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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 in painting and music."{{sfn|Meyer|1963|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 in painting and music."{{sfn|Meyer|1963|p=169-186}} Must we then dismiss such works as faddish freaks, of more interest to literary gossip than literary history? | ||
In France, where criticism has been long associated with the spirit of lucidity, critics take a different stand. A quick look at some of their statements may persuade us that their view of literature is not too far from the view I have proposed. The common theme of Claude Mauriac’s ''The New Literature'' is stated thus: “After the silence of Rimbaud, the blank page of Mallarme, the inarticulate cry of Artaud, a literature finally dissolves in alliteration with Joyce. The author of ''Finnegans Wake'' in fact creates out of whole cloth words full of so many diverse overtones that they are eclipsed by them. For Beckett, on the contrary, words all say the same thing."{{sfn|Mauriac|1959|p=12}} The theme of Roland Barthes' ''Le Degré Zéro de L‘Ecriture'' is similar: the avatar of the new literature is absence. Barthes writes: “dans ces écritures neutres, appelées ici ‘le degré zéro de l’ecr’iture,' on peut facilement discerner le mouvement même d’une négation, comme si la Littérature, tendant depuis un siècle à transmuer sa surface dans une forme sans hérédité, ne trouvait plus de pureté que dans l’absence de tout signe, proposant en fin l’accomplissement de ce rêve orphéen: un écrivain sans Littérature."{{sfn|Barthes|1959|p=12}} Likewise, for Maurice Blanchot literature is moving toward “l’ére saris parole.” This movement may lead to a form of writing that is incessant sound; or it may lead, as Blanchot states in Le Livre | In France, where criticism has been long associated with the spirit of lucidity, critics take a different stand. A quick look at some of their statements may persuade us that their view of literature is not too far from the view I have proposed. The common theme of Claude Mauriac’s ''The New Literature'' is stated thus: “After the silence of Rimbaud, the blank page of Mallarme, the inarticulate cry of Artaud, a literature finally dissolves in alliteration with Joyce. The author of ''Finnegans Wake'' in fact creates out of whole cloth words full of so many diverse overtones that they are eclipsed by them. For Beckett, on the contrary, words all say the same thing."{{sfn|Mauriac|1959|p=12}} The theme of Roland Barthes' ''Le Degré Zéro de L‘Ecriture'' is similar: the avatar of the new literature is absence. Barthes writes: “dans ces écritures neutres, appelées ici ‘le degré zéro de l’ecr’iture,' on peut facilement discerner le mouvement même d’une négation, comme si la Littérature, tendant depuis un siècle à transmuer sa surface dans une forme sans hérédité, ne trouvait plus de pureté que dans l’absence de tout signe, proposant en fin l’accomplissement de ce rêve orphéen: un écrivain sans Littérature."{{sfn|Barthes|1959|p=12}} Likewise, for Maurice Blanchot literature is moving toward “l’ére saris parole.” This movement may lead to a form of writing that is incessant sound; or it may lead, as Blanchot states in Le Livre à Venir, quite in the other direction: “la littérature va vers elle-même, vers son essence qui est la disparition.”{{sfn|Blanchot|1959|p=237}} Both directions, we can surmise, end in the dissolution of significant form, the abdication of language. Is this silence at the heart of modern literature the definition of outrage, a subjective correlative of our terror? Or is the monstrous language of action, which Bachelard believes to be pointing, beyond Lautréamontism, toward “une reintegration de l'humain dans la vie ardente...,” a closer correlative of that terror? We can only observe that from Sade and Lautréamont to Kafka and Beckett, the twin dark streams of poetry, the poetry of action and the poetry of silence, have been flowing toward some unknown sea wherein some figure of apocalypse, man or beast, still lies submerged. | ||
Critics, however, are of many ilks, and for some the mantic role is as foreign as Elijah's. I wish to force no prophecies in the mouths of students of literature. Still, it is not unreasonable to ask that criticism evolve a method which takes deeper cognizance of the evolving character of life as of literature. The point is almost too obvious: contemporary letters can be judged as little by the standards of pure formalism as, let us say, Romantic poetry can we evaluated by the strict conventions of neo-Classicism. | Critics, however, are of many ilks, and for some the mantic role is as foreign as Elijah's. I wish to force no prophecies in the mouths of students of literature. Still, it is not unreasonable to ask that criticism evolve a method which takes deeper cognizance of the evolving character of life as of literature. The point is almost too obvious: contemporary letters can be judged as little by the standards of pure formalism as, let us say, Romantic poetry can we evaluated by the strict conventions of neo-Classicism. | ||