We the Living [antikvár]

Foreword I had not reread this novel as a whole, since the time of its first publication in 1936, until a few months ago. I had not expected to be as proud of it as I am. Too many writers declare that they never succeed in expressing fully what they wished to express and that their work is only some sort of appriDximation. It is a viewpoint for which I have never had any sympathy and which I consider excusable only when it is voiced by beginners, since no one is bom with any kind of "talent" and, therefore, every skill has to be acquired. Writers are made, not born. To be exact, writers are self-made. It was mainly in regard to We the Living, my first novel (and, progressively less, in regard to my work preceding The Fountainhead), that I had felt that my means were inadequate to my purpose and that I had not said what I wanted to say as well as I wished. Now, I am startled to discover how well I did say it. We the Living is not a novel "about Soviet Russia." It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life—using the word "sanctity" not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of "supreme value." The essence of my theme is contained in the words of Irina, a minor character of the story, a young girl who is sentenced to imprisormient in Siberia and knows that she will never retvim: "There's something I would like to understand. And I don't think anyone can explain it. . . . There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by aU of us. Only what is it? What?" At that time, I knew a little more about this question than did Irina, but not much more. I knew that this attitude toward