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Perhaps I have spoken long enough of certain interests of postwar criticism, though I feel I have spoken of them only tangentially. If one were to search for the theoretical basis of these interests—a task which I must leave to more philosophical critics one might be inclined to develop a view of literature that does not put the idea of form as its center. By this I do not simply mean a redefinition of the concept of form so that it may account, say, for the plays of Beckett or the novels of Burroughs. I would plead for a more radical view. From Kant to Cassirer, from Coleridge to Croce and down to the New Critics, the idea of organic form has been a touchstone of value and a cornerstone of theory in literary study. We assume, and indeed we believe, that the imagination incarnates itself only as an aesthetic order, and that such an order is available to the analytic mind. We believe more: that aesthetic order defines the deepest pleasures of literature and conveys its enduring attractions. I am not at all secure in these beliefs. Indeed, I am willing to take the devil's part and entertain the notion that “structure” is not always present or explicable in literary works; and that where it reveals itself, it is not always worth the attention we give it. Such works as Hamlet and Don Quixote not diminished by the discovery that their form, whatever it may be, is less organic than we expect the form of great works to be. Even that supreme artifact of our century, that total structure of symbols, puns, and cross-references, that city of words full of secret alleys and connecting catacombs, even Joyce's ''Ulysses'', may prove to the keen, fresh eye of a critic more of a labyrinth, dead ends and ways without issue, than Dublin itself which encloses the nightmare of history. This is precisely what Robert Martin Adams concludes in his fascinating study, ''Surface and Symbol''. Adams inspects minutely the wealth of details in the novel, and finds that many of them serve to blur or confuse rather than to sustain patterns: "The close reading of ''Ulysses'' thus reveals that the meaningless is deeply interwoven with the meaningful in the texture of the novel...It is a book and an antibook, a work of art particularly receptive to accident. It builds to acute and poignant states of consciousness, yet its larger ambition seems to be to put aside consciousness as a painful burden."{{sfn|Adams|1962|p=245, 253}}Nothing catastrophic to the future of criticism is presaged by this statement. Quite the contrary: criticism may derive new vitality from some attention to the unstructured and even random element in literature. For is not form, after all, best conceived as a mode of awareness, a function of cognition, a question, that is, of epistemology rather than ontology? Its objective reality is qualified by the overpowering reality of human ''need''. In the end, we perceive what we need to perceive, and our sense of pattern as of relation is conditioned by our deeper sense of relevance. This is why the aesthetic of the future will have to reckon with Freud, Nietzsche, and even Kierkegaard, who have given us, more than Marx himself, compelling economies of human needs.{{efn|In recent criticism, certain works have already begun to reflect this particular concern. Besides the works by R. W. . Lewis and Murray Krieger already cited, one might mention Geoffrey Hartman, ''The Unmediated Vision'' (New Haven, 1954), Ihab Hassan, ''Radical Innocence'' (Princeton, 1961), Frederick J. Hoffman, ''The Mortal No'' (Princeton, 1964), and Arturo B. Fallico, ''Art and Existentialism'' (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962).}} | Perhaps I have spoken long enough of certain interests of postwar criticism, though I feel I have spoken of them only tangentially. If one were to search for the theoretical basis of these interests—a task which I must leave to more philosophical critics one might be inclined to develop a view of literature that does not put the idea of form as its center. By this I do not simply mean a redefinition of the concept of form so that it may account, say, for the plays of Beckett or the novels of Burroughs. I would plead for a more radical view. From Kant to Cassirer, from Coleridge to Croce and down to the New Critics, the idea of organic form has been a touchstone of value and a cornerstone of theory in literary study. We assume, and indeed we believe, that the imagination incarnates itself only as an aesthetic order, and that such an order is available to the analytic mind. We believe more: that aesthetic order defines the deepest pleasures of literature and conveys its enduring attractions. I am not at all secure in these beliefs. Indeed, I am willing to take the devil's part and entertain the notion that “structure” is not always present or explicable in literary works; and that where it reveals itself, it is not always worth the attention we give it. Such works as Hamlet and Don Quixote not diminished by the discovery that their form, whatever it may be, is less organic than we expect the form of great works to be. Even that supreme artifact of our century, that total structure of symbols, puns, and cross-references, that city of words full of secret alleys and connecting catacombs, even Joyce's ''Ulysses'', may prove to the keen, fresh eye of a critic more of a labyrinth, dead ends and ways without issue, than Dublin itself which encloses the nightmare of history. This is precisely what Robert Martin Adams concludes in his fascinating study, ''Surface and Symbol''. Adams inspects minutely the wealth of details in the novel, and finds that many of them serve to blur or confuse rather than to sustain patterns: "The close reading of ''Ulysses'' thus reveals that the meaningless is deeply interwoven with the meaningful in the texture of the novel...It is a book and an antibook, a work of art particularly receptive to accident. It builds to acute and poignant states of consciousness, yet its larger ambition seems to be to put aside consciousness as a painful burden."{{sfn|Adams|1962|p=245, 253}}Nothing catastrophic to the future of criticism is presaged by this statement. Quite the contrary: criticism may derive new vitality from some attention to the unstructured and even random element in literature. For is not form, after all, best conceived as a mode of awareness, a function of cognition, a question, that is, of epistemology rather than ontology? Its objective reality is qualified by the overpowering reality of human ''need''. In the end, we perceive what we need to perceive, and our sense of pattern as of relation is conditioned by our deeper sense of relevance. This is why the aesthetic of the future will have to reckon with Freud, Nietzsche, and even Kierkegaard, who have given us, more than Marx himself, compelling economies of human needs.{{efn|In recent criticism, certain works have already begun to reflect this particular concern. Besides the works by R. W. . Lewis and Murray Krieger already cited, one might mention Geoffrey Hartman, ''The Unmediated Vision'' (New Haven, 1954), Ihab Hassan, ''Radical Innocence'' (Princeton, 1961), Frederick J. Hoffman, ''The Mortal No'' (Princeton, 1964), and Arturo B. Fallico, ''Art and Existentialism'' (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1962).}} | ||
I could not persist in suggesting the theoretical implications of postwar criticism without falling into the trap which I have myself described. We do not always need a theoretical argument to bring forth a new critical attitude; we only need good critics. But perhaps we need, more than anything else, to regard literature in a more oblique fashion, regard it even in the slanting light of its own absurdity. We might then see that the theoretical solemnity of modern criticism ignore the self-destructive element of literature, its need for self-annulment. What Camus said of his own work applies, in various ways, to all literature: the act of creation is akin to chance and disorder, to which it comes through diversity, and it constantly meets with futility. "Creating or not creating changes nothing, " Camus writes. "The absurd creator does not prize his work. He could repudiate it." And again: "The absurd work illustrates the intelligence that works up appearances and covers with images what has no reason. If the world were clear, art would not exist."{{sfn|Camus|1959|p=72 ff}} Perhaps the function of literature, after all, is not to clarify that world but to help create a world in which literature becomes superfluous. And perhaps the function of criticism, as I shall argue later, is to attain to the difficult wisdom of perceiving how literature is finally, and ''only'' finally, inconsequential.{{efn|These heretical statements are developed more fully in my essay "The Dismemberment of Orpheus," American Scholar, XXXII.}}{{sfn|Hassan|1963|p=463-484}} | I could not persist in suggesting the theoretical implications of postwar criticism without falling into the trap which I have myself described. We do not always need a theoretical argument to bring forth a new critical attitude; we only need good critics. But perhaps we need, more than anything else, to regard literature in a more oblique fashion, regard it even in the slanting light of its own absurdity. We might then see that the theoretical solemnity of modern criticism ignore the self-destructive element of literature, its need for self-annulment. What Camus said of his own work applies, in various ways, to all literature: the act of creation is akin to chance and disorder, to which it comes through diversity, and it constantly meets with futility. "Creating or not creating changes nothing, " Camus writes. "The absurd creator does not prize his work. He could repudiate it." And again: "The absurd work illustrates the intelligence that works up appearances and covers with images what has no reason. If the world were clear, art would not exist."{{sfn|Camus|1959|p=72 ff}} Perhaps the function of literature, after all, is not to clarify that world but to help create a world in which literature becomes superfluous. And perhaps the function of criticism, as I shall argue later, is to attain to the difficult wisdom of perceiving how literature is finally, and ''only'' finally, inconsequential.{{efn|These heretical statements are developed more fully in my essay "The Dismemberment of Orpheus," '''American Scholar''', XXXII.}}{{sfn|Hassan|1963|p=463-484}} | ||
The foregoing remarks limn certain trends in postwar criticism; they are not intended to define a school or movement. Still, I feel it wise to anticipate some objections before concluding this mock survey. | The foregoing remarks limn certain trends in postwar criticism; they are not intended to define a school or movement. Still, I feel it wise to anticipate some objections before concluding this mock survey. | ||
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I speak, of course, hyperbolically. Perhaps I can make the point clearer, and sharpen thereby the distinction between two generations of critics, by referring to two eminent theoreticians of literature. Both Rene Wellek and Northrop Frye are men of vast erudition; both have shaped the course of literary studies in America. This, I think, is entirely as it should be; the timely authority of such works as Wellek and Warren’s ''Theory of Literature'' or Frye’s ''Anatomy of Criticism'' deserves nothing less. Yet at the risk of seeming ungracious, it is to their later, and perhaps lesser, works that I wish to refer. After all, the question still remains: what lies beyond formalist theory? | I speak, of course, hyperbolically. Perhaps I can make the point clearer, and sharpen thereby the distinction between two generations of critics, by referring to two eminent theoreticians of literature. Both Rene Wellek and Northrop Frye are men of vast erudition; both have shaped the course of literary studies in America. This, I think, is entirely as it should be; the timely authority of such works as Wellek and Warren’s ''Theory of Literature'' or Frye’s ''Anatomy of Criticism'' deserves nothing less. Yet at the risk of seeming ungracious, it is to their later, and perhaps lesser, works that I wish to refer. After all, the question still remains: what lies beyond formalist theory? | ||
In ''Concepts of Criticism'', Professor Wellek shows himself to be somewhat out of love with the directions of contemporary criticism. “It seems to me that in spite of the basic truth of the insight of organicism, the unity of content and form, we have arrived today at something like a deadend,” he states.{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=65}} His dissatisfaction, however, is of short duration. Professor Wellek sees the way out in the doctrine of “structuralism," evolved by the Prague Linguistic Circle-alas, now defunct! “Such a concept of the literary work of art avoids two pitfalls,” Professor Wellek hopes, “the extreme of organicism which leads to a lumpish totality in which discrimination becomes impossible, and the opposite danger of atomistic fragmentation.”{{sfn|Wellek|p=68}} The way out, as it turns out, comes very close to the ancient ideal of the golden mean. This is judicious. But is it really judiciousness which prompts him in two later chapters, “Philosophy and Post- war American Criticism” and “Main Trends of Twentieth-Century Criticism,” to deride all recent criticism? The brilliant and inventive concern with American literature in the last two decades is deplored as an example of “romantic historicism,” and mythic and existential criticism are condemned as an instance of “the irrationalistic philosophies of Europe” adapted to the pragmatic temper of the United States."{{sfn|Wellek|p=333 ff}} Professor Wellek sadly concludes: “Only those who adhere to either the German idealist tradition, in the Kantian or Coleridgean version, or those who rediscover Aristotle, still keep a grasp on the nature of art and recognize the necessity of an aesthetic and the ideal of a study of literature as literature.”{{sfn|Wellek|p=342}} Having defined literature in formalist terms, it is no wonder that Professor Wellek ''still'' believes formalist theory to be the most rewarding view of literature. Thus is the rigor of tautology achieved. | In ''Concepts of Criticism'', Professor Wellek shows himself to be somewhat out of love with the directions of contemporary criticism. “It seems to me that in spite of the basic truth of the insight of organicism, the unity of content and form, we have arrived today at something like a deadend,” he states.{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=65}} His dissatisfaction, however, is of short duration. Professor Wellek sees the way out in the doctrine of “structuralism," evolved by the Prague Linguistic Circle-alas, now defunct! “Such a concept of the literary work of art avoids two pitfalls,” Professor Wellek hopes, “the extreme of organicism which leads to a lumpish totality in which discrimination becomes impossible, and the opposite danger of atomistic fragmentation.”{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=68}} The way out, as it turns out, comes very close to the ancient ideal of the golden mean. This is judicious. But is it really judiciousness which prompts him in two later chapters, “Philosophy and Post- war American Criticism” and “Main Trends of Twentieth-Century Criticism,” to deride all recent criticism? The brilliant and inventive concern with American literature in the last two decades is deplored as an example of “romantic historicism,” and mythic and existential criticism are condemned as an instance of “the irrationalistic philosophies of Europe” adapted to the pragmatic temper of the United States."{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=333 ff}} Professor Wellek sadly concludes: “Only those who adhere to either the German idealist tradition, in the Kantian or Coleridgean version, or those who rediscover Aristotle, still keep a grasp on the nature of art and recognize the necessity of an aesthetic and the ideal of a study of literature as literature.”{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=342}} Having defined literature in formalist terms, it is no wonder that Professor Wellek ''still'' believes formalist theory to be the most rewarding view of literature. Thus is the rigor of tautology achieved. | ||
''The Well-Tempered Critic'', which is not wrought in the massive architectural manner of Professor Frye’s earlier work, is too urbane to be tautological. Its urbanity expresses a fine subtlety of mind in the final chapter of the book, and the subtlety itself disguises a somewhat chilly view of literature. Professor Frye acknowledges the distinction between the classic and romantic tempers in criticism, and proceeds to discover the correlatives of each. The classic temper, he informs us, is aesthetic, the romantic is psychological; the former views art as artifact, the latter as expression; the one derives from Aristotle, the other from Longinus. I do not quarrel with these distinctions, particularly when categorical distinctions make the very basis of the geometric edifices Professor Frye likes to erect. “The first step to take here," he argues, “is to realize that just as a poem implies a distinction between the poet as man and the poet as verbal craftsman, so the response to a poem implies a corresponding distinction in the critic.”{{sfn|Frye|1963|p=123}} For both Northrop Frye and René Wellek, we see, the critical act rests on the ''separation'' of certain human faculties from the continuum of felt life. There are few critics willing to speak professionally for the ancient female principle, acceptance and fusion, and the enveloping wholeness of things, few willing to speak for the fourfold vision of Blake. Yet carried far enough, distinctions become the source of the mind’s alienation, the Cartesian madness of the West. | ''The Well-Tempered Critic'', which is not wrought in the massive architectural manner of Professor Frye’s earlier work, is too urbane to be tautological. Its urbanity expresses a fine subtlety of mind in the final chapter of the book, and the subtlety itself disguises a somewhat chilly view of literature. Professor Frye acknowledges the distinction between the classic and romantic tempers in criticism, and proceeds to discover the correlatives of each. The classic temper, he informs us, is aesthetic, the romantic is psychological; the former views art as artifact, the latter as expression; the one derives from Aristotle, the other from Longinus. I do not quarrel with these distinctions, particularly when categorical distinctions make the very basis of the geometric edifices Professor Frye likes to erect. “The first step to take here," he argues, “is to realize that just as a poem implies a distinction between the poet as man and the poet as verbal craftsman, so the response to a poem implies a corresponding distinction in the critic.”{{sfn|Frye|1963|p=123}} For both Northrop Frye and René Wellek, we see, the critical act rests on the ''separation'' of certain human faculties from the continuum of felt life. There are few critics willing to speak professionally for the ancient female principle, acceptance and fusion, and the enveloping wholeness of things, few willing to speak for the fourfold vision of Blake. Yet carried far enough, distinctions become the source of the mind’s alienation, the Cartesian madness of the West. | ||
Again, Professor Frye views criticism not as the experience of literature but, more discretely, as an area of knowledge. This leads him to the hard-boiled conclusion, so repugnant to visionary educators, that “the values we want the student to acquire from us cannot be taught: only knowledge of literature can be taught.”{{sfn|Frye|p=136}} Can knowledge be dissociated from value, and criticism forego its aspiration to wisdom? Apparently so. “The fundamental act of criticism is a disinterested response to a work of literature in which all one’s beliefs, engagements, commitments, prejudices, stampedings of pity and terror, are ordered to be quiet,” he continues.{{sfn|Frye|p=140}} Ordered to be quiet! Who listens, then, and who speaks instead ? The imagination never demanded such frozen void, nor do the supreme fictions of the mind reject the earth they transmute. We have seen criticism gaze long enough on the world with the quiet eyes of Apollo. Shall we ever see it partake again of the sacred flesh of Dionysus? | Again, Professor Frye views criticism not as the experience of literature but, more discretely, as an area of knowledge. This leads him to the hard-boiled conclusion, so repugnant to visionary educators, that “the values we want the student to acquire from us cannot be taught: only knowledge of literature can be taught.”{{sfn|Frye|1963|p=136}} Can knowledge be dissociated from value, and criticism forego its aspiration to wisdom? Apparently so. “The fundamental act of criticism is a disinterested response to a work of literature in which all one’s beliefs, engagements, commitments, prejudices, stampedings of pity and terror, are ordered to be quiet,” he continues.{{sfn|Frye|1963|p=140}} Ordered to be quiet! Who listens, then, and who speaks instead ? The imagination never demanded such frozen void, nor do the supreme fictions of the mind reject the earth they transmute. We have seen criticism gaze long enough on the world with the quiet eyes of Apollo. Shall we ever see it partake again of the sacred flesh of Dionysus? | ||
I do not wish to suggest that the Dionysiac vision is bound to penetrate literary criticism the world over. I do sense, however, a movement in contemporary letters which must force us to revise our tenets or else accept the charge of theoretical isolationism in America. It is doubtful, fur instance, that the plays of Beckett or Genet or Artaud, the novels of William Burroughs, Maurice Blanchot, or Alain Robbe-Grillet, the later stories of Salinger, the poetry of Charles Olson, Blaise Cendrars, or Dylan Thomas—and I cite these names quite at random----can be illuminated brightly by the critical terms of Professors Wellek and Frye. Nathalie Sarraute's latest book, ''The Golden Fruits'', and Marc Saporta’s “shuffle novel,” ''Number 1'', deny the conventional idea of structure. The first is a novel about a novel which cancels itself in the very act of reading; the second is a stratagem which accepts the principle of chance as an integral part of the literary experience. As for Burroughs’ ''The Soft Machine'', it applies—to what extent, no one will know—the “cut up method of Brion Gysin,” a method which combines collage and montage. If these works possess a form, it is probably a “non-telic" form of the kind recently reflected m painting and music."{{sfn|Meyer|p=169-186}} Must we then dismiss such works as faddish freaks, of more interest to literary gossip than literary history? | I do not wish to suggest that the Dionysiac vision is bound to penetrate literary criticism the world over. I do sense, however, a movement in contemporary letters which must force us to revise our tenets or else accept the charge of theoretical isolationism in America. It is doubtful, fur instance, that the plays of Beckett or Genet or Artaud, the novels of William Burroughs, Maurice Blanchot, or Alain Robbe-Grillet, the later stories of Salinger, the poetry of Charles Olson, Blaise Cendrars, or Dylan Thomas—and I cite these names quite at random----can be illuminated brightly by the critical terms of Professors Wellek and Frye. Nathalie Sarraute's latest book, ''The Golden Fruits'', and Marc Saporta’s “shuffle novel,” ''Number 1'', deny the conventional idea of structure. The first is a novel about a novel which cancels itself in the very act of reading; the second is a stratagem which accepts the principle of chance as an integral part of the literary experience. As for Burroughs’ ''The Soft Machine'', it applies—to what extent, no one will know—the “cut up method of Brion Gysin,” a method which combines collage and montage. If these works possess a form, it is probably a “non-telic" form of the kind recently reflected m painting and music."{{sfn|Meyer|p=169-186}} Must we then dismiss such works as faddish freaks, of more interest to literary gossip than literary history? | ||