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Commitment, however, is but a single impulse of the new critical attitude; it simply prepares the ground for dialogue. Another impulse may be defined as the refusal wholly to objectify the work of literature. The art work, of course, has been long considered as an ''object'', an object for dissection or knowledge, idolatry or classification. Yet the encounter between critic and work is neither entirely objective nor purely aesthetic; it may be a “dialogue” of the kind Martin Buber has proposed. In Buber's sense, the work of art resists identification with insensible It; for the work demands answer and response, and it requires a meeting. Is it then so perverse to ask the critic, whether he subscribes to Buber’s theology or not, that he “turn toward” the work and confess with Buber, “in each instance a word demanding an answer has happened to me” ?{{sfn|Buber|1955|p=10}} Nothing is mystical in this statement, nothing inimical to the spirit of poetry. The statement, in fact, points to some rather mundane questions which Walter J. Ong, theologian of another faith, happily raises. In his original essay, “The Jinnee in the Well-Wrought Urn,” Father Ong states: “Creative activity is often...powered by the drive to accomplish, in terms of the production of an object of art, an adjustment or readjustment in certain obscure relationships with other persons." What does this mean? Quite obviously, it means that behind every work of art lurks and strains a human being; Quite obviously, perhaps, it means that the voice of the human creator, raging heart and feet of clay, is not entirely silenced in his art. The jinnee cannot be exorcised from the urn it inhabits, however shapely the latter may prove; the artifact still comes to life with voices unknown. And indeed this is what we, as readers, require. Once again, Father Ong sees the point clearly: “as a matter of full, serious, protracted contemplation and love, it is unbearable for a man or woman to be faced with anything less than a person. . . .”{{sfn|Ong|1962|p=19, 25}} This is precisely what critics, compelled by the difficult reciprocities of love, may now want to face: not an object but a presence mediated cunningly, incomprehensibly, by language. Such a presence is not simply human. It is the presence, moving and participating in reality, which Owen Barfield, in ''Saving the Appearances'', has shown us to lie at the heart of the symbolic process. In facing such a presence, critics may hope to recover the primal connection with a universe mediated increasingly by abstractions. But they may also hope to recover something more modest: a spontaneity of judgment which reaches outward, reaches beyond itself. Holden Caulfield, we recall, was moved to call on an author whose work he had much enjoyed. In such naïveté there may be a parable for critics as well as an occasion for derision. | Commitment, however, is but a single impulse of the new critical attitude; it simply prepares the ground for dialogue. Another impulse may be defined as the refusal wholly to objectify the work of literature. The art work, of course, has been long considered as an ''object'', an object for dissection or knowledge, idolatry or classification. Yet the encounter between critic and work is neither entirely objective nor purely aesthetic; it may be a “dialogue” of the kind Martin Buber has proposed. In Buber's sense, the work of art resists identification with insensible It; for the work demands answer and response, and it requires a meeting. Is it then so perverse to ask the critic, whether he subscribes to Buber’s theology or not, that he “turn toward” the work and confess with Buber, “in each instance a word demanding an answer has happened to me” ?{{sfn|Buber|1955|p=10}} Nothing is mystical in this statement, nothing inimical to the spirit of poetry. The statement, in fact, points to some rather mundane questions which Walter J. Ong, theologian of another faith, happily raises. In his original essay, “The Jinnee in the Well-Wrought Urn,” Father Ong states: “Creative activity is often...powered by the drive to accomplish, in terms of the production of an object of art, an adjustment or readjustment in certain obscure relationships with other persons." What does this mean? Quite obviously, it means that behind every work of art lurks and strains a human being; Quite obviously, perhaps, it means that the voice of the human creator, raging heart and feet of clay, is not entirely silenced in his art. The jinnee cannot be exorcised from the urn it inhabits, however shapely the latter may prove; the artifact still comes to life with voices unknown. And indeed this is what we, as readers, require. Once again, Father Ong sees the point clearly: “as a matter of full, serious, protracted contemplation and love, it is unbearable for a man or woman to be faced with anything less than a person. . . .”{{sfn|Ong|1962|p=19, 25}} This is precisely what critics, compelled by the difficult reciprocities of love, may now want to face: not an object but a presence mediated cunningly, incomprehensibly, by language. Such a presence is not simply human. It is the presence, moving and participating in reality, which Owen Barfield, in ''Saving the Appearances'', has shown us to lie at the heart of the symbolic process. In facing such a presence, critics may hope to recover the primal connection with a universe mediated increasingly by abstractions. But they may also hope to recover something more modest: a spontaneity of judgment which reaches outward, reaches beyond itself. Holden Caulfield, we recall, was moved to call on an author whose work he had much enjoyed. In such naïveté there may be a parable for critics as well as an occasion for derision. | ||
If some postwar critics are loth to consider the literary work merely as an object, they are equally reluctant to believe that contemplation is the sole reaction to it. Beyond testimony, beyond participation or dialogue, the critic now wishes to entertain in the possibility that ''action'' maybe a legitimate response to art. By this, of course, I do not mean that he rushes to the barricades after reading ''The Conquerors'', or that he develops tuberculosis after reading ''The Magic Mountain''. I mean that the experience of a literary work does not leave him unchanged. To the extent that he is altered in the recesses of his imagination, indeed of his being, to that extent he must act differently in daily life. For if literature is both cognitive and experiential, as we have been so often told, then how can new knowledge but prompt new action? We may have accepted the Thomist notion of ''stasis'' in art much too uncritically. The counter-statement is boldly presented in Sartre's essay, “ Qu’est Ce Que la Littérature? ” “Parler c’est agir:” Sartre claims, “tout chose qu'on nomme n’est déjà plus tout à fait la même, elle a perdu son innocence.” Sartre continues: “L'oeuvre d’art est valeur parce qu’elle est appel.” | If some postwar critics are loth to consider the literary work merely as an object, they are equally reluctant to believe that contemplation is the sole reaction to it. Beyond testimony, beyond participation or dialogue, the critic now wishes to entertain in the possibility that ''action'' maybe a legitimate response to art. By this, of course, I do not mean that he rushes to the barricades after reading ''The Conquerors'', or that he develops tuberculosis after reading ''The Magic Mountain''. I mean that the experience of a literary work does not leave him unchanged. To the extent that he is altered in the recesses of his imagination, indeed of his being, to that extent he must act differently in daily life. For if literature is both cognitive and experiential, as we have been so often told, then how can new knowledge but prompt new action? We may have accepted the Thomist notion of ''stasis'' in art much too uncritically. The counter-statement is boldly presented in Sartre's essay, “ Qu’est Ce Que la Littérature? ” “Parler c’est agir:” Sartre claims, “tout chose qu'on nomme n’est déjà plus tout à fait la même, elle a perdu son innocence.” Sartre continues: “L'oeuvre d’art est valeur parce qu’elle est appel.”{{sfn|Sartre|1948|p=72, 98}} The appeal, above all, is to that act of self-definition which the work persuades its reader to perform, an act of definition and also of freedom. For in a sense, the work itself is “created” by the freedom of the reader to give it a concrete and, ultimately, personal meaning. The work, that is, finally enters the total existence of a man, not simply his dream life or aesthetic consciousness, and in doing so, it becomes subject to the total judgment of human passions. This is precisely what an existential writer of a different breed, Camus, meant when lie wrote, “To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing...”[7] But if the writer must create dangerously these days, the critic cannot afford to criticize timorously. Dangerous criticism assumes that final and somewhat frightening responsibility which some critics naturally resist; namely, the willing suspension of aesthetic judgment in the interests of right action. | ||
I quite realize the enormity of this assertion. For one thing, it brings the critic dangerously close to the posture of the censor—the commissar, the propaganda helot, the prurient chief of police—who requires that every work of art display its social credentials or else stand convicted. No doubt, the redemption of man is a more momentous task than the creation of beauty, and virtue and goodness are not to be scoffed at. Yet redemption, one suspects, does not lie in the grasp of regulators; nor does virtue depend on the degradation of art by power. How, then, can the critic hope to transcend the aesthetic domain of literature without seeming to capitulate to dogma or authority, without seeming to endorse a vulgar or repressive utilitarianism? | I quite realize the enormity of this assertion. For one thing, it brings the critic dangerously close to the posture of the censor—the commissar, the propaganda helot, the prurient chief of police—who requires that every work of art display its social credentials or else stand convicted. No doubt, the redemption of man is a more momentous task than the creation of beauty, and virtue and goodness are not to be scoffed at. Yet redemption, one suspects, does not lie in the grasp of regulators; nor does virtue depend on the degradation of art by power. How, then, can the critic hope to transcend the aesthetic domain of literature without seeming to capitulate to dogma or authority, without seeming to endorse a vulgar or repressive utilitarianism? | ||