Chapter 4

Realism Re-affirmed: Lukacs and the Critique of Modernism

"There is no such thing as the modernist novel. It is a critical artifact,

l~gely Anglo-American in origin and use .... Nonetheless, modernism is a

usable artifact," comments John Orr in his article on the modernist novel in the

twentieth century (Encyclopaedia oj Literature and Criticism 619). Orr's

reference to modernism and postmodernism as mere aesthetic constructs and

not real cultural phenomena seems to go hand in hand with Lukacs' notions of

modernism. The twentieth century with its changing social and cultural

relationships and fragmented status naturally led to many changes in the literary

form and content of the times. In continuation of the realist and naturalist

schools of the nineteenth century, multiple varieties of literary schools came

into. existence with their typical fictional forms like the psychological,

expressionist and impressionist novels. More than the growth of realism, it

was the reaction to realism that seemed to have strengthened during the fin-de-

siecle period between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.

Critics like Lukacs who were extremely sensitive in political as well as

literary matters noted a "loss of authenticity" in such modernist writings.

Lukacs also perceived a very dangerous situation in the complacent attitude of

his contemporary modernist litterateurs who considered everything to be in

'excellent order' with no thoughts of re-adjustment of the arts and sciences to

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suit present-day requirements. The necessity of dissipating the "disastrous

legacy of Stalinism" and the need to "rediscover the creative core of the

teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin" probably made Lukacs discuss and

renounce modernism once again in favour of realism (Lukacs, The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 7).

The German debates or the expressionist debates of the 1930s that

involved even the members of the Frankfurt School brought into focus Lukacs'

responses to modernism which reinforced his standpoints regarding realism.

The debates between Brecht and Lukacs and those between Bloch and Lukacs

gained a large audience of intellectuals who contributed much in favour of and

against the theoretical formulations of Lukacs. Eugene Lunn refers to the

literary debates of the 1930s as one of the richest controversies in the history of

Marxist aesthetics. He sees at the core of Lukacs' work "a traditional ethical

and aesthetic humanism" and a deep commitment to the continuity of European

classical culture (75).

Critics opine that it was Georg Lukacs who had initiated this debate in

the literary and political circles of Germany and the whole of Europe of the

thirties with his article on the "Significance and Decline of Expressionism" of

1934 in Internationale Literatur. This debate on expressionism and realism was

later seriously taken up in the German review, Das Wort published in Moscow

between 1936 and 1939. The essay begins with a quotation from Lenin's
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Philosophical Notebooks (1929/30) which had clearly induced Lukacs to

fonnulate his own ideas regarding the matter:

. . . the unessential, seeming, superficial, vanishes more often,

does not hold so 'tightly' does not 'sit so firmly' as 'Essence' ...

[e.g.] the movement of a river - the foam above and the deep

currents below. But even the foam is an expression of essence!

(Essays on Realism 76)

Lukacs noticed that expressionism merely dealt with surface reality and hence,

according to Lenin, whom he never criticized explicitly, ought to 'disappear'

whereas Realism had its strong roots in the 'essence' of the historical processes.

Lukacs' aesthetic self could not appreciate the 'journalistic reportage' that

occupied the space of classical characters in fiction, especially in the modernist

writings of Willi Bredel, a worker-writer, and Ernst Ottwalt, a close associate of

Brecht. Lukacs' powerful articles of 1931 and 1932 on the novels of Willi

Bredel and Ernst Ottwalt have been compiled in his Essays on Realism (1971).

The reference by Lukacs to expressionism as unwittingly contributing to

the growth of Nazism seems to have roused the critic and realist in Brecht.

Both Brecht and Lukacs had drawn their contrasting arguments from the same

Marx and had explicitly presented their varying cultural and historical notions.

Brecht, the great avant-garde Marxist, was not responding merely to Lukacs'

positions on expressionism but to the whole of Lukacsian criticism directed

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against modernist writings. With a lot of changes taking place in the cultural

and social scenario, Brechtian 'realism' believed in defending experimentation

and avant-garde art as opposed to the traditional art forms favoured by Lukacs.

Brecht considered modem aesthetic techniques like distancing and montage,

criticised vehemently by Lukacs, as capable of forwarding his socialist ideas.

Moreover, Lukacsian precepts had started gaining ground in the official

communist circles in the USSR and Germany.

In an article written against Lukacsian doctrine of realism entitled

"Against Georg Lukacs", Brecht considers Lukacs' proposals to writers as

'impracticable'. The Brechtian maxim of looking up to 'the bad new ones',

instead of turning to the 'good old days' is introduced and he says that there is

no point in asking the writers to keep to the old masters and in persuading them

to abstain from experimentation. Brecht writes in the article:

Man does not become man again by stepping out of the masses

but by stepping back into them. The masses shed their

dehumanization and thereby men become men again - but not

the same men as before. This is the path that literature must take

in outrage when the masses are beginning to attract to themselves

everything that is valuable and human, when they are mobilizing

people against the dehumanization produced by capitalism in its

fascist phase. (69)

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Brecht also finds fault with the elements of "capitulation", "withdrawal" and

"utopian idealism" in Lukacs' writings which make them unsatisfactory, giving

the impression of "a way of escape than an advance" (69).

While discussing the formalistic character of the theory of realism,

Brecht refers to his own creative practices. His argument is that a creative

artist's interest in form, his own for instance, comes of the urge to represent

reality. He adds that if one wishes to call everything that makes works of art

unrealistic as formalism, then many works which are labelled realistic too will

have to be unmasked to reveal their lack of correspondence to reality. Even

works which do not give undue importance to literary form and which seem to

concentrate on social content too tum out to be unrealistic or 'formalistic' in

this sense. Brecht in "Against Georg Lukacs" agrees with Lukacs in his notions

about naturalistic writing:

Naturalism and a certain type of anarchist montage can be

confronted with their social effects, by demonstrating that they

merely reflect the symptoms of the surface of things and not the

deeper causal complexes of society. (72)

The Joycean method of 'interior monologue' need not be rejected and labelled

'formalistic' just because it happens to be different from Tolstoy's method, says

Brecht. Very ironically he comments: "The criticisms were so superficially

formulated that one gained the impression that if Joyce had only set his
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monologue in a session with a psycho-analyst, everything would have been all

right" ("Against Georg Lukacs" 73). Being fully aware of the changing social

reality Brecht felt that literature should not be forbidden from employing newly

acquired skills of contemporary man. In the part subtitled "Popularity and

Realism" he states the need for change very aptly: "For time flows on ....

methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear

and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of

representation must also change" ("Against Georg Lukacs" 82). He adds that

as oppressors do not work in the same way in every epoch and what was

popular yesterday need not be so today, new ways and means ought to be

found out for new expression. Suppressed truths of the day can be brought out

only using many modem ways. Brecht also claims that the proletariat accept

daring and even unusual presentation "so long as they deal with its real

situation," although "the sharp eyes of the workers penetrated the surface of

naturalistic representations of reality" ("Against Georg Lukacs" 84). This

Brechtian claim is questioned by many critics including Ronald Taylor, who

feels that his greatest successes "enjoyed a large bourgeois audience, in

ordinary commercial theatres" (66-67). Anyway, Brechtian logic is beautifully

summed up in his statement, "If we wish to have a living and combative

literature, which is fully engaged with reality and fully grasps reality, a truly

popular literature, we must keep step with the rapid development of

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reality" (85). As Lukacs admits to Istvan Eorsi in an interview, he had some

difference of opinion with Brecht during the debate on expressionism as he

knew very well that Brecht's sympathies lay closer to the expressionists.

Lukacs and Brecht made up their hostilities later in Moscow and as Eorsi

records, Lukacs even regretted his "serious literary omission in failing to write

an essay about Brecht's last period" even after he became aware of its major

importance (Record ofa Life 92).

"Brecht's polemic against Lukacs," remarks Ronald Taylor, "was in no

way defensive in tone. On the contrary, it was caustic and aggressive, mustering

a wide range of arguments designed to demolish the whole tenor of Lukacs'

aesthetic" (62). Brecht tried to highlight the contradiction involved in Lukacs'

arguments. While admitting the great European realists of the nineteenth

century as bourgeois writers, Lukacs had exhorted through many of his works

the proletarian and socialist writers of the twentieth century to look up to the

bourgeois realists as their literary models. Brecht failed to understand how,

though a Marxist fully conscious of the processes of history and the flux of

social reality, Lukacs could ask an entirely different phase of class struggle to

look up to the fiction of a preceding phase of class struggle for principles of

literary creation. Lukacs' reference to modernists as formalists on account of

their excessive use of literary techniques like the interior monologue had

irritated Brecht and other modernists. Brecht, in tum, accused Lukacs of

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timeless formalism, as he expected realist writers to conform to the norms of

traditionalist masters despite his awareness of historical processes and the

dynamic status of social reality.

Brecht also found Lukacs' theory extremely limited because of the

arbitrary selection of literature, the very narrow range of it, especially his

preoccupation with the genre of the novel to the neglect of poetry and drama,

genres in which Brecht himself excelled. The use of literary techniques by the

modernist writers was looked down upon by Lukacs. Analyzing Brechtian

notions regarding techniques, Ronald Taylor writes:

Interior monologue, montage or mixture of genres within a single

work were all permissible and fruitful, so long as they were

disciplined by a watchful truthfulness to social reality. Fertility of

technique was not the mark of a 'mechanical' impoverishment of

art, but a sign of energy and liberty. (63)

Brecht believed that with revolutionary changes taking place on a massive scale

in the world and with the changing stances of the exploited and the exploiter,

revolutionary experiments ought to be permitted in the realm of artistic

creation.

Brecht was certainly able to single out the foibles, frailties and paradoxes

of the realist theory of Lukacs. But Brecht had nothing original to offer in

opposition to the formulations of Lukacs. As Ronald Taylor says, "... he

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[Brecht] was not capable of advancing any positive alternative to it" (64).

Eugene Lunn's comment too testifies to the merits of Lukacsian theory despite

the criticism of Brecht. In his study of the debates that interested the western

world, he comments that Brecht's critique of Lukacs' more classical theories

was "searching and important, but ultimately not really adequate as an

alternative view of twentieth century western art" (78).

Other than the conflict between Brecht and Lukacs, the conflict of

opinions between one-time associates, Ernst Bloch and Lukacs turned out to be

an interesting intellectual episode in the Gennan circles. The real paradox was

that, as Ronald Taylor mentions, "... it was Bloch who essentially influenced

Lukacs towards serious study of Hegel, while it was Lukacs who directed Bloch

toward Christian mysticism, especially the works of Kierkegaard and

Dostoevsky" during the 1912-1914 period of their common stay in Heidelberg

(9). While Lukacs moved further to the realism of later Hegel, Bloch supported

the irrationalist reaction of Schopenhauer to realism. With the Nazi seizure of

power, both of them had moved out of Gennany - Bloch to Prague and

Lukacs to Moscow.

As mentioned earlier, it was during the 1930s that Lukacs developed his

well-defined literary positions. The major stances, to repeat Ronald Taylor's

brief summary of Lukacsian position, were:

... reverence for the classical heritage of the Enlightenment,

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rejection of any irrationalist contaminations of it, assimilation of

modernist trends in literature to irrationalism, identification of

irrationalism with fascism. (10)

Lukacs had made a scathing attack on expressionism in 1934 in Internationale

Literatur pointing out the flaws of the movement as he could identify many.

The dominance of many philosophies including neo-Kantianism and Vitalism

had marred the relationship between ideology and economics or politics. The

obscurity and confusion of the times was naturally represented and reflected in

literature in the form of expressionist art, dealing with abstractions and

stylization. The passionate outpourings and subjectivist renderings of

expressionists were severely criticized by Lukacs even when they claimed to

work towards the core of reality. Though they were unable to point out

'bourgeois vices' in any class, they were generally hostile to the bourgeoisie

and maintained that the non-bourgeoisie should rule the nation which, as

Lukacs believed, was an illusion that eventually led to Fascism.

More than Lukacs' article, it was the violent attack in writing on the

heritage of expressionism, by Alfred Kurella, a disciple of Lukacs that stirred

Bloch and many other established expressionists into the intellectual fray.

Bloch could rightly identify Lukacs' intellect behind the writings of Kurella and

indulged in an open conflict with Lukacs. The expressionist movement had

gained importance in Germany as the first version of modem art in the country.
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The arguments between Bloch and Lukacs, as Taylor notes, can be seen as a

fight over the historical significance and meaning of modernism in general.

Bloch argued strongly in favour of expressionism. He accused Lukacs of

remaining far removed from the actual creations of expressionist movement,

especially in the field of painting and music. As Bloch writes in his essay,

"Discussing Expressionism", in Lukacs' writings,

nowhere is there any mention of a single expressionist

painter.... to say nothing of music parallels ... This is all the

more surprising in that the links between painting and literature at

that time were extremely close, and the paintings of

Expressionism were far more characteristic of the movement than

its literature. (18)

This aloofness of Lukacs from original productions of expreSSIOnIsm is

regarded by Bloch as a great weakness in Lukacs as a critic. Bloch again

accuses Lukacs of depending a great deal on the prefaces and postscripts, or

second-hand material on expressionism, instead of getting directly to the

imaginative works of the expressionist movement which leave a "concrete

impression in time and space", to realize completely the social base and the

ideological superstructure of the movement. To quote Bloch from his article,

Lukacs' theoretical, critical and literary judgments tum out to be "the almost

exclusive criticism merely of expressionist tendencies and programmes, chiefly

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those fonnulated, if not foisted on the movement, by its own commentators"

("Discussing Expressionism" 19).

Countering Lukacs' assertion of the subjective nature of the

expressionist revolt and its escapist ideology, Bloch says that Lukacs does not

do justice to the practitioners of expressionism. Bloch cannot agree when

Lukacs states that all that the content of their works reveals is "the forlorn

perplexity of the petty-bourgeois caught up in the wheels of capitalism,' or 'the

impotent protest of the petty-bourgeois against the kicks and blows of

capitalism" ("Discussing Expressionism" 19).

Lukacs speaks of the 'abstract pacifism' of the expressionists. Bloch

admits that in the context of revolution, the slogan of 'non-violence' certainly

sounded counter-revolutionary. But Bloch adds elsewhere in his essay that any

one truly interested in expressionism could easily realize the revolutionary

fervour underlying the cries of expressionism, though it is true that classical

heritage was not held in high esteem. As all literature produced since Homer

and Goethe in a different image was looked down upon, there also grew the

tendency of clubbing everything not explicitly communist with the ruling class

itself. Bloch provides a clever interpretation of the Marxist standpoint that

expressionism is basically pseudo-revolutionary:

All these recriminations and condemnations have their source in

the idea that ever since the philosophical line that descends from
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Hegel through Feuerbach to Marx came to an end, the bourgeoisie

has nothing more to teach us, except in technology, and perhaps

the natural sciences; everything else is at best of 'sociological

interest'. (21)

Bloch presents the instance of Lukacs' reference to Morike, 'one of the most

authentic of Gennan lyricists', as a "charming non-entity", stating that Lukacs

was so very much removed from real concepts of classicism, though he

maintained with other socialists that the Classical is 'healthy', the Romantic is

'sick' and Expressionism the 'sickest' of all.

Bloch identifies the real problem 10 Lukacs' understanding· of

expressionism in the fact that he operates with a 'closed, objective conception

of reality,' that he is unable to stand any shattering of images of the world, even

if the shattering happens to be of the world of capitalism. Even the art that tries

to expose the real fissures beneath the surface by demolition, and experiments

in demolition, is to Lukacs a condition of 'decadence'. Bloch proudly says that

the expressionists were the 'vanguard' of decadence, persisting in their efforts

of demolition instead of trying to plaster over the surface of reality like the

Neo-Classicists or the representatives of Neo-Objectivity who recoil from the

subjective and emotional effusions of expressionism.

Turning to Ziegler (pseudonym of Alfred Kurella) once again, Bloch

laughs at him for condemning expressionists with the concept of 'subversion of

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subversion' not realizing the impact of two 'negatives' creating a 'plus'.

Moreover, Kurella does not seem to comprehend the problems of montage.

Bloch refers to the condemnation of expressionism by Kurella - that

expressionism undennined the regular schematic routines and academicism - as

expressionists never intended to adhere to the regular patterns of thought and

expression. Expressionism, instead of putting its faith in academics or in the

formal analyses of works of art, tried for the most authentic expression by

turning to the real issues of human beings.

Like Brecht, Bloch too believed firmly in experimentation as a necessary

element in the changing social reality. Moreover, Bloch tried to establish a

tradition or a heritage for expressionism, even though as a phenomenon it did

not have any precedence. He tried to trace its roots to the 'Storm and Stress'

movement, to the visionary works of Goethe and to the Nordic decorative art,

"found on peasant chairs and chests" (Bloch, "Discussing Expressionism" 24).

Discussing 'fonnalism' and popularity or 'closeness to the people' in the

context of expressionism, Bloch points out the folly in referring to the

expressionist art as being formalistic, the major problem of expressionism

being 'a neglect of fonn' with a crude excess of expressions. The use of

folklore by the expressionists had in fact been a way of remaining close to the

people. Mockingly Bloch states:

If expressionist art often remams incomprehensible to the

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observer. .. this may indicate a failure to fulfil its intentions, but

it may also mean that the observer possesses neither the intuitive

grasp typical of people un-deformed by education, nor the open-

mindedness which is indispensable for the appreciation of any

new art. ("Discussing Expressionism" 26)

The attacks of Bloch brought Lukacs to the scene of intellectual debates

openly; he was compelled to declare his notions on avant-garde art in general

and expressionism in particular. Lukacs seems to have believed firmly that all

avant-garde literature was basically naturalistic in character. Like the naturalist,

the expressionist too concentrates his attention on facts and never tries to link

these facts to anything else, merely representing the world as it appears to the

characters. This attitude prevents a direct and profound connection with

objective reality. The kind of immediacy one notes in avant-garde literature is

typical of expressionism. Lukacs never tries to define expressionism but tries

to reveal the reactionary stature of the movement as opposed to the progressive.

The main defect he sees in the movement is its involvement with merely the

experiences of the individual, without making any attempt to connect these

experiences with objective reality. Expressionists regarded objective reality as

chaos, and this aspect seems to distinguish expressionism from Marxism.

Moreover, according to Lukacs, the expressionist hatred of the

bourgeoisie and their vehement opposition remained a mere romantic hatred,

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without any base on objective social currents. Lukacs opposed the movement

because its class basis was the petty-bourgeoisie and not the proletariat. G.H.R.

Parkinson refers to the discussion of the expressionists, of the petty-bourgeoisie

who were desperate on account of their being lost in the machinery of

capitalism, and identifies the reason for Lukacs' obsession with the thought that

expressionism is the ancestor, the ideological ancestor of Fascism. Lukacs

feared that a romantic opposition of the kind maintained by the expressionists

could easily tum "into a critique of capitalism from the right, a demagogic

critique of the kind to which Fascism owed much of its mass appeal"

(Parkinson 103-104).

Lukacs believed In the underlying totality beneath the surface

appearance which prompted him to attack expressionism. The fragmentary

style adopted by the expressionists prevented and obscured a vision of the

society's true interconnections which form a 'totality'. Bloch's justification for

this aspect was based on the fragmentary character of contemporary social

expenence. Lukacs states in his reply to Bloch's essay:

If literature is a particular form by means of which objective

reality is reflected, then it becomes of crucial importance for it to

grasp that reality as it truly is, and not merely to confme itself to

reproducing whatever manifests itself immediately and on the

surface. If a writer strives to represent reality as it truly is, i.e., if

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he is an authentic realist, then the question of totality plays a

decisive role, no matter how the writer actually conceives the

problem intellectually. ("Realism in the Balance" 33)

Despite Bloch's claims to the popularity of modem expressionist art, Lukacs

points out the objectively elitist quality of modernism, which estranges art from

the 'people' in all practical ways possible. As Douwe Fokkema and Elrod

Ibsch write,

To Lukacs, the popular nature of literature means continuing the

cultural tradition. Popular literature is diametrically opposed to

avant-garde literature. To Lukacs, the total rejection of the past is

equal to anarchy. (Theories ofLiterature in the Twentieth Century

119)

Lukacs persisted in his anti-expressionist position despite the pressure of

a heap of counter-arguments from Bloch, Brecht, Anna Seghers, Jurgen Ruhle,

Harry Levin and others. As Fokkema and Ibsch suggest, Lukacs' 'orthodox'

argument is based on a distinction between appearance and essence, between

experienced reality and objective reality, between superficial explanations and

"hidden causes" (Theories o/Literature 121).

As a mature critic, towards the late fifties, Lukacs' discussed

contemporary realism and its significance in a highly influential work, The

Meaning 0/ Contemporary Realism. He took the opportunity to discuss critical

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realism, socialist realism and bourgeois modernism, naturally rejecting

revolutionary romanticism. Commenting on his rejection of revolutionary

romanticism Fokkema and Ibsch observe: "Lukacs' rejection of "revolutionary

romanticism" is the corollary of his idiosyncratic interpretation of Socialist

Realism, which in his view should be close to critical realism" (Theories of

Literature 121-122). Lukacs now seems to have developed his concepts

regarding realism to a greater and more profound extent. He believed that "the

true opposition is not between socialist realism and bourgeois modernism" (The

Meaning of Contemporary Realism 60) and that a writer's rejection of

socialism would lead to a closing of his eyes to the future, thus resulting in the

creation of works of art which are purely static.

Lukacs identifies the crucial distinction between the essentials of

socialist realism and critical realism. The socialist realist perspective is of

course centred on the struggle for socialism which depends for its form and

content on social development and subject matter. Socialist realism should not

be mistaken for the mere acceptance of socialism, which is possible even within

the framework of critical realism. Making the distinction between critical

realism and socialist realism clearer, Lukacs states that the critical realist

perspective is bound to be a description 'from the outside' whereas in socialist

realism, it is a perspective 'from the inside'. Socialist realism is not only based

on a concrete socialist perspective but the society it depicts is an independent

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unit, not merely acting as a foil to capitalist society. The human qualities which

are essential for the creation of a new social order are also located by socialist

realism (The Meaning o/Contemporary Realism 93).

Lukacs makes a distinction between the 'outside' and 'inside' methods,

the outside and inside perspectives:

By the outside method a writer obtains a typology based on the

individual and his personal conflicts; and from this base he works

towards wider social significance. The 'inside' method seeks to

discover an Archimedean point in the midst of social

contradictions, and then bases its typology on an analysis of these

contradictions .... (The Meaning o/Contemporary Realism 94)

Lukacs is not unaware of the simultaneous use of outside and inside methods in

the same work by realistic writers. Dickens, for instance, was able to present his

plebeian characters from the inside while he painted the upper and middle-class

characters from the outside. This, however, cannot be taken as a general rule as

the great realist writers vary in the range of their 'inside' knowledge. Tolstoy,

though belonging to the upper class, views the world from the viewpoint of the

exploited Russian peasantry and at the same time portrays a section of the upper

class from the inside.

Discussing socialist realism, Lukacs opines that the ideological base of

socialist realism is an understanding of the future. In works of socialist realism

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individuals who work for the future will be portrayed from the inside. But in

critical realism, though immediacy gets well represented, the inner development

of consciousness, especially socialist consciousness, is seldom portrayed

comprehensively. Lukacs was perfectly aware of the inability of critical realist

writers to portray from the inside roles played by the revolutionary working

class and the problems arising from it. He thought that when class struggles are

described from the bourgeois point of view, the literature will lose much of its

vitality and power. Lukacs sums up by saying: "It will require hard work, deep

thought and profound imagination to achieve, in this roundabout way, the

desired immediacy, to impose on shrinking and reluctant material a new and

satisfactory wholeness" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 99).. But

socialist realist writing can with clarity and honesty present the plight of the

working classes because of the inseparable link between socialism and the

revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

Lukacs states that Lenin expected no Chinese wall to separate the

bourgeois democratic and proletarian revolutions and that critical and socialist

realism are at one in their struggle against reactionary forces in politics and art.

He believes that people never undergo transformation automatically and

defends his belief with Lenin's remark that socialism had to be built by people

who were moulded by capitalism (The Meaning o/Contemporary Realism 105).

Lukacs' earlier notion of the importance of the writer's participation in the

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transformation of reality comes up again in this connection.

Lukacs believes that awareness of history is most essential for literary

creation. Just as a critical understanding of the present is crucial for an

understanding of the past, a socialist perspective is most essential for a correct

assessment of the future. It is this socialist point of view that helps the writer to

see society and history in the right perspective. Lukacs thinks that the great

critical realists, despite achieving a comprehensive description of the totality of

society, were sometimes not aware of the historical nature of reality and adds

that "a correct aesthetic understanding of social and historical reality is the

precondition of realism" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 97). As

social reality is always in a state of flux it keeps throwing up new material

leading to the development of new forms. If a writer wishes to project a new

social phenomenon thrown up by the society in a work of art, he ought to

understand it in all its totality. Awareness of the past historical reality leading

to the new phenomenon is essential for the achievement of this sense of totality.

Referring to the realistic war novels, Lukacs says:

But war can only be understood in its totality if the writer has a

perspective which enables him to understand the forces that lead

to war, as Arnold Zweig had in Education at Verdun or A .Beck

in The Road to Volokamsk. These latter works, far from giving us

monographs on war, elevate the personal fate of their characters

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to the level of the typical; they mirror the totality of war in

concrete relationships between typical, but living human beings.

(The Meaning ofContemporary Realism 101)

Lukacs notes that socialist realism is able to portray the totality of a society and

also present various patterns of development of the same. As one who believes

in classical heritage and the value of tradition, he recognizes the ambition to

portray the totality or the social whole in socialist realist writers. Moreover,

socialist realism is closer in its narrative method to classical realism.

Truthful depiction of reality has a central place in Marxism. Lukacs

believes in a correct and not oversimplified understanding of reality. He feels

that the road to socialism is identical with the movement of history itself. Each

phenomenon, whether objective or subjective, influences this movement of

history. In this sense, any realistic account in a creative work is to be

considered a Marxist critique of capitalism and a move favouring socialism.

Lukacs' conclusion seems to be that the alliance of socialism with realism has

its roots in the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

Lukacs also maintains that socialist art is national art which has nothing

whatsoever to do with folk-mystique or racial characteristics (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 103). The various moments of history like the decline

of feudalism and the rise of capitalism differ in different countries. As Lukacs

writes, realist works contribute to the creation of the intellectual and spiritual
 207

climate for the growth of typical human personality and specific national

character. "The stronger a writer's ties with the cultural heritage of his nation,

the more original his work will be ..." (The Meaning o/Contemporary Realism

103). He seems to suggest that without modernist movements, socialist

movement· especially socialist realism in literature would not have been

possible. To quote Lukacs, "The evolution of Johannes R. Becher and Bertolt

Brecht or of Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon, into socialist writers would have

been unthinkable without German Expressionism and French Surrealism" (The

Meaning o/Contemporary Realism 104).

Lukacs sees for critical realism 'a prolonged existence' in the new

socialist society, as he feels that even bourgeois writers sympathizing with

socialism will continue to work within the confines of critical realism. A

critical realist in a socialist society, Lukacs says, would be unable to describe

the social reality he confronts from the inside as socialism remains no longer a

perspective but the very basis of his existence (The Meaning 0/ Contemporary
Realism 107). Under such circumstances Lukacs envisages a large body of

literature containing elements. of socialism and critical realism in a society

undergoing a process of transformation. Growth of socialism necessitates

reappraisal of past reality and Lukacs looks up to critical realism for.a changed

perspective without suffering a break from tradition. He writes:

It is a matter not simply of reappraising familiar material, but of

 208

revaluing the entire historical scene as the new perspective throws

light on previously neglected phenomena . .. For though

understanding the past in tenns of the new socialist reality may

represent, qualitatively speaking, an advance, no total break with

traditional perspectives is required. Critical realism can excel at

this kind of elucidation of the past. (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 109)

While referring to the transfonnations in the society, Lukacs notices the

special interest shown by the bourgeois writers and the socialist writers in the

bildungsroman. He not only tries to identify the reasons for this interest but

also attempts a comparison and contrast of the two types of bildungsroman -

the bourgeois and the socialist. The reasons he identifies are: (a) the two types

of societies are "in a state of constant, dynamic change," (b) an individual

growing up in them has to work things out for himself and struggle for a place

in the community," (c) unlike in a feudal society no one is born a bourgeois or a

proletarian, but in the course of personal development he becomes a member of

his class (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 111-112). The mobility and

the freely alterable class status give added scope to the bildungsroman. While

making a comparison Lukacs points out that in a socialist text, a bourgeois

individualist will be converted into a social being when he passes through an

experience, the process beginning with resignation and leading on to active

 209

participation in the life of the community. Though both reflect reality, Lukacs

says:

. . . the typical bourgeois Bildungsroman takes its hero from

childhood to the critical years of early adult life, its socialist

counterpart often begins with the crisis of consciousness the adult

bourgeois intellectual experIences when confronted with

socialism. (The Meaning ofContemporary Realism 113)

The comparison of the two types of realism leads to his prophesying the

very nature of the literature of the future. He envisages the critical realist

writing with a socialist perspective proving to be extremely influential at the

start. But with socialism gaining the upper hand in society, he strongly feels

that critical realism will 'wither away' as the depiction of a socialist society and

its issues turns out to be beyond the grasp of the critical realist. "Critical

realism will wither away, as the literary forms of feudalism have withered

away," writes Lukacs (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 115).

Lukacs believes that Stalinism and its dogmatic and schematic approach

estranged many critical realists from their onward march to socialist realism.

He points out the presence of superfluous characters in Soviet novels who are

merely illustrative figures irrelevant to the action appearing in works of art in

adherence to misconceived artistic principles. Unnecessary application of

politics leads to a kind of socialist naturalism which cannot be looked up to for

 210

its typology (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 122). At this juncture,

Lukacs states the importance of writers like Thomas Mann, critical realists who

are capable of presenting the non-socialist reaction to the society, depicting the

complexities of the changed social reality.

Lukacs estimates Thomas Mann as the last great critical realist with a

fine perspective of socialism, despite his status as a bourgeois writer with

bourgeois prejudices. Though the young Mann had the strength of only the

'culture' and 'humanism' of his own bourgeois-patrician past to oppose the

'inhumanity' and 'cultural poverty' of capitalism, his strong literary sense grew

later to keep pace with the changing social world. It is probably this literary

sensibility with its ability to comprehend the changing socio-cultural scenario

that makes Thomas Mann acceptable to Lukacs despite Mann's limitations as a

'romantic anti-capitalist'. It is again his literary sensitivity that enables Mann

to identify the new threat of fascist reaction in literature.

Mann's anti-fascist writings and attitude gain great significance in the

context of National Socialism using its state power to falsify the political,

literary and cultural past through official fascist propaganda. Lukacs notes that

it is by exploiting the "unfamiliarity of the broad masses with the great figures

of the past" and by mobilizing the resources of the universities that National

Socialism employs its fascist tactics (Essays on Thomas Mann 144). Hence

Lukacs writes:
 211

In these circumstances Thomas Mann's book of essays on

Goethe, Richard Wagner, Cervantes, Platen and Storm ... is of

extreme importance . .. Goethe and Wagner after all play a

central part in the National-Socialist myth of German literature.

Therefore, a non-fascist, anti-fascist analysis which reveals the

true character and significance of such figures in the history of

Gennan culture has an importance transcending the purely

literary. (Essays on Thomas Mann 145)

In spite of his bourgeois status, Mann is rated high by Lukacs partly on account

of his anti-fascist stance as a defender of humanism against barbarism. Mann

was never excessively bothered about the form and seldom indulged in formal

experiments. He never believed that the greatness of the literary figures of the

past depended on their fonnal skills either. He not only trusted their humanist

persuasions but even traced the humanism of masters like Goethe to their

"bourgeois being", their bourgeois way of life and outlook. Though Mann

remained a bourgeois all his life, his involvement in the activities and struggles

of the society made him realize the need for a socialist perspective to resolve

the contradictions in the bourgeois society. He knew that "... only socialism

could prevent mankind from sinking into barbarism" (Essays on Thomas Mann

162).

Like Lukacs who believed that "... without a positive perspective no

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effective realist literature can exist," Mann too placed no faith in the mere

rejection of the inhuman tendencies of fascism (Essays on Thomas Mann 162).

Lukacs points out that Mann even provided an artistic instance of such useless

'negative' resistance in his story Mario and the Magician (1929) where a

Roman resists the fascist "spellbinding" yet surrenders in the end. Mann's

awareness of the self-defeating stance of mere resistance is indeed revealed

through this story.

Mann's position as a critical realist enables him to represent life in all its

totality. He stands in contradistinction from the bourgeois realists in this regard.

Hence, instead of a representation of the conflict between the proletariat and the

bourgeoisie, a comprehensive picture, a complete totality of the "ideological,

emotional and moral" reflexes of the bourgeois society, emerges in his novels.

As Lukacs observes,

Thomas Mann is not only the greatest bourgeois writer of his

time, but at the same time, and inseparably therefrom, a great

educator of society in his time, in the same way as his literary

ancestors, the great critical realists. (Essays on Thomas Mann

163)

Lukacs' approval of Thomas Mann seems to arise out of various reasons.

Hailing from a bourgeois family and having great regard for the humanist spirit

as a true Marxist, Lukacs probably finds the humanist concerns of Mann as seen
 213

m his literary outpourings extremely appealing. Just as Mann's patrician

culture had provided him the 'culture' and 'humanism' necessary to fight the

'inhumanity' and 'cultural poverty' of capitalism, his bourgeois literary sense

had enabled him to identify the fascist threat in literature. The realistic concerns

of Thomas Mann, the bourgeois-patrician make him acceptable to Lukacs.

Lukacs did not reject Stalinism outright though he had certain

reservations regarding some aspects of Stalinism. Stalin's faith in the 1920s

and afterwards, that socialism was possible in one country in an otherwise non-

Stalinist world found Lukacs' endorsement as it was made in defence of

Leninist doctrine. But he did not approve of the 'cult of personality' that grew

in alarming proportion in the Stalinist era. As Parkinson says, the phrase was

"made popular by Russian communists during and after the Party Congress of

1956: 'the cult of personality'. This cult, said Lukacs, led to the destruction of

discussion within the Party, and to the use of organizational measures, going as

far as judicial action, against any opposition" (Georg Lukacs 119). Parkinson

also mentions that the letter Lukacs wrote to the Italian Communist Alberto

Carocci in 1962 contained his views on Stalin. Lukacs in this letter made the

point that the Stalinist method tended to exclude mediations as far as possible,

by bringing matters of fact into an immediate relation with theoretical

propositions of the most general kind. Lukacs who was extremely critical of

Soviet literature seemed to have found fault with the failures of Stalinism to
 214

provide mediations 'between universal and particular'. He traced the growth of

naturalism in Soviet literature to the 'Stalinist exclusion of mediations' . There

is a sea of difference between bourgeois naturalism and Soviet naturalism.

While bourgeois naturalism merely presents the factual character of individual

experience, Soviet naturalism merely illustrates an abstract truth. As Lukacs

himself says, many Marxist doctrines were misrepresented during the Stalinist

regime and the literary theoreticians of the times thought up a poetical

substitute for naturalism, viz., 'revolutionary romanticism' (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 125). Lukacs is sore over the misrepresentation of

Lenin's passionate exhortation to the revolutionaries to dream (certainly not a

'subjective' dream) which in fact is a call to have clear foresight from a base of

'sober and realistic revolutionary measures'. Another damage caused by

Stalinism to Soviet literature, according to Lukacs, is the arbitrary primacy

accorded to agitation and propaganda. As Parkinson writes, with the Stalinist

influence on literature, "the writer's task became the illustration of Party

directives", and what the writer produced "cannot properly be called realistic

literature nor can his characters properly be called types" (Georg Lukacs 122).

Many Russian writers have opposed Stalinism. Among these writers,

Lukacs has paid the greatest attention to Solzhenitsyn (b.19l8), the Nobel

laureate of the Soviet Union, supporting him wholeheartedly. As Martin Esslin

writes,
 215

Solzhenitsyn has been denounced by the authorities responsible

for controlling literature in Soviet Russia as deviating from the

officially approved principles which govern the work of writers of

fiction ... . The acknowledged world authority on Marxism and

literature, Georg Lukacs, has in fact come forward as a champion

of Solzhenitsyn's attitude. ("Solzhenitsyn & Lukacs" 47)

Lukacs wrote an essay on One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) in

1964 which in fact gives his views on the genre of the 'novella'. Lukacs knew

very well that the difference between a novel and a novella is not one of length,

but of aim. While the novel aims at the portrayal of totality by a representation

of types, the novella never attempts to portray the totality of social reality. "For

this reason," writes Lukacs, "the novella can omit the social genesis of the

characters, their relationships, the situations in which they act" (Solzhenitsyn 8).

In Lukacs' eyes a novella needs 'no mediations'. That which is a weakness in

a novel need not be so in a novella. Lukacs believes that the truth of the novella

depends on the fact that an individual situation is possible in a certain society at

a certain level of development and just because it is possible, is characteristic of

the particular society at a particular level.

Solzhenitsyn's novella is not a SYmbolist work in Lukacs' eyes, though

the day in a Stalinist Concentration Camp is presented as a SYmbol of Stalinist

everyday life. To Lukacs mere SYmbolism or expressions of abstractions

 216

belong to a decadent literature, which is a kind of naturalism.

Lukacs looks upon the work, Ivan Denisovich, as the first exploration of

a new kind of reality, of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet society. He

announces his faith in the novella as a concentrated version of the forces of

progress. He sees Solzhenitsyn as "the one who has succeeded in really

breaking through the ideological bulwarks of the Stalinist tradition"

(Solzhenitsyn 10). As Martin Esslin writes, "Lukacs welcomed Solzhenitsyn as

a portent of a truly socialist realist style" ("Solzhenitsyn & Lukacs" 49).

Lukacs certainly wondered whether Solzhenitsyn would bring about the rebirth

of socialist realism, but he was not unaware of the fact that the main problem of

socialist realism was to come to terms critically with the Stalin era. He also

knew that to regain the solid status of the 1920s, socialist realism should depict

contemporary man as he is, along with the inhumanities of the Stalinist decades.

The sectarian bureaucrats object to the raking up of the past which is

'completely outmoded' and 'vanished from the present'. Lukacs, the Marxist

who places his faith in history realized the falsity of the situation and refers

again to the realistic works of Balzac and Stendhal of the nineteenth century:

When Balzac or Stendhal depicted the period of Bourbon

restoration, they knew that they were portraying characters, the

majority of whom had been shaped by the revolution, by

Thermidor and its consequences, by the Empire. Julien Sorel or

 217

Pere Goriot would be shadowy and elusive figures if only their

momentary existences in the restoration had been depicted and

not their fates, their developments, their pasts. (Solzhenitsyn 11).

Lukacs believed that the present intellectual, moral and political physiognomy

of the majority has been fonned by the Stalinist experiences.

Solzhenitsyn's critique of Stalinism, Lukacs argues, is mainly pointed at

the 'damage' inflicted upon the integrity of individual by the forces of

authoritarianism. This is certainly not a socialist point of view but a 'plebeian'

one. A socialist world-view stresses the alienation of honest refonners and

critics during historic periods which do not provide them with an opportunity to

act. As Lukacs says, socialist realism has a perspective, but Solzhenitsyn

sometimes gives the impression of a lack of perspective. He adds that

Solzhenitsyn's heroes achieve a kind of self-deliverance but they remain

enclosed in a purely abstract subjectivity with even a leap into action seeming

impossible for them.

In his 1969 essay on Solzhenitsyn's novels, Lukacs records his doubts

regarding the literary importance of Solzhenitsyn as his criticism of the Stalinist

era is from a plebeian point of view and not from a communist one. At the same

time, Lukacs does not wish to detract from Solzhenitsyn's "tremendous

historical achievement of having proved himself a worthy successor to the

important plebeian tradition which became one of the foundations of the

 218

greatness of Russian literature and which played a vital role ill the fIrst

flowering of socialist realism" (Solzhenitsyn 87).

Lukacs' appraisal of Solzhenitsyn gains in greater signifIcance when he

refers to the relationship of the authorities of Soviet Russia with the writers of

the period. The period before the Bolshevik victory of 1917 witnessed the

'leftist views in politics' working almost in unison with the 'avant-garde

attitude' in the arts. With Stalin's rise to power, the Soviet Union became a

bureaucratic dictatorship with a radical change of views on arts on the part of

the Soviet authorities. The natural consequence was a conflict between the

avant-gardist experimenters in art and the hardened official orthodoxy of the

Soviet Union. Moreover, the official orthodoxy, especially Stalin's closest

collaborator, Andrey Zhdanov exhorted the writers to harness the arts for the

ideological education of the masses "in the spirit of socialism". Martin Esslin

quotes Zhdanov's guidelines given at the first All-Union Congress of Soviet

Writers in 1934:

... you must know life to be able to depict it truthfully in artistic

creations, to depict it neither "scholastically" nor lifelessly, nor

simply as "objective reality" but rather as reality in its

revolutionary development. The truthfulness and historical

exactitude of the artistic image must be linked with the task of

ideological formation, of the education of the working people in

 219

the spirit of socialism. This method in fiction and literary

criticism we call the method of socialist realism. ("Solzhenitsyn

& Lukacs" 47)

But the Stalinist regime could not digest the idea of advertising "food shortages

or injustices" of the epoch in novels or plays. Though Zhdanov made an appeal

for "revolutionary romanticism" in writings, which meant an exaggeration of

colours and the presence of the optimistic spirit, he rejected outright all

"non-realistic art", avant-garde abstract art as "formalistic, a-political and

morbidly individualistic."

Many avant-garde writers were badly affected by the rigid

pronouncements of Zhdanov. Brecht and other expressionist-surrealist writers

who had always combined communist aims and ideologies with avant-gardism

were terribly embarrassed, and more sensitive avant-garde writers like the

Russian poet Maiakovsky committed suicide. When a debate was conducted on

this issue in various periodicals, Georg Lukacs, "the most brilliant and

influential of all communist aestheticians", came in defence of socialist realism

giving the impression that he was very much akin to Zhdanov and Stalin in this

Issue. His arguments that the representatives of the various modern literary

movements from naturalism to surrealism are prone to representing the

"immediate" as reality, and that "spontaneity" and the insistence on immediacy

can never assure real "freedom from the reactionary prejudices of the
 220

Imperialist period," made people misunderstand him as the spokesperson of

Stalinist officialdom.

Martin Esslin in his essay on Solzhenitsyn and Lukacs refers to the

conversation he had with Lukacs in 1968, when Lukacs had talked of his being

misunderstood in the '30s. He had tried to convince Esslin that,

when he talked about realism he had merely voiced his opinion

that writers like Walter Scott, Thomas Mann, Balzac or Tolstoy

were greater than avant-garde writers like Joyce or Beckett. But

this had not meant that he was advocating cheap optimistic

propaganda of the kind Zhdanov had proposed. ("Solzhenitsyn &

Lukacs" 49)

While many other critics try to find in Solzhenitsyn's novella, One Day

in the Life of Ivan Denisovich traces of symbolism, with the labour camp

standing for the whole of the Soviet Union, Lukacs finds only a "genuine,

realistic slice of life" with "the typical fate, the typical behaviour of millions

concentrated into this slice" (Solzhenitsyn 17). This enables Lukacs to praise

Solzhenitsyn, as he is free from the abstract influence of all the modem literary

movements from naturalism to surrealism. Lukacs was aware of the fact that

the arbitrarily prescribed literature of the Stalin era was in fact a mixture of

naturalism and romanticism, and he never ever favoured it. As Esslin puts it, ".

the only way possible to oppose it was to call it a form of literature which
 221

did not sprmg from genuine experience but was merely there to illustrate

abstract political ideas" ("Solzhenitsyn & Lukacs" 49). Plots had to be

mechanically contrived and the fates of human beings had to be manipulated for

the illustration of Party decisions.

Lukacs had clear notions regarding the "illustrative literature" or

"illustrating literature" of the Stalin era. Such works never maintained a

dialectic between the past and the realistic aims for the future. The form and

content of such works were inevitably determined by the momentary

resolutions of the state apparatus. Such literature maintained no contact with

real life.

Unlike such literature, the works of Solzhenitsyn, especially his novella,

sketch finnly certain typical issues. Solzhenitsyn ascetically concentrates on the

essential, practising strict economy of presentation. Only select elements of the

external world which are indispensable for revealing their effect on the inner

working of man are included in the novella. The emotional world of man is

sparingly presented with only those reactions directly connected with their

human substance (Solzhenitsyn 14). The omission of basic political questions

and the presentation of personal injustice as part of the hard facts of life,

without directing any criticism against it, are the hallmarks of the novella of

Solzhenitsyn, which according to Lukacs "consciously eliminates" the task of

the great novels of the future.

 222

Though Lukacs was aware of the merits of Solzhenitsyn's works, it was

only in 1964, that he was able to announce it openly. Martin Esslin's

statements testify to this:

Twenty five years later Lukacs' reply was that he had thought as

ill of this literature [Stalinist socialist realist] as they [the avant-

garde writers]. And that the best work of socialist realism to be

produced in the Soviet Union was in fact Solzhenitsyn's highly

critical account of the Stalinist terror. ("Solzhenitsyn & Lukacs"

50)

As Lukacs writes in his discussion of the novella, "the role of landmark on the

road to the future falls to Solzhenitsyn's story" (Solzhenitsyn 16).

Lukacs believed that on the 'eve of a renaissance of Marxism' Stalinist

distortions of socialist realism had to be eliminated though he considered it a

mistake to go in for a 'premature burial' of socialist realism by dropping the

attribute 'socialist'. Lukacs had noticed many opponents of socialist realism of

the Stalin era seeking refuge in modern experimental literature. The various

'isms' which tried to replace naturalistic writing had in fact created works

which lacked 'inner cohesion' and compositional coherence. With the extreme

economy of his descriptive method and with the linking of individual objects to

individual fates, Solzhenitsyn stands in marked contrast to the other writers who

had shifted to the modernist trends. Lukacs writes:

 223

.. , the concentrated totality of camp life is evoked with the very

greatest economy, the sum and system of this mean, threadbare

reality results in a humanly significant symbolic totality which

illuminates an important aspect of human life. (Solzhenitsyn 20)

If in the 1964 essay on the novella of Solzhenitsyn Lukacs concludes with the

question whether the author would tum out to be a great and true socialist

realist, in his 1969 essay on the novels, Cancer Ward (1968) and The First

Circle (1969) he tries to answer his own questions. Lukacs admits the greatness

of Solzhenitsyn at the very outset of his long discussion:

The question of whether he himself would bring out the re-birth

of socialist realism and its new growth into a significant world

literature was one that I cautiously left open. I can now state with

pleasure that I was far too cautious: Solzhenitsyn's two new

novels represent a new high point in contemporary world

literature. (Solzhenitsyn 33)

Lukacs attempts a comparison between the literary techniques of

Solzhenitsyn, and the techniques employed by Thomas Mann, especially in The

Magic Mountain (1924). In order to portray the total social reality, Mann

brilliantly employed a new device of bringing together a large representative

cross-section of the society in one place, the sanatorium for consumptives,

enabling the interaction of many characters who would not otherwise come
 224

together. This, as Martin Esslin suggests, would "represent the whole of social

reality by concentration on the typical features of the social scene"

("Solzhenitsyn & Lukacs" 50). Lukacs' argument is that Solzhenitsyn too had

hit upon the same device employed by Mann, knowingly or unknowingly, but

partially in the novella-a cross-section of the society brought together in the

labour camp. But the totality of the Soviet society is satisfactorily brought into

focus in The First Circle, with the prisoners, their guards, the free scientists and

their assistants. Lukacs notices the extension and "totalization" of the novella,

with an increase in the number of internees to represent the cross-section of an

entire society, including the executors of major actions in the society, for more

concrete and extensive socially-determined universality. Even in his novel

Cancer Ward Solzhenitsyn arranges a whole array of characters, "... from the

patients without convictions for political crimes to the personnel of the hospital,

the doctors (who are predominantly women) and nurses" (Solzhenitsyn 66).

None of the new group of characters is made to express any ideas regarding the

politics of Stalin era, or the overthrow of the socialist regime.

Right from the novellas Solzhenitsyn's approach had been not to

criticize explicitly the contemporary politico-socio-historical situation but to

present social factions of conflicting interests in society, whose fates are

irrevocably bound up with one another. If in the novella, Ivan Denisovich the

place of internment is an average one, with its depiction of the 'one day' as
 225

being a relatively pleasant one, the later novels, The First Circle and Cancer

Ward intensify the places of internment with fear and threat. In The First

Circle the place of internment is in fact "the first circle" of Hell with every

internee being "confronted not only by the slender hope of liberation, but by a

very real threat of a more infernal region of hell (Solzhenitsyn 50). In the other

novel, as the title suggests, a cancer ward is the place of confinement, where the

threat of imminent death overshadows life. If the Stalinist system and its

impact upon individuals form the identifiable base of The First Circle, the

second novel presents "a more troubled period namely after Stalin's death"

(Solzhenitsyn 65).

Even in The First Circle, Stalin is presented on one occasion only and

this is compared by Lukacs to Sir Walter Scott's classical historical novels,

"where the central figure appears only episodically" (Solzhenitsyn 51). Lukacs

is probably attempting to link Solzhenitsyn's writings with the great literary

traditions of the historical novel. He is also impressed by the fact that

Solzhenitsyn is seldom preoccupied with petty psychological issues. Even

while presenting Stalin in a 'tired', overworked mood, expressing the same

through inner monologues, Solzhenitsyn concentrates on the "political and

human" questions of Stalin's historical existence. Lukacs writes:

Solzhenitsyn demonstrates his great talent for concise

characterization, for observing or inventing situations which

 226

compel the characters to reveal-not passively but in response to

those situations - their practical relations to society, to their own

concrete activity within it, and thus to themselves. Throughout

the whole concrete range of external and internal variants, the

social and human laws of such a way of life come to light vividly

and extremely unambiguously. (Solzhenitsyn 54)

The dehumanizing degradation in prisons, people's reaction to the various

social situations, the spiritual and moral awareness of people under the social

system in which they exist, the inner contradictions of the society are all

portrayed with extraordinary imaginative power.

Lukacs in his essay cites exact instances of the dehumanization of life as

depicted in The First Circle. A young diplomat Councillor Volodin tries to

save a doctor whom he admired, from imprisonment and death. Out of his

humanitarian consideration he wishes to warn the doctor by telephone call from

a public box, but the excessive caution of the doctor's wife makes the warning

unsuccessful. Volodin is arrested in the end and the social aspect of camp

administration with its dehumanizing touch is presented again and again.

Solzhenitsyn also presents the camp leaders making demands on the internees,

"which can only be answered negatively if a man wishes to preserve his

humanity at all" (Solzhenitsyn 57). While establishing a contrast between the

camp authorities and the inmates, Lukacs identifies in the former a

 227

"dehumanized passivity that constitutes the core of their incessant and feverish,

... tactically adroit activity" and in the latter, "behind their imposed impotence

and behind their passivity of forced obedience . . . a self-chosen praxis - the

inextinguishable inner activity of a humanity defending itself' (Solzhenitsyn

64).

As mentioned earlier, the novel Cancer Ward depicts the events of a

troubled period after Stalin's death. The work presents relatively free

movement of characters, but captivity is imposed on them by the disease.

Lukacs perceives in the novel a fine critique of bureaucracy which manifests as

inhumanity. He sees an instance of the intervention of the bureaucracy in

"compelling the ward to send hopeless cases home to die so that their beds can

be freed for new admissions" (Solzhenitsyn 67). But since the times have

slightly changed the work also shows the doctors fighting on behalf of every

patient and "at times even force the bureaucracy to beat a retreat (Solzhenitsyn

67). Solzhenitsyn seems to have presented Donsova, the chief doctor, a kind-

hearted woman with genuine talent and passion for research, as a genuine

specimen (rare in real life) of good and ideal behaviour. She is respected

invariably by Kostoglotov, the man "who takes up a critical attitude on all

human questions," by Rusanov, "the conceited bureaucrat" who feels degraded

in the hospital in the city" and by the young girl, Asya, who has to have her

breast operated on and removed. Donsova's sense of humanity is brought to the

 228

fore by Solzhenitsyn when her self-examination lets her know of her own

cancer and the noble woman suppresses her despair and bravely decides to

work till her last breath. Lukacs comments that the "noble woman . . .

endeavours to integrate her own death-sentence into an attitude to life that

preserves her humanity" (Solzhenitsyn 69).

In his portrayal of the character Rusanov, Solzhenitsyn analyses the

Stalinist bureaucracy in a semi-humorous way. Lukacs cites the instance of the

bureaucrat's anger at being treated in an "ordinary hospital" among "such

commonplace people", with someone like Kostoglotov not respecting his

priority even with the newspaper. The changes in social life of the time evoked

in The First Circle and in Cancer Ward are significant. A fundamental change

is noticed in the socio-political climate quite different from the state of

"immutability" and the context is "the fixed and total hopelessness of the period

of the last few years of Stalin's life" (Solzhenitsyn 71). The panicky Rusanov

regains his old assurance after a visit from his daughter when he feels that the

new era preserves all the essential methods of Stalinism with only superficial

modifications. Lukacs' sense of realism again notices Solzhenitsyn's merit in

keenly and truly depicting "the unchanging psychology of a bureaucratically

paralysed conservatism which adjusts to everything." Lukacs cites the instance

of Rusanov being very much hurt at the ordinary article on Stalin's birthday

without any photographs, but quickly adapting to the possibility of a reality

 229

which is not quite different from the earlier Stalinist nature (Solzhenitsyn 73-

74).

Referring to the skepticism of Shulubin, another seriously ill inmate,

regarding 'democratization of socialism' and faith in an "ethical socialism",

Lukacs sounds slightly unhappy. This is due to Solzhenitsyn's ambivalent

stance, vacillating between political and ethical socialism without revealing his

own OpInIOns.

Though Solzhenitsyn never makes his stance explicit, Lukacs praises the

'unparalleled perfection' of the world he creates as well as the narrative method

he employs to present the transitional phase to socialism. In the form and

content of his writings, Solzhenitsyn assimilates the most diverse subjects

bringing in all the contrasts involved. The opponents of Solzhenitsyn try to read

into his works political ideas capable of influencing the masses but Lukacs sees

only a truthful and comprehensive portrayal of life in the Stalin era.

Lukacs attempts a comparison and contrast between Solzhenitsyn's

novellas and the modern bourgeois novellas of writers like Conrad or

Hemingway. He notes that in both the categories man has to struggle against an

all-powerful and hostile environment, which in modern bourgeois novellas is

actually nature. While some modern bourgeois novellas relegate social nature

into the background by pitting man against real nature, Solzhenitsyn's novellas

incorporate a "second nature" which is "a social complex", a structure of

 230

human relations. Although this "second nature" appears inhuman, it tends to be

the outcome of human acts; a protagonist who defends himself against this

"second nature" has to behave quite differently from the one who stoutly fights

the elemental forces of real nature. Lukacs who knew first-hand that it was

futile "to struggle against the bureaucratic arbitrariness of the Stalin era"

tried to defend Solzhenitsyn against the charge of an apparent lack of

perspective in him (Solzhenitsyn 25). Hence his comment that "the austere

abstinence from any perspective itself contains a concealed perspective."

Lukacs also approves of the objectivity of Solzhenitsyn's descriptive method

and the depiction of the "natural" cruelty and inhumanity of a social-human

institution presenting a "more devastating judgment than any lofty declamation

would be able to pronounce" (Solzhenitsyn 22).

Examining the works of many writers whose faith in socialism was

shaken by the Stalinist era, Lukacs makes a prediction that ". .. all future

development in world history and world literature depends above all on those

whom the Stalin era has spurred on to deepen their socialist convictions and

give them contemporary relevance" (Solzhenitsyn 29). When intellectuals, who

held skepticism and pessimism and stylistic experimentation in great esteem,

get totally disillusioned with socialism, they tend to produce second-rate works

of an imitative nature. Solzhenitsyn's works gain in greatness as formal

experiments are alien to him and he aims to work "humanly and intellectually,
 231

socially and artistically" toward the reality which has always been the starting

point of genuinely new forms in art.

Lukacs' conviction is that no great literature of a revitalized socialism

of the future can be a continuation of the socialist literature of the 1920s as the

structure of conflicts has changed fundamentally with changes in the qualitative

character of human beings and their relations. His argument seems to be that

creative artists, instead of turning towards the western style and trends in a

mood of disillusionment, ought to gain moral victory "by strengthening and

deepening real Marxist and socialist convictions through the rejection of

Stalinist distortions while remaining receptive to new problems" (Solzhenitsyn

31). Socialist realism, according to Lukacs, must be more alive to contemporary

issues instead of following the Stalinist line in order not to die a premature

death. The curious paradox in this study of socialist realism is that a writer like

Solzhenitsyn who was expelled from the Union of Soviet writers is regarded a

great socialist realist by a great Marxist critic like Lukacs. Martin Esslin writes:

There could be no better illustration of the deep inner

contradictions of the society and the ideology of which

Solzhenitsyn's novels give, in Lukacs' opinion so masterly a

picture. ("Solzhenitsyn & Lukacs" 51)

Lukacs indulged in empirical analysis of great writers probably to

validate and reinforce his own notions on the concept of realism. Though he
 232

was aware of the disastrous nature of Stalinism, direct opposition was not

possible to the ideological dictatorship of Stalin and Zhdanov. Lukacs refused

to use the Zhdanovian concept of "revolutionary romanticism" or even the term

either in his speeches or in his writings. He believed that literary criticism had

no need to use the term. He kept silent about the term but even this silence was

taken for opposition by Zhdanov and others. After the death of Stalin, Lukacs

slowly started expressing his disagreement with the "illustrative literature" of

the Stalin period. In his essay "Critical Realism and Socialist Realism", Lukacs

writes:

Literature ceased to reflect the dynamic contradictions of social

life: it became the illustration of an abstract truth ... Even where

this 'truth' was in fact true and not, as so often, a lie or a half-

truth, the notion of literature-as..illustration was extremely

detrimental to good writing. (The Meaning of Contemporary

Realism 119)

He identified revisionism which had sprung up in response to the legacy of

Stalinism as the greatest possible danger facing Marxism-Leninism.

Revisionism in literary criticism saw the rejection of the Marxist notions of

'decadence' and socialist realism in the real sense of the term. Lukacs is

opposed to this revisionism in literary criticism without a thorough critique of

Stalinist dogmatism.
 233

At this juncture, the observations made by George Lichtheim become

relevant. In his essay of 1963, "An Intellectual Disaster", Lichtheim refers to

the two prefaces by Lukacs, one to the German and the other to the English

editions of The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. He accuses Lukacs "of an

unbroken determination to remain in the swim," swaying in his opinions from

one extreme to the other. Regarding the English edition of the Preface dated

May 1962, Lichtheim writes that the Preface faithfully employs the anti-

Stalinist terminology officialised since 1961, while retaining the essentially

Stalinist characterization of the Soviet orbit as a realm of "socialism" opposed

to a western Capitalist-Imperialist bloc. At the same time Lukacs had taken

advantage of the new climate, writes Lichtheim, to stress the perils of

"dogmatic sectarianism". However, the Preface to the original German edition

(written in April 1957) not only dwelt effusively on "Stalin's positive

achievements", but made the dutiful affirmation that revisionism was to be

regarded as "the greatest present danger for Marxism" ("An Intellectual

Disaster" 74). Despite vacillations in respect of Stalinism, he always remained

committed to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism. As Lichtheim mentions,

Lukacs' revisionist-followers had been continuously disappointed because in

1962, even when he affirmed that the disastrous legacy of Stalinism must be got

rid of, he asserted that one ought to rediscover the creative core of the teaching

of Marx, Engels and Lenin ("An Intellectual Disaster" 75).

 234

As a critic fully conscious of the significance of the socio-cultural and

literary aspects of life, Lukacs dislikes and discards certain 'prejudices' - the

prime prejudice being that the techniques of traditional realism are inadequate

to deal with the issues and realities of modern age, and that avant-garde

literature or the literature of modernism is "the essential modem literature."

The second is the prejudice of the socialist realists who seem to think that

socialist realism has made bourgeois 'critical realism' obsolete (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 13). To Lukacs who believes that literature and

criticism ought to reflect social reality, the "fundamental reality of the modem

age" is once again the conflict between socialism and capitalism, ever since the

1848 rising of the Paris proletariat. He considers that this struggle between

socialism and capitalism, the formative principle of the age, has its close

parallel in the conflict between Fascism and anti- Fascism which had been the

formative principle before the Second World War.

Lukacs had emphasized right at the beginning of his realist aesthetic

phase the importance of a knowledge of history since the present is always an

outcome of "hidden but long-active forces." He traces contemporary bourgeois

realism of the 1950s to the "great realism" of the early nineteenth century. The

'great realism' was followed by a period of "relative mediocrity," which in tum

was followed by a phase of new realism which was the product of imperialism.

This new realism in tum led to a 'humanist revolt' against imperialism. Lukacs
 235

sees "contemporary bourgeois realism" as a continuation of this humanist revolt

(The Meaning o!Contemporary Realism 16).

Lukacs is extremely displeased with the attitude of bourgeois-modernist

critics in exaggerating the importance of the formal criteria, including style and

literary techniques. He realizes that the modernist works of writers like Joyce,

which give exaggerated importance to 'the detailed recording of sense-data',

are very much in tune with their 'artistic ambitions' and cannot be treated as

"artistic failures." Techniques like the stream-of-consciousness are not mere

stylistic devices for them but "something absolute", "part and parcel of the

aesthetic ambition" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 18). Making a

comparison between the interior monologue in Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and

Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar (1939), Lukacs points out that in the former,

stream-of-consciousness is the "formative principle governing the narrative

pattern" whereas it is only a "technical device" in Mann, aiding the author to

explore the core of Goethe's personality. Lukacs cannot approve of Joyce as he

lays exclusive emphasis on formal matters which can create a crisis in the

communication of the content to the reader. Lukacs acknowledges a certain

degree of unconventionality in Mann but his use of the compositional

principles of the traditional epic, "the way the pace is controlled, and the

transitions and climaxes are organized", seems to endorse the ancient rules of

epic narration (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 18). This establishes

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his status as a master craftsman.

Lukacs perceives certain basic differences between the realist writers

who believe in the traditional Aristotelian dictum that 'man is a social animal,'

'zoon politikon' and the modernist writers who consider man as a 'solitary,

asocial being' by nature (this basic solitariness being quite different from the

'individual solitariness' depicted in traditional realist literature). Solitariness

is regarded as a universal ontological phenomenon by modernists whereas it

becomes a typical phenomenon and a 'specific social fate' for realist writers.

The Heideggarian concept of man as someone 'thrown-into-being' makes man

a solitary, a-historical being without any relations with anything or anyone

outside of him. Lukacs believes that realist literature must not only aim at a

truthful reflection of reality, but ". " must demonstrate both the concrete and

abstract potentialities of human beings in extreme situations" (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 23). Lukacs, the philosopher, makes a distinction

between abstract and concrete potentialities - abstract potentiality concerned

with 'subjectivity' and concrete potentiality "concerned with the dialectic

between the individual's subjectivity and objective reality" (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 24).

"Negation of outward reality" and "the attenuation of actuality" are

tendencies Lukacs perceives in modernist literature. Moreover, in writers like

Kafka, an angst-ridden vision of the world is presented in the place of objective

 237

reality. As Lukacs says, in Kafka, "the realistic detail is the expression of a

ghostly un-reality, of a nightmare world, whose function is to evoke angst" (The

Meaning of Contemporary Realism 26). From his wide experience of European

literature Lukacs knows that the attenuation of actuality also involves

dissolution of personality. Analysing Gottfried Benn's assessment of the

concept of dissolution of personality, Lukacs observes that "man's animal

nature is opposed to his denaturized sublimated thought-processes" and that

"man must be either a moral or a thinking being - he cannot be both at once"

(The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 27). Lukacs also thinks that this

notion has its place in the tradition of bourgeois thought. Kierkegaard had

denied the Hegelian concept of the objective dialectical unity of the inner and

outer world stating that the individual exists within an opaque, impenetrable

'incognito'. This isolation of man from his environment only l~ads to a further

dissolution of personality.

Another major feature of modernist literature that Lukacs identifies is its

obsession with psychopathology. He traces the roots of this phenomenon to the

times of naturalist writing and establishes a link or continuity between the twq,

namely naturalism and modernism. With the changing social and historical

conditions, psychopathology too gains a "different significance" and "artistic

function. " If in naturalism it was a way of escape from "the dreariness of life

under capitalism", some years later "the obsession with morbidity" "became a
 238

moral protest against capitalism" and still later with writers like Musil, it

became the "goal of their artistic intention" (The Meaning of Contemporary

Realism 29). Lukacs can never approve of such modernist gimmicks as he

considers the protest by escape into psychopathology as a totally abstract

gesture carrying no concrete criticism. This mere flight into nothingness can

never be fruitful because, according to him, to protest against any particular

social condition, the same conditions ought to be depicted centrally in literature.

A purely subjective rejection of modem reality lacks 'content' and 'direction'

and the protest is recorded merely as an empty gesture of 'nausea, or discomfort

or longing.' Not just literature, but even psychology, especially Freudian

psychoanalysis, reveals this passion for and obsession with the pathological.

'Glorification of the abnormal' and the 'adoption of perversity' and

idiocy too qualify modernist writing. Lukacs explicitly reveals his aversion for

primitivism as seen in Gottfried Benn where man is looked upon as an animal

and not as a social being, with pure 'undisguised anti-humanism.' Sexual

perversity is celebrated by some like Montherlant as a "triumphant return to

nature" and as "the liberation of impulse from the slavery of convention" (The

Meaning of Contemporary Realism 32). Lukacs realizes very well that life

under capitalism means a "distortion of the human substance", but he cannot

approve of psychopathology which is itself a kind of distortion for an escape

from this distortion.

 239

Depriving literature of a sense of perspective is, according to Lukacs,

another limiting tendency of modernist fiction. Modernists like Kafka, Benn

and Musil neglect this sense of perspective altogether. To Lukacs, perspective

is of over-riding importance as it determines the course and content of the work,

drawing together the threads of narration. Apart from enabling the artist to

choose between the essential and the superficial, the crucial and the episodic,

perspective determines the direction in which characters develop in a novel. A

lucid perspective also assures a striking and economical selection. The

repudiation of the principle of selection in modernist writing makes it come

closer to the naturalistic style. As Lukacs writes in his essay "Franz Kafka or

Thomas Mann", ". . . perspective acts as a principle of selection, as the

criterion by which a writer selects his details and avoids the pitfalls of

naturalism" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 53). Stressing the

importance of perspective as a selective principle, Lukacs quotes the Berlin

Impressionist Max Liebermann who believed that 'to draw is to subtract'.

Lukacs extends this aphorism to state that "art is the selection of the essential

and subtraction of the inessential" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 53).

The modernists, however, concentrate merely on the formal criteria, style and

techniques.

Discussing perspective, Lukacs refers to Camus' literature and states that

his characters remain mere 'shadows' unlike the passionate characters of

 240

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. This reduction of human personality, Lukacs attributes

to the lack of perspective. "The lives of his characters are without direction,

without motivation, without development" (The Meaning of Contemporary

Realism 59). To make a distinction between modernism and realism, Lukacs

chooses the elements of change and development as the proper subject of

literature. Modernists believe in the unalterable nature of outward reality, says

Lukacs, whereby they render human activity impotent. Lukacs writes that

"absence of meaning makes a mockery of action and reduces art to naturalistic

description" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 36). He refers to the

instance of the 'mood of total impotence' of man in the face of the unknown

power of circumstances in Kafka's modernist work The Trial, where Joseph K.

views the world "from the perspective of a trapped and struggling fly." Though

he does not agree on any ground with Kafka, Lukacs notices the primitive awe

roused in the character by the author and states that Kafka's angst is the

experience par excellence of modernism.

Referring to the impact of modernism on music, Lukacs agrees with

Adorno's views on the elements of decadence in modernist music, and thinks

that modernist music has lost its touch with the angst-ridden truth of life. The

'obsession with angst' among bourgeois intellectuals has started receding,

destroying the authenticity of modernist music as an art form. Modernism had

made inroads into philosophy before making itself felt in literature, painting or
 241

mUSIC. The debate on the question of subjective and objective time is an

instance in this regard. From philosophy the concept slowly entered the realm

of literature.

Lukacs notices a key difference between the attitude of contemporary

realists and that of the earlier realists with reference to the unity of the world,

and the concept of time. While the earlier realists had always cared for the

unity of the world as a living whole inseparable from man, contemporary

realists like Thomas Mann are seen consciously introducing elements of

disintegration into their work like the concept of subjective time to portray the

contemporary world, thereby constructing a consciously evolved unity. But in

modernist literature this disintegration of the world leads to a dissolution of

personality, which is part of their ideological intention (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 39).

Allegory which is used in modernist literature is certainly suited, admits

Lukacs, to describe man's alienation from objective reality. Walter Benjamin

who keenly analysed allegory and modernism refers to the annihilation of

history and its link with allegory. Lukacs, who approves of Benjamin's shrewd

and consistent analysis of modernism, shares his views and adds that the notion

of objective time is essential for an understanding of history and that the notion

of subjective time is a product of a period of decline.

 242

Lukacs attempts a comparison between realistic and modernistic writings

on the basis of the use of 'descriptive detail' in them. Whereas 'individuality'

and 'typicality' are taken into account in the descriptive details of realist

literature, modernist writing denies the 'typical' altogether. Lukacs writes in

The Meaning of Contemporary Realism that, "by destroying the coherence of

the world, they reduce detail to the level of mere particularity", revealing once

again the connection between modernism and naturalism (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 43). In line with Benjamin's thoughts, Lukacs states

that modernist literature ". replaces concrete typicality with abstract

particularity". However, if the writer is genuinely talented, and uses the

principles of selection and significance, 'descriptive detail' may tum out to be

an authentic reflection of reality. This is possible only for the critical realist.

And for 'descriptive detail' to contribute to objective reality, the writer ought to

organize the details into an organic whole. "If it is handled uncritically", writes

Lukacs, "the result may be an arbitrary naturalism" (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 51).

Lukacs sums up his ideas on modernism with the observation that

"modernism leads not only to the destruction of traditional literary form; it

leads to the destruction of literature as such" (The Meaning of Contemporary

Realism 45). Lukacs following Benjamin's statements given in another context

 243

declares that "modernism means not the enrichment, but the negation of art"

(The Meaning o/Contemporary Realism 46).

To Lukacs realism is not just one style among many others but is the

very basis of all literature including even anti-realistic literature. Realistic

detail is a pre-condition even to convey absurdity. Lukacs points out the

fantastic and thoroughly improbable writings of Kafka which appear real on

account of their descriptive details.

To Lukacs, realism is so basic that it not only embraces all levels of the

creative process but also transcends the limits of literary criticism. Even the

protest of the modernist writers against Hitler's suppression of 'degenerate art'

is seen as a 'defence of realism' by Lukacs. Though the protest is for the

creative freedom of the artists in general, Lukacs understands it as a protest to

defend the writer's duty to portray reality of truth. Lukacs argues that as

Hitlerism was against truth, the persecution of even the 'degenerate art' of

modernism can be seen as a persecution of realism; in this sense, the protest

against Hitlerism can be read as a defence of realism.

The superiority of critical realism to modernism in fiction is, as already

explained, a recurrent preoccupation in Lukacs' criticism. Critical realists like

Thomas Mann were interested in the formal experimentation of modernists and

were stimulated to widen the scope of realism to accommodate contemporary

subject-matter (The Meaning 0/ Contemporary Realism 50). There is an

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apparent similarity in the treatment of time and in the use of the stream-of-

consciousness technique in James Joyce and Thomas Mann. But this is merely a

superficial similarity. As mentioned earlier, in James Joyce the stream-of-

consciousness is part of the aesthetic and artistic intention whereas in Thomas

Mann it is merely a technical device. Despite the many apparent similarities,

there is a sea of difference between modernist writers and critical realists.

While the modernist writers are uncritical about the shape of things in the

society around them, the contemporary realists can judge everything while

staying detached from the issues of social life. Lukacs' assessment is that it is

the uncritical approach of modernist writers that makes them consider

subjective experience and subjective time as reality itself. Critical realists like

Thomas Mann, on the other hand, take care to place a set of characters "whose

experience of time is normal and objective" (The Meaning of Contemporary

Realism 51) in opposition to those with a subjective time experience. Lukacs

adds that when a modernist writer accepts subjective reality as reality itself, it is

a distorted picture of reality that emerges ultimately. The critical realist writer,

on the other hand, places the modem subjective experience in the wider context

of the objective whole, giving it only the deserved importance (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 51).

Lukacs finds Kafka a modernist writer who unlike naturalists is selective

in his descriptive details. His difference from the realists is largely on account
 245

of his faith in transcendence, which is nothingness. It is this "nothingness", this

"allegorical transcendence" which blocks Kafka's way to realism. Though

Lukacs approves of Kafka's "extraordinary evocative power" and his "unique

sensibility", the "nothingness" prevents Kafka, says Lukacs, from achieving

the fusion of the particular and the general which is the essence of realistic art

(The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 45). Kafka thus seems to stand

between the two realms of realism and naturalism. Though he looks very much

a realist on many counts, there are elements in him which really obstruct his

passage to realism proper. In a sense Kafka belongs to the class of realists on

account of his direct, simple way of communicating the basic experience of a

blind and panic-stricken angst without any complex formalistic

experimentation. However, Lukacs realizes that "The diabolical character of

the world of modem capitalism, and man's impotence in the face of it, is the

real subject-matter of Kafka's writings" (The Meaning of Contemporary

Realism 77). The world he represents is certainly a fragmented one filled with

angst, a 'strange and hostile', 'nightmarish' reality. Lukacs knows that angst as

a ruling existential condition leads to the impoverishment, attenuation and

distortion of the image of man and of described reality (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 73). As G. H. R. Parkinson writes, "Lukacs does not

deny that there is such a feeling, or that it is widespread in modem society;

what he denies is the correctness of Kafka's interpretation of this feeling"

 246

(Georg Lukacs 105). Adolfo Sanchez Vasquez also comments in his essay

"Contemporary Marxism and Art":

Lukacs is not so myopic or dogmatic as to deny the existence of

phenomena that are within the realm of art but not contained

within the limits of realism. He recognizes the formal

accomplishments of the modern novel, and admits that Kafka

penetrated his reality to a certain extent, although in Lukacs'

judgment it was a penetration "in one dimension only." (Art and

Society 38)

Lukacs seems to be opposed only to the description of this hellish character of

the capitalist world as a timeless, transcendent reality and not as a passing phase

of social history. His faith is probably that the Kafkaesque horror with its

concepts of angst and alienation would cease to exist when once the transition

to socialism is achieved.

Moreover, Kafka's artistic mode is that of the allegory, says Lukacs,

which is the most appropriate method for the presentation of transcendence, in

his case, transcendent nothingness. Allegory, as Lukacs himself says, is "a

problematic genre because it rejects that assumption of an immanent meaning

to human existence which ... is the basis of traditional art" (The Meaning of

Contemporary Realism 40). As Kafka is unable to raise his characters to the

level of the typical, and as he cannot establish a link between the universal and
 247

the particular, Lukacs labels him as a modernist and not a true realist.

Lukacs made a thorough study of many realists of Western literature

who shot into prominence after 1848. He calls them critical realists even when

they are bourgeois writers without a Marxist standpoint. From French literature

he studied many including Flaubert, Zola, Anatole France and Romain Rolland;

Shaw from English literature; Dreiser from American literature; Wilhelm

Raabe and Theodor Fontane from German literature; Gottfried Keller from

Swiss literature. Though he studied them all he has the greatest regard for

Thomas Mann. Hence very dramatically he presents the dilemma of modem

age as "the dilemma of the choice between an aesthetically appealing, but

decadent modernism, and a fruitful critical realism. It is the choice between

Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 92).

To Lukacs, the greatest issue of our times is not the opposition between

capitalism and socialism, but the opposition between peace and war. The

bourgeois intellectual's duty has in fact become the rejection of angst in favour

of humanity, more than making a breakthrough to socialism.

Lukacs analyses Thomas Mann's artistic world and tries to contrast it

with the world of Kafka. Mann's world is free, Lukacs says, from

transcendental reference - place, time and detail being rooted firmly in a

particular social and historical situation. Remaining very much a bourgeois

with a socialist perspective, Mann never shows any enthusiasm to portray the
 248

newly emergent socialist societies (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 78)..

In fact it is his limited socialist perspective which gives credit and hannony to

Mann's works. Lukacs also compares Mann to Andre Gide, who believed that

'beautiful feelings make bad art' and 'without the devil's help there would be

no art" (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism 79). Although in Mann's

works from Tonio Kroger (1902) to Dr. Faustus (1947) he treated 'the demonic

and the underworld of the human mind', it only remained a 'legitimate theme'

with him, whereas the demonic became a doctrine governing the life and art of

Gide. Lukacs identifies this as the parting of ways of critical realism and

modernism. In the same manner, Lukacs offers the modem bourgeois writer

the choice between the social sanity of Thomas Mann and the morbidity of

Franz Kafka.

While taking into account Lukacs' approval of Thomas Mann, certain

remarks made by Alasdair Mac Intyre in his essay "Marxist Mask and

Romantic Face" should also be examined. Mac Intyre seems to comment on

the modernist in Mann:

Lukacs' arbitrary excision from Mann's work of all that does not

fit into the role which he imposes on Mann - that of the bourgeois

realist who disowns the decadence of modernism - is most

obvious when Lukacs simply writes off the opiBions Mann

professed in his essays. So Mann's expressed admiration for

 249

Freud is dismissed and The Holy Sinner read as a refutation of

Freud. Equally Mann's expressed attitude to Nietzsche has to be

discounted. (70)

Mac Intyre also adds that Lukacs really had difficulty in writing about Mann as

he was always ambivalent in his attitudes both to art and to bourgeois society.

Lukacs highlights Mann's distinction as a realist by bringing in the issue

of perspective. Whereas the avant-garde writer has no perspective regarding

the future of mankind and is bothered only about immediate reality, Mann has a

perspective, "in which he sees the disintegrating bourgeois culture of the

present, unable to find a solution in its own terms and poised on barbarism"

(Essays on Thomas Mann 96). Though his perspective remains abstract and

does not discuss much of socialism, which is "unavoidable if humanity is not to

be swallowed up by barbarism," he cannot be grouped with the avant-garde

writers (Parkinson, Georg Lukacs 107).

Lukacs' critique of modernism seems to establish further his strong

convictions regarding the basic concepts governing realism. His dissatisfaction

with the very movement of modernism started with the "loss of authenticity" he

noticed in the so-called modernist writings. While his contemporaries like

Brecht, Bloch, Adorno and Benjamin defended experimentation, Lukacs

took an orthodox stance, defending emphatically his well-argued realist

positions. Though this involved a lot of contradictions including his hailing of

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bourgeois writers, Lukacsian aesthetics found a concrete basis in realism.

What can ultimately be deduced· from Lukacs' position is that he puts his

unqualified faith in the humanist, ethical, working class propensities of the

writer irrespective of the bourgeois or proletarian status of the writer

and the century to which the writer belongs.

Lukacs' opposition to expressionism and avant-garde writers seems to

have had its roots in the belief that the modernist movement unknowingly

contributed to the growth of fascism. Even though a confirmed Marxist, Lukacs

never showed any aversion towards the bourgeoisie. He even believed that the

generally hostile attitude adopted by the expressionists towards the bourgeoisie

was the illusion that paved the way for fascism. He noticed a petty bourgeois

and romantic attitude amongst the expressionists against capitalism which had

the attributes of the opposition maintained by the fascists for mass appeal.

The key concept of 'totality', very much a part of Lukacsian aesthetics,

IS not to be found in expressionism, which had its fragmentary nature and

subjective imprint. The elitist attributes of modernist writings and the

naturalistic quality of expressionist works estranged Lukacs from the modernist

movement altogether. To him, such works seemed to stay quite removed from

the popular concepts of art. He could identify with great critical insight that the

true opposition in the contemporary age was between critical realism and

modernism, and not between socialist realism and modernism. While he had
 251

serious reservations about the Stalinist-Zhdanovist notions of socialist realism,

he fully realized the great significance of socialism as the true basis for the

literature of the future. To him, critical realism is not only acceptable but even

desirable until the conditions are ripe for the emergence of new traditions of

socialist realism; and hence his appreciation of critical realist writers like

Thomas Mann and his preference for Mann to Kafka. To Lukacs any realistic

account, whether historical or social, is in the ultimate analysis a Marxist

critique of capitalism.