Henry C.K. Liu
"Daniel F. Vukovich" wrote:
> At 08:01 PM 31-12-98 -0800, you wrote:
> >>This is not a defense of Lenin, Mao, etc.; it is a tired frustration and
> >>bemusement at our ([Ehrenreich's], in this case) collective ignorance
> >>about these
> >>histories. Contemporary accounts of Lenin (and to a lesser extent of
> >>Trotsky) depict him as a warm, humane, and inspiring fellow (c.f.
> >>Lunacharsky, Gorky, Mayakovsky
> >
> >Hmmm....
> >
> >Maxim Gorky reports a short monologue he once heard from Lenin:
> >
> > "I know nothing that is greater than the Appassionata
> > [by Beethoven,]; I'd like to listen to it every day
> > [Lenin said]. It is marvelous superhuman music. I
> > always think with pride--perhaps it is naive of me--
> > what marvelous things human beings can do!
> >
> > "But I can't listen to music too often. It affects your
> > nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things, and
> > stroke the heads of people who could create such
> > beauty while living in this vile hell. And now you
> > must not stroke anyone's head: you might get your
> > hand bitten off. You have to hit them on the head,
> > without any mercy, although our ideal is not to use
> > force against anyone.
> >
> > "Hm, hm, our duty is infernally hard."
> >
> >Fun guy...
> >
> >Brad DeLong
>
> Do you have a degree in transhistorical pop-psychoanalysis, or are you just
> psychic? Or just a scientist? It must be fun. Potshots always are.
>
> Perhaps you might next intuit the date of this conversation, and even the
> referent of Lenin's remark about those "anyones"? If we take the referent
> here to be "the bourgeoisie" (or is that too vulgar a word these days?),
> and the context to be that of the Soviet regime's desperate war for
> survival, then that complicates this little out-of-context quote. Context
> determines the utterance. I suspect you are merely pulling it from E.
> Wilson's Finland Station book, which is a fine book, but also problematic
> during its moments of intuiting the essence of "the revolutionary
> personality."
> I now know that Cornel West's psyche/soul/being is a simple matter, so I
> should not be surprised too hear that so too is Lenin.
>
> Gorky actually wrote an entire book -- Days With Lenin -- about his good
> friend Lenin, whom he often argued with, but whom he nevertheless "loved"
> (in his own damn words). This is the book Wilson quotes from here, and
> which you then completely de-contextualize or reify, without being so good
> as to actually comment on it for us. Perhaps if you are serious about
> delving into the mystical waters of Lenin's or anyone else's essential and
> true revolutionary personality, you might actually read this whole
> conversation with Gorky, as well as the damn book. Or just tell us why and
> how Lenin's quote proves that he was a remorseless puritan who could not
> tolerate "fun."
>
> How do you define the "fun" Type Personality anyway? Is there a handbook I
> am missing, and does it provide all the correct interpretations of my
> dreams too?
>
> Lenin was indeed a prude and a cultural conservative in many ways, in terms
> of gender, sexuality, and art and culture generally; these traits no doubt
> in part derive from the fact that he was born into a late victorian and a
> bourgeois era himself. Barbara E's point was different; she was spoutting
> gibberish about *the* (?!) Leninist "personality type" and about Lenin; the
> very notion of personality-typing is stupid and insulting. She offered no
> "proof" or substantiation to this or to any of her other sloppy
> generalizations about the state of the world wide left. Still, your post
> makes her look like Einstein. I gave my reasons for not liking these
> things, as well as my stance in re Lenin. I would have thought that
> marxist "types" can see the pitfalls of transhistorical psychologizing, and
> moreover can see that the more important questions are about practices and
> about contexts -- that that is where we begin.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Daniel Vukovich
> English; Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
> University of Illinois
> Urbana, IL 61801
> vukovich at uiuc.edu
> ph. 217-344-7843
> ----------------------------------------------------