Page:The Theme of the Joseph Novels.djvu/8

 You have been told, of course, that I am to speak about the book "Joseph and His Brothers," a tetralogy of novels, or epic in prose, whose final volume, "Joseph the Provider", is just about to be completed. Let me say first, that I was quite startled and disconcerted when Archibald MacLeish suggested this book to me as my topic for tonight,—I was much rather inclined to refuse than to accept. Would it not seem terribly presumptuous, vain and egocentric, if I talked today, and here, about my own affairs, my own work, in other words: about highly personal and private matters instead of general and important ones, of the great cares and hopes of our time, of the war and its objectives? And yet, this is a time and a world where it makes almost no difference what we talk about—we always talk about one and the same thing. Categories crumble, the borderlines between the different spheres of human thought become unessential. Everything is connected with everything else—and, in truth, it has always been so: only, we were not conscious of it. Once, it was possible to distinguish between a "purely esthetic," "purely philosophic," "purely religious" sphere and the sphere of politics, of human society, of national and international community life, and to declare that we were interested in the one but not in the other. This is no longer possible. We are interested in the whole, or we are interested in nothing. "Totalitarian" is an oppressive word in its strictly political meaning; we do not like to hear it because it signifies the voracious absorption of all things human by the state. But, then, we are indeed living in a totalitarian world, a world of totality, of spiritual unity and collective responsibility, before which all sovereignties have to abdicate. Unity is the word of the historic hour. The world wants to become one, all the way, into practical [4]