Lukács' main writing as a Marxist critic of literature falls largely within [the] period in which it was most difficult, or even dangerous, to air venturesome thoughts that might not quite fit in with the canon of rigid and fixed rulings about what one should or should not think. (p. 173)
To recall these facts of history and to append to them these conjectures is not to exculpate the philosopher, let alone to applaud him. But Lukács' critical activities did not happen in a void, and they reflect certain facts about the world he lived in. During his stay in Moscow, Lukács did not announce his views through participation in the polemics on Socialist Realism, the new Russian orthodoxy exported to the rest of Europe via the network of party organs. He wrote of Tolstoy or Gorky, but not much of the successors of Sholokhov. He gave as a reason for this his defective knowledge of the Russian language. He gave keen attention to the novels of Heinrich Mann, as examples of a new democratic humanism in the making; but he steered clear of the entirely orthodox, copy-book 'socialist realist'—even programmatic—early socialist novels of Aragon in France (1935 onwards), though these were written in French. If he had pronounced their sentiments, treatment of themes, and value systems to be 'correct', he would no doubt have had difficulty in explaining why the novels, as novels, are unremarkable and tedious; but if he had attempted such an explanation, the results would have been complicated in other ways. Better then to concentrate on important literature, on major monuments of the past. This has always the advantage that it is easier to deal with issues that are not topical: safer too; moreover, the philosopher, in his search for general principles requires elbow-room, and a certain calm. Not that for any philosopher eager to contribute to Marxist thought in the age of Stalin the search for general principles can be an entirely unrestricted quest: Marx, Engels, Lenin cannot be overlooked (even their particular fancies and tastes), and a certain number of tenets cannot be allowed to admit of exceptions ('Realism good, Naturalism bad'). But there remains scope for fresh discoveries within the framework of general guide-lines. (pp. 174-75)
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