Page:The Theme of the Joseph Novels.djvu/25

 tell myself that there are connections between my work and general and important matters,—indeed underneath all badinage, that is its secret motor. In a discreet and unpathetic manner, the case of mankind is tried in it, and therefore the manner in which this book treats the myth is so different from a certain contemporary manner of employing it: a malevolent and anti-human manner whose political name we all know. After all, the word "myth" has a bad reputation nowadays—we only have to think of the title of the book, which the "philosopher" of German fascism, Rosenberg, the preceptor of Hitler, has given to his viscious text book: "The Myth of the 20th Century." So often, in the last decades, had the myth been abused as a means of obscurantic counter-revolution that a mythical novel like the Joseph, upon its first appearance, inevitably aroused the suspicion that its author was floating with the murky stream. This suspicion had to be discarded for at a second glance a process could be observed similar to what happens in a battle when a captured gun is turned around and directed against the enemy. In this book, the myth has been taken out of Fascist hands and humanized down to the last recess of its language,—if posterity finds anything remarkable about it, it will be this.

In the idea of humanity, the human idea, the sense for the past and that for the future, tradition and revolution form a strange and, to my mind, infinitely attractive mixture. The slogan of the "conservative revolution" has played a pernicious part; fascism has seized it as it seized the myth, and has pretended to be the conservative revolution. Its nature is fraud. But what better formula than just this: "conservative revolution" could be found for the spirit and meaning of that famous speech which an American [21]