the “dregs of the earth” would “sully thenpoet’s memory” if it bore that designation,nand so the sensitive Herr Himmlerndecreed that it should be rechristenednBuchenwald, or Beechwood. And it isnby admiring the beauty of the solitarynbeech in the snowy field that Sorel successftillynaverts the murderous suspicionsnof the camp guard who pursues himnwith rifle at the ready.noemprun’s novel is “modem,” butnnot excessively so; indeed, it brings tonmind Konstantin Fedin’s early Sovietnclassic of 1924, Cities and Years. It shiftsnconstantiy through time and space,nthough always returning to the basicnreference point of that December Sundaynin 1944: forward to an automobilentrip in I960 from Paris to Nantua tonPrague; back to the Spanish Civil War;nforward to Sorel’s expulsion from thenSpanish Communist Party in 1964; furthernforward to a talk at Yale on April 11,n1975, the aimiversary of Buchenwald’snliberation, when he meets a youngnPolish woman whose father perishednthere. On another level, Semprun/Sorelnimagines Goethe still walking the Ettersbergnin the 20th century and conversingnwith Leon Blum, who had imagined conversationsnwith Goethe; or Karl Marxnstill walking the streets of London andnhaving to confront the results in realitynof his manifold theories. ,The history ofnhumankind is a string of repetitions, justnas is the history of an individual:nMy life is not like a river—above allnnot like an ever-changing river, nevprnthe same, in -which one could nevernbathe twice. My life is always a matternof ciefa-vu, oid^a-vecu, of repetition,nof sameness to the point of satiety, tonthe point where, by virtue of beingnidentical, it transforms itself intonsomething new and strange.nUsing this concept of history, Semprunncreates a work with constantiy intersectingnchronological and geographicalnplanes. The entire book is written fromnthe perspective of a man who realizesnthat the Marxist ideal to which he dedi­ncated much of his life was felse: “the justice,”nhe recalls, “for which I thougjit Inwas fighting, was serving at the samentime to justify the most radical injusticesn… the camp of the just had created…nthe Kolyma camps.” He now knows thatnprison cells and labor camps are thentruest material expressions of the totalitariannideology, whether German NationalnSocialism or Russian commimism.nAnd this explains something that initiallynpuzzled Semprun/Sorel: the fact that thencommunists were a privileged caste innthe prisoner-run administration at Buchenvvald,nand that the Russian prisonersngenerally were quite at home in thencamp. Camps, he argues, are the “dfrect,nunequivocal product of Bolshevism,”nand not only of Bolshevism but also,nthough less directiy, of Marx’s own doctrines,nas abstract as they were in theirnoriginal formulations. The Russian communistsnare convinced that history is determinednby elites, and elites are muchnIsSaul/Usn Atttmig I’hese Propbels?nI’VCTi in deeply religiou.s societies,nproiibctshave aKv;i)sIvcn in shon “•iippl>nand tpicall’ h:ivc been ipiKircd. killed,nor iniprisoiied by the reigiiiiiji politicalnpowers. ‘Ihlngs arc evidetuK iliHi-renl Innmodern .New York <“.it. There Jack Newfieldn:UKI the director ol’ilu- ali(iii:il (i:i>nTask I’orce lia’e fiuind :i fKililioilh’ jiolcntnj-orce of millions of little Miishas llirongiiignthe streets. Itideitil. e\1iekl c;)iiklnscarcely restrain his h<>.saniias wbi-ii henreci’iitly beslcnveil the holy mantle (re-n(-•Lshioned in drag for his friends, we pre-n.sume) upon the “prophetic majority” ofn”lal-Mir, minorities. femini.sr.s.gas.and liberals”nin the Hig .Apple. ‘Iliis companj’ ofnseers. Ncwiield prescicntly declared, isnon thi- verge of miraculous triumphs:n.11 that’s nei-ileil now i.^ ijiiul lailli.nmutual rcipect. and a pmgnunniatienai-encla to unify the clt-menis of thisn}>ran(.lalii:imc’.nmore intellecmal than the common runnof humanity; therefore, theoretical intellecmalncurrents eventually debouchninto the horrors of extermination campsnlike Buchenwald, where there is annever-present trail of pale smoke fromnthe crematories.nSemprun/Sorel is also an intellectual.nHe was converted from communist totalitarianismnnot so much by the realitynhe experienced as by the artistic visionnof others. Chief among them was AleksandrnSolzhenitsyn; Semprun/Sorel’s life,nhe writes in a powerfiil tribute to Solzhenitsyn,n”had been changed, invisiblynbut radically, by reading A Day in thenLife of Ivan Denisovich.” Several othernwriters also influenced him, amongnthem Varlam Shalamov, the author ofnseveral short stories describing thenfrightening reality of the Gulag.nWhat sort of memorial would benappropriate for the victims of thenLlBI^RAL CLLTL’RE~|nnnWe agree. Having recojaii/ed the nei-dnlor good liiith. we hope thi-se latter-ilaynoracles will slud the declaralions ofn.lo.ses on .scMial mores, of Jeremiah onnthe peril ol’leaningon Uic stale, of ly.ekielnon the blessings of ri-pen(;ince. of Malachinon the sanctity of Ihe family, and of Isaiahnon thi- doom of iiilse propliets. ZJnJune 1983n