4 - Writing for causes: unpopular political statements

Summary

In the writing of Heym's first three novels, there had been a clear moral aim. In Hostages, portraying the evils of National Socialism; in Of Smiling Peace and The Crusaders, further depiction of the evils of fascism, but with the scope extended to evils in the American army and in a number of American individuals. For his fourth novel Heym was to choose a completely different topic and to make a much bolder and more provocative political statement. His unease with American politics and the American way of life led him not only to a formal rejection of capitalism, but to the literary endorsement of a socialist approach: in this case, the Communist ‘takeover’ in Prague, 1948, the first of several ‘revolutions’ to which Heym was later to devote complete novels (Lenz; 5 Tage im Juni; Schwarzenberg). He was to justify this takeover as something not only necessary and beneficial, but also as a step towards ‘freedom’ — when seen, that is, in the words of the title, through the ‘Eyes of Reason’.

Heym's interest in the ‘Prague Coup’, as it was for long referred to in the West, must in part have been inspired by the American government's vigorous denunciation of the Communists' rise to power.