Love and Exile by Bashevis Singer Isaac

Author:Bashevis Singer, Isaac
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Goodreads Press
Published: 2023-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

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I had chosen but two idols that I would be willing to serve: the idol of literature and the idol of love, but many of my colleagues both in and out of the Writers' Club invariably served the idol of World Betterment. They hammered away at me: How can one be a writer if one isn't ready to fight for a better world, equality, freedom, justice, a world without competition and of eternal peace? The capitalist countries fought wars on account of oil. They kept putting up new munitions factories. The strongest among them seized huge areas of the earth. Within the groups, some individuals seized all the power under the guise of democracy while they preached offering the other cheek. How could an honest and sensitive person witness all this and still keep silent?

Well, but terrible tidings emerged from the land of socialism.

Isaac Deutscher, who had become a Trotskyite, revealed many Stalinist outrages in his little magazine—the slave camps, the liquidation of the old Bolsheviks, the rigged trials and purges which had already taken the lives of millions of innocent people. Was this socialism? Was this the ideal postulated by Marx, Engels, Lenin? Deutscher had overwhelming proof that Leon Trotsky would have handled things differently. I attended a meeting at the Writers' Club at which this Isaac Deutscher was the speaker. The Stalinists tried to outshout him. They called him the renegade, fascist, sellout, capitalist bootlicker, imperialist murderer, provocateur. But Deutscher had a powerful voice. He pounded his fist on the podium and his audience of Trotskyites encouraged him with thunderous applause. He hurled sulphur and ashes at Stalinists and right-wing Socialists, at Fascists, and at such alleged democracies as America, England, and France.

Within the Jewish circles, he castigated the Zionists in all their factions and variations. What madness to want to turn back the clock of history two thousand years! Well, and why had the Zionists concluded that Palestine belonged to the Jews? They gleaned all their information from the Scriptures, a book filled with miracles and legends. Deutscher said that the fact that Zionism could attract millions of Jews merely demonstrated the degeneracy and hopelessness of the bourgeoisie.

Among those who came to the lecture were Sabina and her younger brother, Mottel. Although Sabina was leftist-oriented, she hadn't yet decided whether she was a Stalinist, a Trotskyite, or an anarchist. Mottel was a fervent Stalinist and he had come to heckle and maybe even throw a rotten potato or egg at the speaker. Mottel was short and broad-shouldered, with thick lips, a broad nose like a duck's (he actually was nicknamed Mottel Duck), and small, piercing eyes under bushy brows. Mottel was something of a buffoon. He spouted jokes, and absurdities that evoked laughter. He had a low forehead and a thatch of pitch-black, curly hair. Mottel Duck had already served time at the Pawiak prison for his Communist activities. His sister told me that he carried a gun. He allowed his sister and mother to support him.

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