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Begin with an assumption: that literature defines our concepts of criticism or else it defies them, and that life constantly challenges the pieties of both art and thought. What I shall attempt here, then, could not be considered an authoritative review of postwar criticism. It should be understood, rather, as a partial statement on the gathering mood of American criticism, an intimation of a trend which the facts of literary history in the past two decades (colored inevitably by my own sense of fact) may help to clarify. | |||
The admission that I neither hold nor accept a definitive view of criticism should not be too shocking. In England, where the empiric temper prevails in the name of common sense or urbanity, and even in France, where questions of methodology yield to a lively concern with new writing, such an admission would seem fairly innocuous. It is otherwise in America. Among us, the notion that criticism must become a rigorous, quasi-scientific activity in order to justify its name still finds wide support. Not long ago---or is it really ages past? —most students of literature, myself included, recognized the elegance of Rene Wellek’s formulation of the destiny of criticism: “the interpretation of literature as distinct from other activities of man.” | The admission that I neither hold nor accept a definitive view of criticism should not be too shocking. In England, where the empiric temper prevails in the name of common sense or urbanity, and even in France, where questions of methodology yield to a lively concern with new writing, such an admission would seem fairly innocuous. It is otherwise in America. Among us, the notion that criticism must become a rigorous, quasi-scientific activity in order to justify its name still finds wide support. Not long ago---or is it really ages past? —most students of literature, myself included, recognized the elegance of Rene Wellek’s formulation of the destiny of criticism: “the interpretation of literature as distinct from other activities of man.”{{sfn|Welleck|1963|p=343}} Coming from Professor Wellek, the emphasis on interpretation rather than on literary theory seemed unduly self-effacing. Be that as it may, the formula appealed then to the common rage for order, and seemed also to aver the dignity of the humanities on terms that the age demanded. With the years, however, the formula seems, to me at least, to have lost in elegance as it has gained in naivety. The breed of technicians it has unwittingly sanctioned may have found a truer consummation of their hopes in the laboratories of Oak Ridge. Literature as a distinct activity of man? Criticism as a distinct response to a distinct activity of man? What is man that we should be so little mindful of him, so arbitrary with the complexities of his mind? From Surrealism to Absurdism, literature itself suggests that a distinct aesthetic response may be defined only at the risk of deadly discrimination. | ||
Yet my object is not to engage in polemics. The point can be stated with some equanimity: a new breed of American critics are anxious to assert them selves against the rigors and pieties they have inherited. Their mood is restless, eclectic, speculative; sometimes, it is even apocalyptic. Those who feel out of sympathy with them may wish to apply different epithets: romantic, primitivist, existential, amateurish, or plain anti-intellectual. (The usefulness of these tags, dispensed usually with contumely, is as doubtful as their accuracy.) Others, however, may recognize the creative possibilities of this new mood, troubled, vague, or disruptive as it may seem. | Yet my object is not to engage in polemics. The point can be stated with some equanimity: a new breed of American critics are anxious to assert them selves against the rigors and pieties they have inherited. Their mood is restless, eclectic, speculative; sometimes, it is even apocalyptic. Those who feel out of sympathy with them may wish to apply different epithets: romantic, primitivist, existential, amateurish, or plain anti-intellectual. (The usefulness of these tags, dispensed usually with contumely, is as doubtful as their accuracy.) Others, however, may recognize the creative possibilities of this new mood, troubled, vague, or disruptive as it may seem. | ||
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This is no time to sit in judgment on the world or to interpret its modern tragedy. From the Revelation of St. John the Divine to Norman O. Brown’s extraordinary PBK address, entitled "Apocalypse,” men have envisioned the destruction of the world and foreseen its resurrection. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death has no power...,” St. John says.[24] But we are not at the first resurrection yet ; we are not even beyond madness. Thus from Norman O. Brown: “The alternative to mind is certainly madness... Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness: open your eyes and look around you—madness is in the saddle anyhow.” [25] What task will criticism perform, wavering between holy and unholy madness? What bootless task? | This is no time to sit in judgment on the world or to interpret its modern tragedy. From the Revelation of St. John the Divine to Norman O. Brown’s extraordinary PBK address, entitled "Apocalypse,” men have envisioned the destruction of the world and foreseen its resurrection. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death has no power...,” St. John says.[24] But we are not at the first resurrection yet ; we are not even beyond madness. Thus from Norman O. Brown: “The alternative to mind is certainly madness... Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness: open your eyes and look around you—madness is in the saddle anyhow.” [25] What task will criticism perform, wavering between holy and unholy madness? What bootless task? | ||
Criticism is no country for old men of any age. Criticism, which was born to behold literature, must still do so and look beyond itself. Tack and rigor may attend all our words, but our words, but our words will avail nothing if man prevails not. What lies beyond criticism? D.H. Lawrence knew. This is what he says in his Apocalypse: “O lovely green dragon of the new day, the undawned day, come come in touch, and release us from the horrid grip of the evil-smelling old Logos! Come in silence, and say nothing. Come in touch, in soft new touch like a spring-time, and say nothing.”[26] | Criticism is no country for old men of any age. Criticism, which was born to behold literature, must still do so and look beyond itself. Tack and rigor may attend all our words, but our words, but our words will avail nothing if man prevails not. What lies beyond criticism? D.H. Lawrence knew. This is what he says in his ''Apocalypse'': “O lovely green dragon of the new day, the undawned day, come come in touch, and release us from the horrid grip of the evil-smelling old Logos! Come in silence, and say nothing. Come in touch, in soft new touch like a spring-time, and say nothing.”[26] | ||
Works Cited | Works Cited | ||