![]() The quality of that faith I cannot define beyond saying that in my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations and social determinants, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which, in our rare moments of grace, we were able to decipher a small fragment. The reeds to which I clung and which saved me from being swallowed up were the outgrowth of a new faith, rooted in mud, slippery, elusive, yet tenacious. This, in sum, is my story from 1931 to 1938, from my twenty-sixth to my thirty-third year. I WENT to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned. ![]() ![]() I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water. When one burns one's boats, what a very nice fire it makes The reader is advised to get through these opening chapters as best and as quickly as he can. I disliked writing these chapters, but felt the chronicler's compulsion to record material which appears to him trivial and boring, in the hope that at some future date it will appear less so. I found it impossible to revive the naive enthusiasm of that period: I could analyse the ashes, but not resurrect the flame. This point will become painfully apparent to the reader through the first five or six chapters of this book, which deal with my early Communist days in Berlin and Russia. Facts can be complemented by files and newspaper records, emotions not. Gains in distance and perspective must be balanced against losses in emotional freshness, for facts are more easily retained than feelings. But if one's past is worth recording at all, this should be done before its colour and fragrance have faded. To write one's memoirs before one has reached the age of fifty may seem a premature and somewhat presumptuous undertaking. ![]() An epilogue brings the narrative up to the present date. The present, concluding volume ends with my escape to England in 1940, and my settling down in that country. The previous volume of this autobiography covered my first twenty-six years, up to my joining the Communist Party in 1931. Portrait of the Author at Thirty-five and After Une vie d'analyse pour une heure de synthese!Įverything becomes legend, if the gentlemen will have the goodness to wait. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |