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The critic therefore feels the need for commitment; he wants to testify. And what is to prevent him? The encounter with an authentic work of art is a bruising experience, full of strange knowledge and hidden pleasure, of the kind we usually spend a life-time resisting. The critic knows that he himself is on trial, and that the act of literary criticism is above all an act of self-judgement. Since his business is to speak of literature, speech in his case must ultimately take the form of self-revelation. But the need for self-revelation is not only a private or existential need. It is also a social function of the critic. “Is art always an outrage - must it by its very nature be an outrage?" Durrell asks.{{sfn|Durrell|Perles|1961|p=9}} The question haunts the critic even more than it does the oafish censors of our time. For should the critic insist on his dubious right to privacy or detachment, his deepest knowledge of literature would remain locked, a private outrage, an inner wound. Yet literature, we know, acts through language; it is a communal call, there where words and experience are one, as it is solitary subversion, where words begin to fail. In the act of testimony, therefore, the critic admits the ''relevance'' of the buried power of literature; he offers himself to the harsh task of mediating between society and vision, culture and anarchy. Only thus can he give to outrage wider reference, give it a meaning beyond itself. There is the risk of course, that such mediation may rob both culture and outrage of their particular force. Yet from that loss a new life in history may be gained, a new consciousness of self and society may be born. This is precisely the gain, implicit in the discomforts of critical commitment, which Lionel Trilling, in his otherwise subtle essay, “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature,” seems to ignore.{{sfn|Trilling|1962|p=267 ff}} | The critic therefore feels the need for commitment; he wants to testify. And what is to prevent him? The encounter with an authentic work of art is a bruising experience, full of strange knowledge and hidden pleasure, of the kind we usually spend a life-time resisting. The critic knows that he himself is on trial, and that the act of literary criticism is above all an act of self-judgement. Since his business is to speak of literature, speech in his case must ultimately take the form of self-revelation. But the need for self-revelation is not only a private or existential need. It is also a social function of the critic. “Is art always an outrage - must it by its very nature be an outrage?" Durrell asks.{{sfn|Durrell|Perles|1961|p=9}} The question haunts the critic even more than it does the oafish censors of our time. For should the critic insist on his dubious right to privacy or detachment, his deepest knowledge of literature would remain locked, a private outrage, an inner wound. Yet literature, we know, acts through language; it is a communal call, there where words and experience are one, as it is solitary subversion, where words begin to fail. In the act of testimony, therefore, the critic admits the ''relevance'' of the buried power of literature; he offers himself to the harsh task of mediating between society and vision, culture and anarchy. Only thus can he give to outrage wider reference, give it a meaning beyond itself. There is the risk of course, that such mediation may rob both culture and outrage of their particular force. Yet from that loss a new life in history may be gained, a new consciousness of self and society may be born. This is precisely the gain, implicit in the discomforts of critical commitment, which Lionel Trilling, in his otherwise subtle essay, “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature,” seems to ignore.{{sfn|Trilling|1962|p=267 ff}} | ||
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; | 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; less 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.”{{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 he 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...”{{sfn|Camus|1961|p=251}} 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. | 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 he 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...”{{sfn|Camus|1961|p=251}} 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. | ||