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"Trotsky demonstrated a keen insight and a penetrating analysis of literature (Russian and foreign) and society."-Choice
Index, Annotation
| Introduction | 7 | |
| Pt. I | Critical Theory | |
| From Literature and Revolution | 29 | |
| Class and Art | 63 | |
| From Culture and Socialism | 83 | |
| Historical Objectivity and Artistic Truth | 92 | |
| Culture and the Soviet Bureaucracy | 94 | |
| The Future of Partisan Review: A Letter to Dwight Macdonald | 101 | |
| Art and Politics in Our Epoch | 104 | |
| Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art | 115 | |
| The Independence of the Artist: A Letter to Andre Breton | 122 | |
| Pt. II | Essays in Literary Criticism | |
| Tolstoy: Poet and Rebel | 127 | |
| On Tolstoy's Death | 143 | |
| A Drama of the French Working Class: Marcel Martinet's La Nuit | 148 | |
| To the Memory of Sergei Essenin | 162 | |
| Churchill as Biographer and Historian | 167 | |
| The Suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky | 174 | |
| The Strangled Revolution: Andre Malraux's The Conquerors | 179 | |
| Celine and Poincare: Novelist and Politician | 191 | |
| Silone's Fontamara | 205 | |
| Critical Jottings | 207 | |
| Maxim Gorky | 217 | |
| Jack London's The Iron Heel | 221 | |
| A Masterly First Novel: Jean Malaquais's Les Javanais | 225 | |
| Notes | 235 | |
| Name Index | 249 |
Anonymous
Posted April 8, 2003
With razor-sharp insight and wit, Trotsky points to the necessity for art to exist free from political and social agendas, as well as from the shackles, the stereotypes, the dark ignorance of reactionary class rule. These are not at all contradictory goals. Trotsky declares boldly in these articles that artistic truth must be based not on any particular literary school or dogma but on ¿the immutable faith of the artist in his own inner self.¿ In this collection Trotsky debates Stalinists, appreciates Tolstoy, Essenin, Gorky, and Jack London, and slam-dunks Winston Churchill¿s pretentious writings. Must reading for activists who seek to advance their understanding of the arts as well as for writers and artists seeking to understand how their work relates to society.
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Posted March 14, 2003
This is a marvelous book which brings out the deep humanistic sensibility that lay at the heart of one of the twentieth century¿s great socialist revolutionaries. Trotsky¿s writings show that Marxism is far from being a sterile set of formulas which relegate art, literature, music, love, and our emotional lives to the sidelines, in favor of economics. No, the book shows that Marxist ideas are so powerful because they can illuminate the complex connections between economic structures and the varied human creativity expressed in all forms of art. It also takes a strong stand against censorship and for freedom, not only in capitalist societies, but in post-capitalist ones, such as the Soviet Union, where Stalinists had made a mockery of artistic freedom in the name of socialism. These ideas are illustarted by a fascinating set of writings, including literary reviews, correspondence with artists like Andre Breton and analysis of the challenges facing artists and writers in the Soviet Union.
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Overview
"Trotsky demonstrated a keen insight and a penetrating analysis of literature (Russian and foreign) and society."-Choice
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