Serge Liberman is that unfashionable thing, a committed writer. Not committed to a party-line, of course, but to a literature of engagement with humanity. A parable that seems to illustrate his view of the artist’s role is provided by a story entitled ‘The Poet Walks Along High Street’. The poet, Gabriel Singer, walks along a street pointed towards ‘Erehwon Creek’, peopled by allegorically named figures. In this imaginary place the inhabitants are offered a ritual cleansing, announced in the manner of an evangelist’s message. But there is violence in the streets. The slogan over the hospital echoes the viciously ironic slogan that welcomed victims of the holocaust to the concentration camps: ‘Cleansing Makes Free’. The poet watches friends and acquaintances being sent into the ovens:

He was a poet, an artist, not a man of action. His brief was to create order from disorder, beauty from discord, truth from confusion. Not for him was it to compound violence with violence or confound common sense with derring-do. Nor was it in his power – let others do it! – through ill-judged action to alter events. What had been – if, indeed, it had truly been – had had to be. For this was the way of the world. And if others had been cleansed, purified, purged and, in that way, redeemed, it was because they had shown reason for it ...