Global historical forces in movement are set off against a small detail of individual humour or tragedy.
The language of Marxist objectivity (not, of course, the same thing as neutrality) is doubled by the vivid recreation of some lived experience, the subjectivity, so to speak, of that objectivity. Theoretical analysis, historical narrative or political characterization may be illuminated by a sudden, compressed image. The question as to what is literature may be a particularly thorny one but I mean simply to draw attention to the way in which, in some basic sense at least, the techniques and inspirations of creative literature inform the productions of the young Trotsky in his activities as historian and journalist, revolutionary theoretician and polemicist. Nor is it a matter of focusing, narrowly, on the nature of Trotsky’s prose style, his manner of construction or exposition. I am not now speaking about the strictly scientific value of these writings, about their strengths and deficiencies as political theory or historical analysis (or, for that matter, literary criticism), although even in this respect many things still need to be spoken. This appears to be a paradox, so let us explore it. footnote 1 And yet such is the imaginative force of some parts of Trotsky’s early work, and so compelling their narrative drive, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that, as a contribution to revolutionary literature, they have not yet been properly valued. Others besides Isaac Deutscher have commented on the excellence of his prose. His biographer, in a work whose own towering literary achievement is undiminished by the passage of a decade and a half since its completion, gives due space and attention to these facets of Trotsky’s personality. Where is its wealth appreciated? Naturally, anyone in the least familiar with Trotsky’s life’s work will know that within his wide range of concerns the literary-artistic occupied a prominent place, as they will know also the power and quality of his best writing. Upon reading them, it is quickly evident, even from the accessible fraction of a much larger output belonging to the years before the October Revolution, that here is one rich source.
A re we sensible enough of all the sources of our own literary heritage? The question is suggested to me by some of the writings of the young Trotsky.
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