p Ilya Ehrenburg was known all over the world, both as a writer and as a member of the World Peace Council. Ehrenburg’s popularity as a writer and a public figure became especially widespread during the Second World War and in the post-war years when the struggle for peace was launched in view of the contradictions arising between the capitalist and socialist camps. Ehrenburg’s trenchant and brilliant pamphlets against the war-mongers and in 189 defense of peace appeared in the press in European countries and in the United States.

p I find it difficult to write about Ehrenburg. It is difficult because in order to evaluate the aesthetic worth of his writings (the same is more or less true of any writer) one must be able not to let oneself be influenced by the topicality of his newspaper work. And in the case of Ehrenburg it is not easy to do.

p Although Ehrenburg himself as a poet, novelist and publicist, liked to stress that he was purely an artist, and that his tastes were personal and subjective, in actual fact there was no clear dividingline between Ehrenburg the artist and Ehrenburg the politician. Sometimes he was simply the politician, travelling about the world with purely political assignments, delivering speeches, awarding medals and prizes, and so forth. These days, of course, every artist is a politician. But there is a difference between a political and an artistic perception of life.

p Ehrenburg was a very unusual personality. This thin, stooping man with a disgruntled and frequently squeamish expression, had the highly vulnerable heart of a poet: a poet, moreover, inclined to sentimentality.

p As an artist Ehrenburg overlooked none of the themes that were “in the air”, so to speak, at any particular time. World War I, the economic dislocation and rehabilitation of Europe, the socialist revolution, the crisis and the contradictions of capitalism, technical progress, the economic rise of the U.S.A., imperialism, the New Economic Policy, the war against Hitler Germany and fascism, the campaign for peace—these and dozens of other topical themes were treated in turn in his novels, articles and short stories: whatever was of current importance. The sequence of themes is interesting in itself, because it reflects the psychological evolution of a man who, finding himself in the thick of the battle between socialism and capitalism, sought refuge first in “the small man’s right to personal happiness”, then in eternal cultural values, and so on.

p Ehrenburg is a writer of the subjective cast; that is, he is concerned first and foremost with his own personal attitude to reality, an attitude which acquires objectivity only in the characters of his different books. This style became shaped as a means of embodying tnotifs of a cultured individual’s “independence”, denied him by the cruel world, and also motifs of sentimental humanism which used irony as a protective screen.

p Ehrenburg (1891-1968) entered the literary scene in the period between the two Russian revolutions. He left Russia in 1908 on account of his connection with the revolutionary movement and his position of social outcast which was the lot of the Jews under tsarism. He made his home in Paris where he lived in the 190 international milieu of anarchically inclined Bohemians. It was then that those sentimental Chaplinesque little-man motifs began to develop in his poetry. However, there is no need to go into Ehrcnburg’s biography here since he himself has told his life story in the two volumes of autobiographical notes entitled People, Years, Life (1961-1965).

p The fifteen or so books of verse published by Ehrenburg in the period from 1911 to 1921, both abroad and in the U.S.S.R., passed unnoticed. He first commanded attention with his book The Countenance of War (1920), a pamphlet against the First World War. Fame came to him after the publication of his novel The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and. His Pupils, written in Belgium in 1921, of which Lenin spoke with approval. The strongest side of Ehrenburg’s talent—his satirical criticism of capitalism—is displayed here in all its brilliance. However, it must be said, that this criticism was made from the standpoint of anarchist nihilism. The hero of the novel is a “great agent provocateur”, a “man without convictions”, a wanderer of the world who preaches a sort of religion of “wise nihilism" to a handful of pupils (the author himself among them), all of different nationalities and social standing who symbolically represent the main trends of culture. What is there for a man to believe in? One of Julio Jurenito’s favourite pupils is a Negro named Aishi, who fought in the French army. He used to go round pulling out the teeth of dead German soldiers and made a necklace of them which he hung on the “Champion of Civilisation" statue, for doing which the University of Lisbon awarded him the title of Doctor. The idea of the novel is that all is false, shameless and cynical in this falsest of worlds, and its motto is: do in Rome as the Romans do. Julio Jurenito was written in war-ravaged Europe, in an atmosphere of bourgeois cynicism and disillusionment with all moral values. The “teacher” and his pupils also make a trip to Soviet Russia. But here, too, the “teacher” sees nothing except the “exotic novelty" of the Soviet scene. And Julio Jurenito decides to put an end to his senseless existence, choosing a most original method: he puts on new boots and starts down the main street of Konotop, a small town in the Ukraine, counting on these boots to tempt the bandits with whom the country was teeming. The stratagem works, and bandits kill this great agent provocateur, the “midwife of history".

p Julio Jurenito will probably remain the most vivid illustration, not just in Russian but in the whole of European literature, of the post-war sentiments of the harassed western intelligentsia. In his book there is everything: sophistication, cynicism, trenchant satire, sentimental lyricism, and the gay abandon of despair. All this combined makes a brilliant firework of paradoxes, subtle 191 observations of the life of the European bourgeoisie, and sarcastic details. It may be called a confession, a pamphlet, a grotesque, or a poem.

p After Julio Jurenito Ehrenburg devoted himself entirely to prose. He followed a road entirely his own, for he became a writer of two worlds: the world of capitalism and the world of socialism, the West and Russia. He dropped the sounding line of his sentimental humanism into the two worlds in turn, and summed up the results in his numerous novels and stories. The ideas which guided him in reproducing his impressions and the method of his approach did not allow him to discern the positive forces of history, the prospects of the future and, consequently, the roads to socialism. Therefore, Ehrenburg’s earlier books about life in the Soviet Union in 1922-1927, give us a critical reflection of reality, rather than reality itself, in the mirror of his Chaplinesque sentimentalism.

p A suitable epigraph to all these books—The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov, Mercure de Russe, Thirteen Pipes, The Shark, In Protochny Street (1926), The Love of Jeanne Ney and The Stormy Life of Lazik Reutscbwanz—would be the following words from The Life and Death of Nikolai Kurbov: “People can only be people. The chickens also want to live.” The theme of these novels and stories is the preponderance of such “eternal” personal emotions as love, sorrow, tenderness, self-preservation, and so on, over the abstract algebra of the Revolution and the state. The thing to do is live while one can, eat warm and fragrant bread, curl up near the purring stove, and make love (Nikolai Kurbov}. With Ehrenburg all these motifs were tinged with lyrical regret over the “failure” of the revolution, a beautiful human Utopia for which the author was full of subjective sympathy.

p His books about the world of capitalism, written at the same time, were entirely different in tone. In Julio Jurenito, Trust D.E., and How Europe Came to Ruin (1923) the author’s satirical indictment of the whole capitalist system and his Werther-like distress in the world of machines goes hand in hand with his admiration for the technical culture of the West. This technical culture grows into a sort of new aesthetic basis of the world. “And so, a new style has been created by science and industry and only Russia is an instance of many absurdities,” he wrote in And Still It Revolves (1921).

p Gradually Ehrenburg’s criticism of the world order began to rise above subjectivism, his pamphlets developed into essays, and facts became all-important. This change came about when he took up journalism. His collections of articles about Europe (The Stamp of the Times, The Overdue Denouement and others) and his books about Ivar Kreuger and Tomas Ba^a give a brilliant picture of 192 social and cultural life in the principal countries of Central Europe, and the ugliness and contradictions of the capitalist system.

p However, Ehrenburg did not find the correct attitude to western culture at once. In White Coal, or Werther’s Tears he is full of admiration for technical constructivism and also goes to the other extreme (like Duhamel) renouncing machines and protesting against industry in general. He says: “I believe the second Great Flood is in preparation—machine madness, a crusade of maniquins. . . technical progress is growing with every passing day. It is this that with the help of the toxins of fatigue and the avalanche of cars is burying human lives. A splendiferous, cruel period of history has begun.” And further on he writes: “But the loftiest theme is the despair of man amid aerials and wax automatons.”

p On the Second Day (1934), a story about the first five-year plan, marked a turning point in Ehrenburg’s work and is one of his most realistic books. The first victories of socialism overcame his mistrust and nihilism and enabled him to see the new forces of history. The result was his artistic conversion to the new world. Three themes are intertwined in this novel: the creation of the socialist world, the destinies of culture, and the struggle against nihilism.

p In my opinion, On the Second Day and Without Pausing for Breath are not among Ehrenburg’s best, even though I did praise them once in print. I think most highly of his books written in the 19405 and 19505.

p One of these novels is The Fall of Paris, which deals with the period in World War II when the nazis were advancing on the French capital. Ehrenburg convincingly proves that the fall of Paris began much earlier, when the inclination of the French political leaders to capitulate was made evident at Munich.

p The novel In Storm made a particularly big splash and has been translated into twenty foreign languages. It is a story about the French Resistance and the people (like Madeau, and Sambo, an artist) who came to join the movement.

p The Decuman Wave gives a sweeping panoramic picture of what happened after the war and is dedicated to the struggle for world peace. In this novel, as in many of his others, there is a great procession of characters, the action keeps shifting from one country to another, and there are no lengthy descriptions of events or emotions. The pace is rapid, the style is laconic, the tone changes abruptly from irony to satire, and the psychology of the heroes is often rendered by reportorial means. Ehrenburg’s heroes are forever talking politics and solving political problems. As a writer, he could be called a sort of “sign of the times".

p Ehrenburg’s wartime publicistic writings had the most powerful impact on readers and enjoyed the most outstanding popularity. His 193 articles had the impact of artillery fire. Their aphoristic style, based on short sentences and contrasts, left a lasting impression. Ehrenburg’s humaneness was compellingly eloquent. His message, addressed to the noblest feelings in men, made them stronger in spirit. His words resounded in the heart of every Soviet reader like the ashes of Klaas knocking in the heart of Eulenspiegel.

p In his memoirs People, Years, Life, Ehrenburg speaks of Isaac Babel, Boris Pasternak and many other Soviet writers whose names until then had been kept in the coulisse. These memoirs, however, have been criticised for presenting a “twilight” view of literature and the age, and giving a most subjective portrayal of the writers.

p Admittedly, Ehrenburg’s books arouse different feelings in different people, in the sense that not every reader can accept his manner of writing and especially the arrogance of his tone. The impression one gets from his memoirs is that he never failed to gain the upper hand and was always proved right. True, Ehrenburg does admit that he made some ideological mistakes, but he mentions this rather casually and not from the position of a historical analysis.

But let us forgive him his faults which are common human failings, present to a greater or lesser degree in all men. Be that as it may, I know no other writer in Soviet literature—or in any other European literature either, for that matter—who can equal Ehrenburg for the compelling power of his publicistic talent. And this power he always used for the good of people of all races and nationalities.