http://socialistaction.org/a-new-look-at-1959-novel-about-trotsky/
A new look at 1959 novel about Trotsky
Published November 5, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Trotsky-with-his-wife-Nat-001
By JOE AUCIELLO
Bernard Wolfe, “The Great Prince Died: A Novel About the Assassination
of Trotsky,” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959/2015), 416 pp.,
$18.
Credit the critical and popular success of two recent novels, “The
Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver and “The Man Who Loved Dogs” by Leonardo
Padura, for this year’s re-publication of this 1959 historical novel by
Bernard Wolfe, with a new afterword by novelist William T. Vollmann. A
slightly rewritten hardback version appeared in 1975 with the title
“Trotsky Dead.”
For eight months in 1937, Wolfe was a secretary to Leon Trotsky at the
beginning of his Mexican exile. This was the time of the Moscow Trials,
orchestrated by Stalin, which resulted in the forced confessions and
execution of many former leaders of the Bolshevik Party, who had been
charged with sabotage, treason, and espionage, and for conspiring to
restore capitalism in Russia. Throughout these trials, Trotsky and his
son Leon Sedov were the main defendants, in absentia. Their execution
required greater planning and effort from Stalin’s secret police.
Based on these experiences, and his impressions and speculations about
them, Wolfe has written a novel of sorts, in which Victor Rostov is
essentially a stand-in for Leon Trotsky. In Wolfe’s account, Trotsky in
his final years “must have been” wracked with unacknowledged guilt for
his role in the Bolshevik suppression of a sailors’ rebellion at the
Kronstadt naval base in 1921. These unspoken self-recriminations, “a
very particular agony” which Wolfe assumes tormented Trotsky,
“interfered with his will to live.” In Rostov, Wolfe has created a
character who craves his death; that Trotsky has earned his fate is the
central idea of the novel.
Unfortunately, Wolfe is no novelist. At his best, his writing is simply
dull. Characters are thinly drawn, and none are developed. Dialogue
becomes speechifying, where not one but several characters serve as
mouthpieces for the author, all making the same point, repeatedly.
Description is minimal; plot development is nonexistent.
There are affectations to a poetic style; the influence of
stream-of-consciousness narration occasionally and woefully intrudes.
When Wolfe reaches for a literary flourish, his prose reads like an
awkward translation into English. The heavy hand of the author is
everywhere and is unavoidable.
Here, for instance, are Rostov and his chief bodyguard, Paul, leaving
the compound to take a motor trip to the countryside: “Parade of small
epics out there: unheroic simmer Paul, bodyguard, and he, body guarded,
were now farthest spectators to; yet ideologically it was their one
concern. What they built programs for, drafted theses for, this world of
the lively picayune, these day maneuvers and flea circuses—past their
touch: the sandbags only memorialized the gulf.” Deficiencies of style
and theme are displayed in this passage and in so many more: There is no
need to belabor the point.
In a favorable “Afterword” to the book, novelist William T. Vollmann
describes Wolfe’s writing as “uninspired,” with “wearisome
redundancies.” While Vollmann will allow that Wolfe’s style can
sometimes be effective and that he can, on occasion, generate narrative
interest, Vollmann does say, “Wolfe continually undermines his own
verisimilitude, eschews subtlety, has a tin ear for dialogue, etcetera.
— Enough.”
Well, not just yet. Add that Wolfe’s writing is infused with the
sensibility of a peeping-Tom pornographer. The behind-the-counter “dirty
books” style of cheap 1950s dime-store novels is presented here as
insight into feminine psychology. Perhaps an element of the risqué was
meant to be entertaining or avant-garde, but it makes a contemporary
reader cringe. Wolfe’s concupiscence is just creepy.
Though Wolfe’s literary gifts are limited, he does make the most of what
technique he does have. He is particularly fond of foreshadowing. From
the very first chapter, Rostov is shown trying to dodge the fateful
topic he cannot bear to consider. “When do we get to the Kronstadt
chapter?” his secretary asks. Rostov’s gestures show the question
disturbs him, since he “pursed his lips and fingered his pointed beard.”
He answers the question by saying that other matters must take priority.
Perhaps the answer is legitimate and the fidgeting of no consequence?
Should a reader think so, or not notice the exchange about Kronstadt,
the second chapter develops the hint and puts the matter more squarely.
Again, Rostov is made uncomfortable by a mention of Kronstadt (“the word
for which there was no answer”). This time, though, one of his trusted
guards plays the key role. In fact, the guard is shown to be more
insightful of Rostov than he is of himself. Ultimately, the climactic
scene of the novel is not the assassination but the verbal confrontation
about Kronstadt between Rostov and this guard, Paul, formerly Rostov’s
strongest supporter.
The parallel is hard to miss. Just as the fictional guard is supposedly
more perceptive than the fictional Trotsky, more aware of the
significance of Kronstadt and its political and psychological
implications, the real secretary—Bernard Wolfe—is supposedly more
perceptive and aware than the real Trotsky. Here, in short, is the
essence of the novel. It’s as if Wolfe hauls Trotsky into a court where
Wolfe is the prosecutor, judge, and jury.
So, both in matters of fact and fiction, the novel is thoroughly and
irredeemably flawed. Curiously enough, it is the defects of “The Great
Prince Died” that are its main source of interest. That the novel fails
is not in question. Some readers will be compelled to ask why it fails.
Leaving aside the author’s evident lack of literary craftsmanship, what
makes the novel just plain bad?
At issue is more than just tendentious and simplistic political
analysis, though Wolfe’s sophomoric understanding of history and
politics is certainly no virtue. Ultimately, though, the novel fails as
a work of fiction. What standards of aesthetic judgment, then, are
violated in this work? To what extent does the author’s re-writing of
history contribute to the literary failure?
Historical fiction admits to a large degree of latitude, after all. An
author has ample room to create, and strict fidelity to truth is not
necessary. Yet, facts matter. Wolfe’s argument is not predicated on the
unknown or unknowable, the soil where historical fiction thrives.
Instead, he develops his ideas by ignoring or brushing aside what is
known and what is not convenient for his theme.
That is, Wolfe does not use fiction to fill in the gaps of history or to
explain what history cannot access. There are no gaps: the issue of
Kronstadt was raised towards the end of Trotsky’s life, and he put his
opinions in writing, defending Bolshevik policy and his personal role in
making and carrying out that policy.
The real issue, the contention that gave rise to the novel, is that
Wolfe is dissatisfied with Trotsky’s (and Lenin’s) analysis of Kronstadt
and the reasons why the revolt was repressed. “The Great Prince Died”
isn’t “history as it might have been” but “history as it wasn’t.” The
disregarding of fact and flouting of truth, which the essay would not
condone, is not readily permitted in the novel either, even though, of
all the literary genres, fiction may be the most forgiving.
So, Wolfe should not be faulted for telescoping events, shifting crucial
dates, omitting some historical figures, simplifying others, all in the
interest of a lively story. Let Wolfe also have his fictional Trotsky
lead the armed assault against the Kronstadt guns, even though the real
Trotsky was not actually present and was never expected to be. Many of
these alterations, and others, are permissible if the essence of
history, as it is generally known, is accurately depicted and if the
changes add to the overall artistic effect of the novel.
Still, even granting a large degree of artistic license, false history
produces a bad novel. If the central conflict in a work of fiction is
historical, but the conflict is untrue, then the problems the characters
encounter, and the characters themselves, cannot develop organically
from the story’s events. They must instead be manufactured and imposed
on the plot. Fiction is thus so constricted that it is unable to breathe.
For the traditional realist novel (contrasted with mystery or romance,
where plot is most crucial), the literary element most essential for the
reader’s interest is characterization. Whether virtuous or evil,
conflicted or confused, typical or exotic, the central character must be
credible. Without plausibility of character, a reader’s pleasure lessens
with every turn of the page. Historical fiction does not escape this law.
Wolfe has Rostov writing a book about Stalin, but this fictional Trotsky
is unable—because of a psychological block—to complete the chapter on
Kronstadt. During his exile in Mexico, Trotsky did continue his work on
such a biography, though by Stalin’s order the murderer struck before it
could be completed. The actual manuscript, in fact, is stained with
Trotsky’s blood.
Not surprisingly, the conflict about Kronstadt in 1921 is mentioned only
briefly in the biography for the best of reasons: Stalin played no vital
role in the events. Further, the short account that Trotsky writes gives
no indication that he suffered from a troubled mind about the rebellion
or its suppression. Instead, what does disturb Trotsky are the many
falsehoods that had grown around the Kronstadt uprising.
In fact, Trotsky criticizes as untrue the point of view that Wolfe will
later turn into a full-length novel: “The Stalinist school of
falsification is not the only one that flourishes today in the field of
Russian history. Indeed, it derives a measure of its sustenance from
certain legends built on ignorance and sentimentalism; such as the lurid
tales concerning Kronstadt. … Suffice it to say that what the Soviet
government did reluctantly at Kronstadt was a tragic necessity;
naturally the revolutionary government could not have ‘presented’ the
fortress that protected Petrograd to the insurgent sailors only because
a few dubious Anarchists and Essars [Social-Revolutionary Party] were
sponsoring a handful of reactionary peasants and soldiers in rebellion”
(“Stalin,” p. 337).
Do words like “reluctantly” and the statement of a “tragic necessity”
point to an unacknowledged personal torment roiling within Trotsky’s
heart? On this flimsy basis, Wolfe answers “yes” and proceeds to invent
a character driven by remorse to a deserved self-suicide. It has little
to do with the real Trotsky, who wrote unequivocally: “I was a member of
the government, I considered the quelling of the rebellion necessary and
therefore bear responsibility for the suppression.”
Is such a statement insufficiently clear? Might an admission of
responsibility indicate an admission of guilt? To remove any such doubt,
Trotsky concluded: “But I am ready to recognize that civil war is no
school of humanism. Idealists and pacifists always accused the
revolution of ‘excesses.’ But the main point is that ‘excesses’ flow
from the very nature of revolution, which in itself is but an ‘excess’
of history. Whoever so desires may on this basis reject (in little
articles) revolution in general. I do not reject it. In this sense I
carry full and complete responsibility for the suppression of the
Kronstadt rebellion” (see “More on the Suppression of Kronstadt,” in
V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, “Kronstadt,” p. 97).
How accurate to history does the historical novelist have to be? To the
general question, only a general answer follows: The novelist must be
accurate enough and the story must be true enough to be plausible. The
reader must trust the story enough to believe in it. The historical
novelist who cannot build or sustain the reader’s trust has made a cake
that does not raise, a lump of dough. A work of fiction built on history
must succeed as a work of fiction.
The author who strives to create a believable world cannot permit the
reader to observe the author’s hand at work. Otherwise, the illusion of
realism is shattered, plausibility disappears; the novel falters or
fails. Of course, the writer will be present in tone, style, subject
matter, etc., but this presence must be hidden and unacknowledged. The
realist novel does not survive the evidence of the novelist.
In “The Art of Fiction,” a stately manifesto for artistic freedom, Henry
James wrote: “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a
novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it
be interesting.” James added that the ways in which a novel could be
interesting were “innumerable.” He had not reckoned on “The Great Prince
Died,” which has not produced even one point of interest.
Photo: Leon Trotsky in Mexico with his wife, Natalia Sedova.
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Posted in Arts & Culture, Marxist Theory & History. | Tagged Bolsheviks,
books, Kronstadt, Stalin, Trotsky, Wolfe.
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