besides rejecting thespiritual propositions of the Church, they manifested a profound dis-illusion regarding the rationalist substitute which the ’philosophes’offered as the panacea for the world’s problems. The decline of Chris-tianity as a formal and orthodox institution was quickly and unavoid-ably followed by a crisis of reason which had in fact partly helped tofurnish the Church with a solid, propositional foundation; witness StThomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

Of course, it would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the realineffectiveness of the reasoning faculties had not produced a metaphysi-cal impasse before the romantic period. Anti-rationalist philosophies



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have always existed because they form part and parcel of man’s mentaland emotional apparatus, but what does distinguish romanticism fromall other periods of Western cultural history is the penetrating andcollective realization that the world is apparently not controlled by asingle, intelligible power. Romanticism does not simply suggest therebirth of ideas, the proliferation of new literary genres, and theproclamation of a new era of social justice, all of which are, of course,the positive side of the movement. The negative side that seems muchmore noteworthy is that, in the name of romanticism, numerous writersgrouped themselves in order to deliver, for the very first time, a

collective onslaught on the traditional notions contained in metaphysi-cal investigation. The true revolt implied in romanticism lies in its

fundamental antithesis to system-building. Consequently, it may be

safely argued that ever-increasing repercussions were being produced bythe belief that the world, far from depending upon an orderly pattern,is a mere product of insensible chance, and that, reduced to a purelypersonal level, individual experience must be meaningless. The conspi-cuous lack of all definitive meaning lies at the root of the confusion andagitation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Russiannihilism, for instance, was the logical outcome of this anti-rationalistattitude. The romantic artist translates this all-embracing, spiritualdevastation, not by pining away in amorous language, which is hisdistorted traditional image, but by emphasizing his own creative in-stinct, and elevating himself as the final arbiter of moral, literary andmost important of all, metaphysical values.

Romanticism developed its identity by stressing the supreme import-ance of freedom, the spirit of which assumed a multitude of forms,constitutional with Mirabeau, political with Danton, practical withCobden and Cavour, militant with Cochrane and Garibaldi, and poeticwith Schiller and Shelley. Scornful of the old order which had, after all,survived many hundreds of years, the romantics saw freedom as the

new watchword capable of dissolving the carefully delineated classicalconcepts of form and genre. In France, the publication of VictorHugo’s Preface to his play Cromwell underscores the radical reactionliterary circles were feeling, in relation to the classical unities of Racine,and the reasonableness and moderation of Voltaire and Diderot. In

audacious, momentous language, Hugo writes:

There are no rules or models; or rather there are no other rules save the generallaws of nature which hover over all art* 8



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Arrogantly hostile to the concept of genre, Hugo praises those plays inGreek tragedy which are embellished by the sense of the comic. Theconclusive point in this romantic mingling of the genres is that thenineteenth century witnessed such a radical dissolution of the literarygenres and types that it is no longer possible to invoke artistic canons asa means of justifying the structure of a work of art, the development ofcharacter, and an impartial, coherent description of the world.

The romantic rejection of the divine and temporal order of thingswas accompanied, quite consistently, by a sense of social chaos whichthe French poet Alfred de Musset ascribed to the transitional phasebetween the old and the new. Reflecting upon society at the end ofNapoleon Bonaparte’s reign, Musset wrote in 1836 that young peoplehad been caught between a past destroyed forever and the ’dawn of animmense horizon, the first gleam of the future’.9 He proceeds to speakof the nineteenth century as

... one which separates the past from the future, which is neither the one northe other and resembles both at the same time, and where one does not know,at each step one takes, if one is walking on a seed or a ruin.’ 0 0

This chaos is reflected, in all its lurid and apocalyptic disorder, by thewrithing, monstrous figures of Goya (Satan Devouring his Children, forinstance), and the illustration by Fuseli for Thomas Gray’s The Bard, inwhich the poet sees himself apart from the rest of humanity, standinghigh on a wind-swept rock and surveying torrential streams covered ingloom.

Needless to say, a strong sense of the diabolical forms the kernel ofthis vision of disorder which informs much revolutionary thinking, forSatan himself must obviously be considered as the very first figure to begripped by the denial of supreme authority. It is precisely the Satanicalelement in revolutionary politics which gives the theme of revolt inliterature its most fascinating aspect. Dostoevsky’s writings are the mostvivid illustration of this particular point. Although the Russian novelistbecame less politically active in his later years, at the time of the

writing of his major works in fact (1864-80), he had been engaged inrevolutionary politics, if only in a dilettante way, an involvement whichled to his implication in the Petrashevsky affair (1848), and three years’exile that he spent in appalling conditions in a Siberian penal settle-ment. One of the reasons why the novel The Devils assumed the form itdid is that Dostoevsky perceived, with an unusually uncanny penetra-tion, a powerful, indissoluble link between religious fanaticism or

madness, and the political revolutionary. Kirillov, we are informed by



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one of Dostoevsky’s commentators, 1 is committed to seditious activi-ty as a result of a strong religious motivation. He lives in the ’House ofFilippov’, in Bogoyavleskaya Street, both names containing a religiousconnotation. Furthermore, other inhabitants of the ’House of Filippov’have a similar passion for revolt at both a metaphysical and politicallevel. Again, two of Dostoevsky’s previous novels, Crime and Punish-ment and The Idiot suggest a very marked link between the two kindsof revolt. It is very significant to observe that Kirillov is incontestablythe prototype for Malraux’s revolutionaries, Hong (Les Conquerants),and especially Tchen (La Condition Humaine) whose suicidal terrorismborders on the mystical experience: witness the scene where he at-

tempts to kill Chiang Kai-shek by throwing himself under a car as heclutches a bomb.’ ’ The novels of Dostoevsky and Malraux demonstratevividly how dependent the political revolutionary is upon his meta-

physical impulse and how, in fact, the longer the spiritual problem ofGod’s existence remains unsolved, the more fanatical the terrorist

becomes. Tchen becomes a political terrorist precisely in so far as hesuffers from a total lack of transcendence. As he states to the mission-

ary Pastor Smithson: ’What does one do if one believes in neither Godnor Christ? 13 Tchen can only forget his metaphysical problem by thepolitical acts of murdering a businessman at the beginning of LaCondition Humaine, and by blowing himself up in the hope of assassin-ating the Chinese military commander. The problem obsessing Mal-raux’s Tchen is exactly that which obsesses Kirillov who commitssuicide for both political and metaphysical reasons.

Dostoevsky and Malraux repeat and expand, in very analytical terms,an idea that is implicit in Byron’s poems, although the distinctivefeature of the two novelists is their constant and deliberate preoccupa-tion with the metaphysical significance of the revolutionary instinct.Moreover, no writer before the advent of the Russian novelist had

analysed in such arresting and authentic imagery, the spiritual implica-tions of political dissent, and in this sense, Dostoevsky is probably themost representative novelist of the nineteenth century, at least as far asthe concept of change is concerned. He exhibits an active recognition ofthe spiritual dilemma involved in the overthrow of the temporal order,as though political dissent and terrorism are the practical consequencesof a much deeper, personal disturbance. Political change becomes, inDostoevsky’s view, the privileged method by which the individual mayconceal, if only momentarily, the unique unchanging problem inherentin all existence, that is ’Why do men not commit suicide? ’ Such is thequestion raised by Kirillov in conversation with Stavrogin and later, in



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the same novel, with Peter Verkhovensky, as well as by Albert Camuswho regards it as the one outstanding obsession upon which all ethicalcodes must hang. Camus’s Le Mythe de Sisphe and L’Homme Révoltémerely explore, in more analytical style, the questions of murder andsuicide raised by Kirillov and many other Dostoevskian characters forthat matter.

The fact that the modem artist sees the need for revolt in societysuggests that man has moved from an essentially passive state to anactive one. In other words, the concept of revolt is indissolubly linkedto the call to action or movement. Revolt, if it is to survive, has to

prolong itself through some form of violent activity, for is it possible toposit the question of revolt, and then retire to a secluded spot and washone’s hands of the existential dilemma? To avoid some kind of violent

activity would be tantamount to the betrayal of the whole ethos behindrevolt, since the latter deliberately seeks out action in order to realizeitself more fully. Active revolt constitutes a kind of intermediary valuebetween two self-excluding realities: the conscience and the world.Revolt is the mediator, argues Camus, because it deliberately provokesthe confrontation. Conversely, non-violence cannot indicate an attitudeof revolt but merely that of the conscience which remains unaffectedby the world, and even consents to its apparently illegitimate patternand order. The rebel will therefore act, not merely out of duty or evenambition, but from fidelity to the very sense of revolt. Camus writes:

What can the attitude of the rebel be? He cannot turn away from the worldand history without denying the very principle of his revolt, and he cannotchoose eternal life without resigning himself, in some way, to evil.’ 4

Action is indispensable to the conscience animated by the concept ofrevolt, because the defiant affirmation implied in every act of revoltdraws the individual from his solitude, places him in society, and

frequently provides him with his only reason for living.The contemporary value attached to the act is partially explained by

the disappearance of traditional modes of thinking, since what was onceconsidered as firm and unimpeachable evidence of some transcendentand, by extension, social order, has yielded to such a disquieting ebband flow that it is no longer possible to formulate ideas in a definitiveform. They have to be constantly reconsidered and restated until anidea becomes the result of a conquest or a struggle. The concept of theact draws the artist into combat with the material realities of his time,for he feels that his artistic impulse must affect the movement of

society at all costs. The creator prefers the process of creating to the



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static condition, since the perpetual act of creation, whether it be awork of literature or of the plastic arts, fills him with a sense ofexhilaration and liberation. Therefore, the continuous necessity forredeveloping an idea which, as soon as it is expressed, loses its originalvalidity, suggests that the act or the process of expression takes prece-dence over the idea itself. The creator desires unendingly the movementof creation as a refuge from the sterility of the fixed idea, and it is justthis unending movement that lends modern literature its youthfulardour. It is certainly no coincidence that Andr6 Gide, for instance,engrossed as he is in the association of creativity and movement,personifies this movement in the form of adolescent characters such asProtos and Lafcadio in Les Caves du Vatican

Clearly, the origins of the very real emphasis upon the act as theall-important gesture lie in the earliest revolutions of the modem era.We may safely assert that the French revolution represents the firstcollective attempt to translate feelings into deeds, not words. Revolu-tion demands of the individual that he submit himself to the disciplineof the act, which explains the immense importance of Marx in therealm of social dissidence. Starting from the premise that philosophyhad become separated from action until the advent of thinkers likeRoche, Hume and Bentham, Marx raised the deed to its highest philo-sophical level, viewing it as the supreme test in the conquest of eachand every situation. Isaiah Berlin comments

The nineteenth century contains many remarkable social critics and revolu-tionaries no less original, no less violent, no less dogmatic than Marx, but notone so rigorously single-minded, so absorbed in making every word and everyact of his life a means towards a single, immediate and practical end, to whichnothing was too sacred to be sacrificed. 1 5

Marx perceived the fundamental weakness of the paralytic rationalismof Leibniz and Descartes, since the abstract notions of honesty, truth,right and wrong were meaningless in his world of incalculable socialinjustice. The revolutionary path was the only means at man’s disposalfor acquiring both justice and meaning through the act it automaticallyimplied. The revolutionary principle unrealized through the act itselfproved futile to Marx who, for all the grim persecution he had toendure, the wretched years he spent in London, could not be deflectedfrom his Herculean task of delivering the world, by advocatingpassionate acts of terrorism in the cause of revolution. Needless to add,and this seems very important in the elaboration of a philosophy of theact, Marx was the product of a world in turmoil, in labour pains, about



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to bring forth an entirely new creation, for he arrived on the historicalscene at a time when Europe was witnessing an enormous increase inthe range, speed and complexity of events. For example, in less thanone hundred and fifty years, the population of Europe grew by morethan three hundred and fifty millions. Cities expanded at an unprece-dented rate, governments assumed ever-increasing powers, while newmodes of transport enabled huge armies to be conveyed to the centre ofwarfare. Revolutionary methods of commercial travel destroyeddistance as an insurmountable factor. Scientific discovery began toreveal a universe not governed by static conditions but mobile ones,according to which matter itself, even in the form of molecules, wasshown to be in constant and unending transformation. This geometricacceleration in speed and change naturally fostered the desire for

movement and essentially action, which informed revolutionarymethods with a greater violence and impressed upon literature anurgency and immediacy it had never known before. The Italian Mari-

netti’s collection of ten poems entitled Le Demon de la Vitesse providesa poetical extension of this mad thirst for speed and action. Marinettipursues a frantic course through space, eager even to sacrifice his life, asW. Starkie comments

... as a manifestation of the speed and vital impulse of our century. To such aman, motors, aeroplanes, engines of all sorts symbolize the attempt that is

being made to redeem mankind.’ 6

Aldous Huxley’s Faster Faster reflects the self-same passion for anever-increasing revolution of ideas through sheer speed. T. E. Lawrencefurnishes another recent example of an eminent thinker enmeshed in adesire so profound for the speed of the machine age that it finally killedhim.

In all the deep metamorphosis which makes of the nineteenthcentury the first comprehensive revolutionary era, the deed was ob-viously of utmost significance, while the romantics themselves becamedeeply imbued with an ideology of action. For instance, Goethe’s Faustdisplays an unusual belief in action as he transcends St John’s ’In thebeginning was the Word’ with ’In the beginning was the deed’, 17 anexclamation pointing to the eternal innocence of action, and the artist’sconstant intoxication with the act of creation which is eternally sur-passed and destroyed by successive acts of creation. A mere word,argues Goethe’s commentator Gray,18 cannot have such a great signifi-cance for the dynamic surge of activity may only be translated by theomnipotent deed. Faust sees himself borne into eternally new spheres



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of fervid activity, as he seeks the mysteries of the universe, that he ’mayknow what binds the world together’. Faust’s satanic thirst for know-ledge is linked to his irresistible thrust of will power that can only befully realized by the rejection and redevelopment of every moment intime. The newly found creed of action accounts for Goethe’s immenseadmiration for Napoleon, despite the disapproval of his master theDuke of Weimar. Napoleon served to synthesize the recently acquiredfruits of the French revolution, dispensed liberally across Europe, as hevanquished the reactionary governments of Prussia, Poland and theAustro-Hungarian Empire. Goethe revered the daemonic nature of

Napoleon who, for all the formidable opposition, carried out his will toconfer upon Europe a revolutionary form of government. The FrenchEmperor developed, as a consequence, into the model of the man ofaction for many literary figures who elaborated their own principles oftranscendency in the light of his power and daring in action. Stendhal’sLe Rouge et le Noir and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment developcharacters (Julien Sorel and Raskolnikov) who personify their author’sattraction for Napoleon, although nowhere in all literature may be seenthe equal of Byron’s awe and approval of the French military leader’sconquests. Napoleon cast a spell over Byron who, as we have alreadynoted, spurned the life of ease and happiness in favour of adventure andpolitical strife. Byron was quick to seize upon the identical initials forhis name and Napoleon’s (i.e. N.B.), for not only did he applaud theFrench commander but also considered himself as his rival, and even asa further incarnation of his genius and energy. Of course, Byron didexpress esteem for other military figures such as Wellington, Washing-ton and Bolivar, but they lacked the dark magic, and attractive lustre ofwill power that seemed to drive Napoleon. The basic point at issue hereis that, caught up in his love for horse-riding, boxing, swimming andrevolutionary warfare, Byron is at pains to stress his fondness of action,precisely because it implies a permanent preoccupation with the con-cept of revolution. Thus, he is able to write the following arrestingwords:

Action-action-action, said Demosthenes. Actions-actions, I say, and not wri-

ting, least of all, rhyme. Look at the querulous and monotonous lives of thegenus - except Cervantes, Tasso, Dante, Ariosto, Kleist, who were brave andactive citizens, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and some other of the antiques also -what a worthless, idle brood it is.’ 9

Byron informs us in his Letters that he ’swam the broad Hellespont’from Sestos to Abydos, after a failure the previous week, while he



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conquered the Tagus at its widest point at Lisbon .2 0 The feats ofremarkable endurance, and the permanent need for travel, confer uponByron’s poetry a very distinctive significance since he creates a kind ofpoetry in action. He lived the idea of the poet more convincingly andfully than any other writer, injecting unceasingly into his expression anincreased power and a search for action characterizing his whole life.For this very reason, he displayed a deep admiration for animals whichdo not intellectualize the feeling of strength and the surge of move-ment. Images of warfare, boats, and the sea permeate Byron’s writings,and even a ship laid up in dock is ’a grand poetical sight’.21 The Englishpoet lived in actions his personal sense of revolt against society, govern-ment and even literature. The poetry of Cain’s revolt meant nothing tohim unless he translated it into an armed struggle against unjustauthority. For the rebel artist, to refrain from action is the beginning ofdeath.

That Byron should be bent on living his poetry determined theextremely personal manner in which he interpreted historical events.Historical interest transcended the dry, academic manual, in his view,since it establishes a contact between his own vehement nature and the

passionate revolutionary spirit of all Europe. As Professor Knight pointsout in his book Lord Byron: Christian Virtues, Byron’s early poetryand later dreams were inspired by a very keen awareness of history, somuch so that the authentic and accurate details of the event surpassedthe poetical element. Yet, this awareness of history, in all its complexdetails, is shot through with a prophetic sense which lifts MarinoFaliero and Sardanapalus, for instance, from the local setting to a senseof the limitless progress that man can make through his own striving.Byron was probably the first great romantic to give literature import-ance as the expression of life as it is lived and suffered, as biographyand history. It is not possible to read Byron’s poetry meaningfullywithout following the events attending each circumstance of his

existence and that he strove to shape. Thus, the welter of biographicaldata in Byron’s life is a very necessary complement to Byron the poet.The commentators’ biographical interest in the English writer is there-fore by no means an accident, any more than is the same interest in thecolossal figures of Berlioz, Rousseau and Goethe.

The romantics emerge undoubtedly as the first group of thinkers tolay especial emphasis upon the act as the touchstone of life. They wrotewith humanity and social causes in mind, exalted by the vision of arevitalized Europe to be created by their active participation in themomentous events of the time. With the advent of romanticism, litera-



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ture suddenly acquired a pressing, urgent reality it had probably neverknown before, appealing to the personal life of the individual and

seeking to transform that life. The growing interplay between literatureand the raw material of the writer’s own existence, that is his environ-ment, has led inevitably to the development of existantialist philosophywhich, after all, is merely an extension of romanticism, albeit in a morespectacular and thrilling form. The existentialist’s most notable contri-bution to modern literature is precisely his romantic passion for the actas the sole method for justifying personal existence. The long develop-ment of romanticism culminating in Sartre’s concept of the act haswitnessed a gradual elimination of theories, beliefs and attitudes, and adefinite movement towards living itself, until literature offers an en-tirely new aspect: that of the exasperated and violent expression ofaction. The metamorphosis that European culture has undergone, fromthe stress on essence to the stress on existence, has meant that man nowrealizes himself through some form of physical activity, and notthrough reference to an absolute and detached being. Since suchnotions as God, order, reason, and even nature have been divested of allultimate meaning, man must create and plan his own existence, but theidea of creation entails a continuous movement, an unending act bywhich the individual projects his being against and beyond the world. Aphilosophy of the act ultimately signifies the permanent revolution ofsocial and moral values.

The main reason why existentialism has exerted such a popularappeal is that, while yet expressing a philosophical notion, it uses

concrete and living imagery accessible to the lay reader. All humanitycan appreciate the significance of the physical gesture. Indeed, all

humanity can participate in it and sense the thrill of its immediacy,which accounts for the current universal use of the term ’instant’ as acommercial attraction. The concept of ’instant’ suggests that reality isnot so much a purely subjective phenomenon as the romantics or eventhe existentialists would have us believe, but rather it relates the

subjective to the objective, just as matter and spirit have been dissolvedinto a single, indivisible unit. Activity helps the individual to achieve akind of synthesis of objectivity and subjectivity, and to cross what wasformerly considered an unbridgeable gap between reason and matter.The act becomes the unifying factor affording subjectivity a meaning,by virtue of its associations with the objective world.

The biography, or life of the man who, in existentialist terms, ’isborn, lives and dies’, has pervaded the narrative and dramatic fields ofart, because the more imaginative faculties lend themselves more readily



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to a direct emphasis on the physical gesture. This is why Andrd Malrauxstates in L’Espoir :

The whole of the end of the nineteenth century was passive; the new Europedoes seem to be building itself upon the act.2 2

Inspired by the vision of the Nietzschean overman, Malraux is probablythe first European novelist to emphasize the primacy of action in thewriter’s life as a method of authenticating ideas and theories. Althoughthe myths surrounding Malraux’s life have obviously blurred the truefacts of his exploits, it is beyond dispute that his novels of political andsocial revolution spring from living a very real encounter with danger.As far as Malraux is concerned, the act becomes the all-importantconcept since, as for Camus in the metaphysical sense, it is the tool ofrevolution and social change. Revolution is construed by Malraux as thehighest and most privileged form of the act. Furthermore, revolutioncontains the essence of the act, for as we have noted, it impliesunending movement. The very palpable reality of the act may beviewed in Malraux’s own life if we understand that he did not ‘find’

events, or in other words, they did not simply happen to him in apassive manner, but rather that he went in quest of them. He did notconsider revolution in a detached, submissive fashion, but took on anactive role, exposing himself to perils which had the function ofheightening his awareness of the act as a philosophical ideal. Althoughit is not altogether clear how far Malraux imperilled his life in theChinese uprisings, it is abundantly evident that he organized, in anadmirable manner, an International Air Squadron against Franco in theSpanish Civil War, and commanded a tank corps as Colonel Berger inthe invasion of France by the Germans in 1940. The legendary appealattached to the figure of Malraux lies in his treatment of the theme ofthe man of action who sustains, through the act, the honour of

manhood.Given Malraux’s viewpoint that modem culture is founded upon

physical activity, it is not surprising that he sees a link between writingand the very act of revolt, and this link proves to be an eminentlyorganic one. Just as writing a novel must be securely rooted in theconcept of action both in connection with character and the flow ofevents, so revolt itself assumes a lasting form only when it is clothed ina literary expression. On innumerable occasions, Malraux attaches thehighest importance to the concept of revolt only when it has beenrecorded. For instance, the social revolutionary Garine reflects on his



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own existence: ’Which books are worth writing except Memoirs? ’2 3

and relates this, on the following page, to a quotation originallyascribed to Napoleon, ’What a novel my life is! ’ While yet a minorcharacter in La Condition Humaine, Peï takes an important place in hisauthor’s eyes precisely because it falls upon him to report the death ofthe terrorist Tchen in his attempt on the life of Chiang Kai-shek.Similarly, Shade, the American journalist in L’Espoir witnesses scenesof warfare so as to present them to posterity and invest them with apermanent meaning. Again, the action in Hemingway’s novels and shortstories receives both a lasting quality and a certain dignity through theauthor’s very strict adherence to the act of war. Both Malraux and hisAmerican counterpart aim at the true description of what takes place,because the thirst for action gives them a strong, material sense ofplace, time and, most essentially, historical fact. The dictum Heming-way cherished all his life, ’The way it was’, aptly reflects both writers’desire to approach the event as closely as possible. Events streamthrough their novels in a pulsating movement, as though the authorsneed to escape the passivity and sluggishness of the very words they areusing. Thus, it cannot be said that Malraux’s novels or Hemmingway’sfor that matter, are built so much upon a series of scenes as upon aseries of images. The rapid, staccato transference from one image to thenext translates the imperative, constant necessity of the revolutionaryto destroy what he has just created. Malraux’s novels reveal a revengefulstreak regarding the nature of the universe and society, in the sense thathis use of words, scene construction, and violent imagery, correspondexactly to the political revolutionary who can only satisfy his fervourby a permanent and bewildering destruction of social values.

The true writer strives to acquire, argues the rebel artist, a new levelof consciousness and applies his will power to that end. This strivingmust be differentiated from the Darwinian concept of the survival ofthe fittest, in so far as the English scientist saw in the process of naturalselection an unconscious movement, lacking the personal drive of theNietzschean hero. The latter attaches an exclusive emphasis to hisconscious act above all else, denouncing the determinism of themachine age. Opposing the concept of the superior type inherent in theDarwinian theory of evolution, the rebel suggests a refusal to believe inman as a progressing species. He cannot consent to the view that naturalselection forms the real basis for the superior being, since he argues thatthe contrary is in fact taking place. Man, he contends, is subject to agreater risk of degeneracy than every before, relying increasingly as hedoes on the herd instinct, and the spectacle of greater political and



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social organization. It must be said, in support of this argument, thatnot only is man being lost in the political apparatus at a local or evennational level, but also at an international level, given the growingweight attached to the notion of ’power blocks’, according to whichEngland would no longer be governed from London, any more thanHungary or Czechoslovakia are governed from their respective capitals,or even a North American state from its local state capital. Thesovereignty of the individual is constantly subject to erosion, a fact thatjustifies the alarmist prophecies of Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Carlylewho did not predict the general raising of the standard of the humanspecies, but its opposite. Modem art, in all its guises, whether it beliterature, painting or sculpture, offers a persistent denunciation of thegeneral tendency towards group consciousness implying the ultimateimmoral act, by removing from man what gives him his particularindividuality.

The rise of socialism as a European and, in more recent years, as aworld force, has consequently been countered by a mounting resistanceon the part of the artist who cannot share Rousseau’s optimism foun-ded on the perfectibility and inevitable moral progress of mankind. Theartist finally repudiates the social ethic of optimism which transformsthe individual into a kind of non-entity, in the alleged interests of thebetterment, however indiscriminate, of society. What is designed toelevate the general level of society must unavoidably result in the

disappearance of the outstanding exception, a change the rebel fearsabove all else. We are reluctantly brought to the extraordinary paradoxof the necessity to defend the strong against the weak, and not theweak against the strong. The weak gather their forces into comprehen-sive units in an attempt to deny the strong individual his superiorpowers. Happiness and community harmony may indeed constitute theideals of the masses, but these ideals militate against the restless soul ofthe rebel who creates out of disharmony and dislocation. Against thegathering forces of socialism and all forms of totalitarianism, which aremoving towards the dehumanized condition of the individual, the rebelfollows a path of solitude as the unique expression of his artistic genius.The lure of adventure appeals more and more to him as he contem-plates a civilization bent on social prestige and financial profit. He triesunremittingly to discover in his art what is singularly human, whatcharacterizes him as a suffering individual; hence his crusading spiritand his gesture of defiance, and most important of all, his pride inputting the world and society in the wrong and stressing the rights ofthe individual.



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The highest forms of art have, in the past hundred and seventy years,played an indispensable role in the enlightenment and guidance of man.Art has no other ideal save that of the expression of the enduring andexpanding human spirit, although even this philosophical concept isfraught with the traditional values of decency, self-righteousness andso-called Christian charity. Briefly, what has occurred in the past twocenturies is that formal religious ideology was excised from philosophi-cal enquiry by the romantics who replaced it, in many cases, by acertain bourgeois spirit. The extreme notion of iconoclasm, inherent inromanticism, found this bourgeois ideology of realism and naturalismequally uncongenial, so that literature developed into a radically subjec-tive discipline related to the concept of revolution. Therefore, thefundamental difference between romanticism and current thought isthat, while the former contains the seeds of rebellion against social,political and metaphysical injustice (and these seeds grew into a sturdyflower), this flower, by virtue of excessive personal aattention, seems tobe decaying. The dramatic and permanent revolution involved in intro-spection has ended by leading man nowhere. This is why one of thelatest manifestations of rebellion in literature, the Absurd Theatre, isleading into a spiritual impasse typified by intense frustration. Thediscussion revolving around introspection and the question of nothing-ness seems to be sustained only by ingenious dramatic devices, and onehas the impression that it is no more than interesting that SamuelBeckett, for instance, is able to express the feeling of nothingness inWaiting for Godot, Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape, merely bychanging the technique. The moral to be drawn from all this is that

revolution for revolution’s sake, which is the rebel’s standpoint, mustprecipitate his downfall. The obsession with revolution inevitably opensout on to the destructive nature of nihilism.

One cannot discuss the theme of revolt in modern literature without

some discussion of nihilism as a politico-literary creed. As we have

already observed, nihilism first developed in Russia in the middle of thenineteenth century; Turgenev coined the word ’nihilist’ in Fathers andChildren which was published in 1862. Bazarov, the nihilist prototypein that work, seeks to overthrow all authority and previously acceptedideas and judgements. Arkady Kirsanov, who comes under his in-

fluence, comments upon him in the following manner:

A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not

accept any principle of faith, however much that principle may be revered.2 4



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Endowed with an inflexible will power, Bazarov crystallized, for thefirst time in the imaginative literature of Europe, a sentiment that hadbeen steadily gaining ground since the turn of the eighteenth century.Yet, dissimilar from his real life counterparts, Dmitri Pisarev, NikolaiChemyshevsky and Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Bazarov’s interests were,

curiously enough, of a non-political nature. Nevertheless, he displayswith these political figures a great faith in reason, a commitment tomaterialist philosophy, as well as an ardent desire to create a socialistutopia.

It requires little imagination to understand why nihilism flowered inRussia more rapidly than in any other European country, exceptperhaps Spain. Her persistent lack of a stabilizing, bourgeois society, ina Europe that was witnessing a radical and tumultuous metamorphosis ofthe ruling classes, intensified the social vacuum, and created the idealconditions for extreme revolt. While such countries as France and

England, and the German states saw the birth of a staunch middle classwhich ensured, at least in the long term and internally, the peaceful andcontrolled progress of society at all levels, the entire Russian com-munity remained pegged to its feudal system, in which poverty-strickenpeasants saw themselves frustratingly separated from the aristocracy. Ofcourse, this kind of radical separation was nothing new, but what wasnew was the Russian writer’s sense of creating ex nihilo, uninhibited bya cultural tradition.

Just as many Spanish authors of the late nineteenth century in-

cluding Unamuno, Baroja and Ganivet, created out of a sense ofsolitude and even uncongenial environment, so Dostoevsky and Tur-genev did not belong with an indigenous cultural school. That is to say,they did not adhere to any traditional artistic ideal. While they werewell versed in foreign cultures, especially French, they could not appealadmiringly to a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Cervantes or a Racine. Dostoev-sky, the supreme type of artist alienated from his own society, com-posed his works without the notion of discipline, order or direction. AsHelen Muchin points out in her study on Russian literature, while theDivina Commedia and The Canterbury Tales were being written, ’Russiawas silent under the Tartar rule’.2 Obviously this kind of interpreta-tion of both Russian and Spanish literature of the middle and latenineteenth century is coloured by a romantic streak which naturallytends to blur certain specific realities, but it is a fact of considerableimportance that Russian literature emerged at the turn of the eight-eenth century even less affected than its Spanish counterpart by theperiods of classicism and the enlightenment, and was highly vulnerable



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to nihilistic ideologies. The formative period of Russian literaturecoincides with the iconoclastic motivation behind romanticism, andespecially nihilism, and while powerful reactionary forces, based onearlier traditions, were exerting themselves in the West, the true birth ofRussian literature was attended by a nihilistic brooding and melan-choly. Whereas the Western romantic showed a concern for the distinc-tive nature of the peasant, Russian creativity grew out of a compassion-ate attraction for the primitive man whom he understood mainlybecause of his own primitive, and consequently, nihilistic identity. It isquite rightly argued that Dostoevsky’s primitive realism contains amuch more authentic and moving note than the naturalism of a Zola,precisely because he felt closely identified with the strong undercurrentof nihilism arising from the intgllectual’s social isolation and naturalaffection for the peasant. Dostoevsky by-passed middle class culture,society and even intellect, in his efforts to interpret the nihilism of theRussian soul, and it is just in this pristine climate, deprived of a sense oftradition, that we see the origins of contemporary nihilism.

Dostoevsky’s primitive nihilism serves as a prelude to a whole fieldof literature of social revolt in the very specific context of naturalism,and neo-realism. Zola, Verga and Blasco Ibanez illustrate the naturalistmovement in France, Italy and Spain respectively, for they all stress thefalse, sophisticated elegance of city and aristocratic life as opposed tothe struggle for existence of the disinherited. Zola’s Germinal, Verga’sNovelle Rusticane and Blasco Ibáfiez’s La Barraca provide powerfulevocations of poverty-stricken communities enslaved throughout theirexistence by a remote and inexorable social system. This strongly feltlink with the soil which attends the denunciation of city life lays aheavy stress on sheer physical destitution and financial distress. Thesocial protest of naturalism finally worked itself out in the cruelty,violence and ultimate wretchedness of neo-realism. The novels of JesusFernández Santos (Los Bravos), Ignacio Silone’s Pane e Vino andSteinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, to mention only three authors amonga whole host inspired by the neo-realist mood, serve to centralize in amost pertinent, stark manner, the abandonment of the peasant by anindustrialized, and ruthlessly capitalist society heedless of the povertyof the frequently naive, defenceless peasant. The communist Carlo Leviunderscores the very primitive aspect of the indigent peasant whom heknew only too well during his ’exile’ period in Southern Italy. Hespeaks of Lucania where the

peasants live submerged in an indeterminate world, where man does not



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distinguish himself from the sun, his beast or malaria ... the sombre passive-ness of a painful nature which reigns there alone... this resigned, secular andcollectively felt patience.2 6

The true inspiration for the composition of the neo-realist novel, itspoint of departure, in fact, lies in the very real conflict between man’swretchedness and society’s intolerable indifference. It is a question ofthe brutal, unadorned clash between the basic human problem of needand authority’s repressive manner.

Neo-realism draws much of its strength from naturalism, whiledeepening and extending its content of social protest. It redevelopedand revitalized the sources of naturalist art by employing the sametechniques, establishing the perennial antithesis of bourgeois tyrannyand peasant desolation, which explains why it could never have growndeep roots in England, at least in the twentieth century, and why itfound acute expression in such relatively underdeveloped countries asSpain and Italy. The only fundamental defect of neo-realism in thesphere of revolt inheres in the writer’s very real attachment to theever-decreasing and localized question of the disinherited masses of

Europe, the proletariat in its more rural aspect. This defect explainswhy the latest trends in neo-realism, that is in Spain, exhausted them-selves within the relatively short space of time of some nineteen years(1942-61). The limited social protest of a Camilo Jos6 Cela (La Familiade Pascual Duarte, 1942) or of a Fernández Santos is evidently not thekind of protest which helps to confer immortality upon an author, inaddition to which it rapidly leads to a literary impasse, as with

Beckett’s preoccupation with nothingness. Moreover, the writer anima-ted by the desire for social equality cannot expect posterity to see inhim anything more than a passing phase in literary history. As aconsequence, a crisis has been reached by the present generation ofSpanish novelists such as Luis Martin-Santos, Juan Goytisolo and DanielSueiro who are undergoing during these very years, an acute period ofnovelistic reappraisal. No new and truly fertile sources for literaryendeavour are, as yet, forthcoming, which seems to indicate a sure signof the essential barrenness of literature when used as a vehicle for

expressing the sense of injustice at a purely social level.The literature of revolt in its social and political context, apart from

the deeper philosophical and metaphysical notions pervading the

writings of Dostoevsky and Camus for instance, emphasizes the in-creasing preoccupation with man’s rights as an individual. As Lebedev,in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot states: ’Every one looks for his own rights’,



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thereby underlining the intensely moral awareness of the present age,for all the apparent disorder and sexual promiscuity. The demand forthe restoration of social rights points to the fundamental motive behindmuch modem thinking: the rebellion against God in the name of ethicaltruth. Rebellion reaches its most profound depths when inspired by thetorment and suffering of mankind, not merely within the socio-politicalframework, but notably within the context of metaphysical principles.The question of rights is pushed to its limits by Ivan Karamazov whouses, among many other examples, the supreme image of innocentchildren callously butchered as a final, irrefutable indictment both ofsociety and especially of the world order. The entire chapter entitled’Rebellion’ in The Brothers Karamazov revolves around the intolerableaffliction of small children, and Ivan takes the example of smallchildren ’to make his case cleare’r’. 2 Ivan’s metaphysical revolt derivesdirectly from his own author’s experience of prison life, and especiallythe frightening punishment inflicted upon children which he records oninnumerable occasions in The Diary of a Writer. The rebel Ivan accedesto his rightful place in the moral realm, and this particular obsessionwith ethical truth outweighs all other considerations, aesthetic, legal,and even religious. Revolt has become a literary preoccupation becauseit is linked to an ethical conviction which is the deepest convictionknown to man, despite Nietzsche’s trenchantly contrary views. Therebel is a leader whom we should admire and respect as an indispensableforce for the proper functioning of society, despite his apparent dis-regard for civic duties, altruism and the public weal. Behind his fre-quently sullen, misanthropic appearance, and we need look no furtherthan Dostoevsky for such an example, lies a genuine, heart-felt love forhumanity, the affectionate desire to defend and vindicate all that isworthwhile and irreplaceable in man’s psychological fabric.

NOTES

1. A. Camus, L’Homme Révolté, Essais (Paris: Pléiade, 1965), 435.2. The Devils (translated by D. Magarshack) (London: Penguin, 1953), 404.3 See ’La Révolution étranglée’, Nouvelle Revue Française, vol. XXXVI (1

April, 1931).4. Les Conquérants (Paris: Grasset, 1928), 62.5. Literature and Revolution (New York: Russell and Russell, 1957), 229.6. The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (selected), Walter Scott, (Lon-



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don, 1886), 239.7. Quoted by J. L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1967), 9.8. Preface to Cromwell, Théâtre Complet (Paris: Edition de la Pléiade,

1963), 434.9. La Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle (Paris: Garnier, 1960), 7.

10. Ibid.11. See R. Peace, Dostoevsky: An Examination of his Major Novels (London:

Cambridge University Press, 1971), 185.12. See La Condition Humaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1946), 190.13. Ibid., 54.14. L’Homme Révolté, Essais, 518.15. Karl Marx (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 19.16. Pirandello (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 29-30.17. Faust (Translated by A. G. Lathan) (London: Dent, 1910), 60.18. See Goethe: A Critical Introduction (London: Cambridge University

Press, 1967), 143.19. Quoted by A. Rutherford, Byron (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1961), 3.20. See Letters, 26.21. Ibid., 210.22. L’Espoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1937), 388.23. Les Conquérants, 57.24. Fathers and Children (translated by R. Hare) (London: Hutchinson,

1947),24.25. An Introduction to Russian Literature, (New York: Dutton, 1964), 15-16.26. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1966), 74-5.27. The Brothers Karamazov (translated by D. Magarshack) (London: Pen-

guin, 1958), 285.



literature, society and the concept of revolt

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