The Common Pursuit

by F. R. Leavis

  It is true that a great artist's consciousness is in a profound way representative and never unconditioned by the age and culture to which he belongs. But it doesn't at all follow, as Mr Anderson seems to suggest, that James, because he was born in America, had, as great artist, to share that optimism. His strength was both American and more than American, and it enabled him, when he was a great artist, to transcend the optimism. He was, it is clear, also drawn to it. It seems to me equally clear that this weakness was closely correlated with another that looks like its antithesis. I am thinking of the very unpleasantly sentimental morbidity exemplified by The Altar of the Dead. And that morbidity seems in its turn to be related to the curious suggestion of abnormality, the

  THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 231

  preoccupation with indefinite evil, of which The Turn of the Screw is the best-known illustration.

  I must before closing say that the facts adduced by Mr Anderson make no difference at all to my appreciation of those works of James which made him for me a great writer. I ought perhaps to confess that I couldn't antecedently have believed that facts of that kind would, in the nature of things, make any notable difference: the works I admired were what they clearly were, and the grounds of my admiration were such as I certainly hadn't put there myself. The works I am thinking of are The Europeans, Washington Square, The Bostonians, The Portrait of a Lady, The AivkwardAge, What Maisie Knew and a number o£nouvelles having virtues of the same order as the major works. I see no possibility at all of questioning the nature and conditions of the value of these things.

  What strikes us first about them as we read them is the vivid concreteness of the rendering of this world of individual centres of consciousness we live in—a rendering such as seems to imply a kind of interest and a habit of discrimination that bear no relation to any Swedenborgian ethos. Then, the organization that, when we have completed the reading of the given book, is seen to give it significance as a work of art involves no reference to any such symbolism as Mr Anderson describes. What we have, for instance, in The Europeans and The Portrait of a Lady is a characteristic (as I see it) critical and constructive interplay, done in dramatic terms, between different cultural traditions; an interplay in which discriminations for and against are made in respect of both sides, American and European, and from which emerges the suggestion of an ideal positive that is neither. James here is unmistakably preoccupied with the thought of a possible world in which the country house, with its external civilization, shall also be a centre of the life of the spirit; in which manners shall be the index of an inner fineness; and in which die man of the world and the inveterate diner-out who is also an intellectual novelist shall be able to find congenial society and a public capable of appreciating his novels. The characters and the action are 'symbolic* (to use the treacherous word) in a Shakespearean way, and the discriminations made invoke criteria of personality and moral quality that the cultivated reader recognizes, and can accept, iimnediately.

  The organization, again, of a representative success like The Lesson of the Master, is no more to be explained in terms of Swedenborgian mysticism. The relations between the young author and the veteran clearly dramatize the complex debate that has gone on in James himself, between the special exacting claims of his art, and his fears, both as man and artist, of missing the full experience of life.

  THE WILD, UNTUTORED PHOENIX

  TAWRENCE is placed—is, in fact, distinctly passe; we are J-j no longer (if we ever were) very much impressed by him. He had, of course, a kind of genius, but to take him seriously as an intellectual and spiritual force, a force that could affect our attitude towards life and the problems of our time—it's amusing to think that there were once earnest souls who did so. To-day, while recognizing the queerly limited gifts he dissipated, we hardly bother to smile at his humourless fanaticisms.

  At least, that's the impression one gets from the literary world to-day (I mean the milieu in which fashions are set and worn and the higher reviewing provided for). Lawrence is decidedly out of favour—in fact, he was never in, for it was without permission that he won his fame, and he was patently not the kind of writer who would ever earn permission. Phoenix is an admirable reminder of the qualities that make our ruling literary intellectuals feel that his fame had better be encouraged to fade as quickly as possible.

  Here, for instance, in this collection of dispersed papers, he appears as an incomparable reviewer (presenting, that is, a standard that our higher literary editors couldn't be expected to take seriously). We remember that neglected critical masterpiece, Studies in Classical American Literature, and may very well go on to ask what kind of gift it was that made D. H. Lawrence the finest literary critic of our time—a great literary critic if ever there was one. We know it can't have been intelligence; for Mr QuennelTs view 1 that (in contrast to die superlatively intelligent Mr Aldous Huxley) he was, though a genius, muddle-headed is generally accepted (and did not Mr Eliot find in Lawrence *an incapacity for what we ordinarily call thinking' ?) 2

  Yet here, in these reprinted reviews, we have Lawrence dealing under ordinary reviewing conditions (he needed the money) with books of all kinds—H. G. Wells, Eric Gill, Rozanov, Dos Passos,

  1 See The English Novelists, edited by Derek Verschoyle.

  Hemingway, Baron Corvo, fiction, poetry, criticism, psychology —-and giving almost always the impression of going straight to the centre with the masterly economy, the sureness of touch, of one who sees exactly what it is in front of him and knows exactly what he thinks of it. Here he is on H. G. Clissold-Wells:

  His effective self is disgruntled, his ailment is a peevish, ashy indifference to everything, except himself, himself as centre of the universe. There is not one gleam of sympathy with anything in all the book, and not one breath of passionate rebellion. Mr Clissold is too successful and wealthy to rebel and too hopelessly peeved to sympathize.

  What has got him into such a state is a problem; unless it is his insistence on the Universal Mind, which he, of course, exemplifies. The emotions are to him irritating aberrations. Yet even he admits that even thought must be preceded by some obscure physical happenings, some kind of confused sensation or emotion which is the necessary coarse body of thought and from which thought, living thought, arises or sublimates.

  This being so, we wonder that he so insists on the Universal or racial mind of man, as the only hope of salvation. If the mind is fed from the obscure sensations, emotions, physical happenings inside us, if the mind is really no more than an exhalation of these, is it not obvious that without a full and subtle emotional life the mind itself must wither; or that it must turn itself into an automatic sort of grind-mill, grinding upon itself.

  His critical poise is manifested in (pace Mr Eliot) a lively ironic humour—a humour that for all its clear-sighted and mocking vivacity is quite without animus. For, idiosyncratic as Lawrence's style is, it would be difficult to find one more radically free from egotism.

  Professor Sherman once more coaxing American criticism the way it should go.

  Like Benjamin Franklin, one of his heroes, he attempts the invention of a creed that shall 'satisfy the professors of all religions, and offend none'.

  He smites the marauding Mr Mencken with a velvet glove, and pierces the obstinate Mr More with a reproachful look. Both gentlemen, of course, will purr and feel flattered .. .

  So much for the Scylla of Mr Mencken. It is the first essay in the

  THE WILD, UNTUTORED PHOENIX 235

  book. The Charybdis of Mr P. E. More is the last essay: to this monster the professor warbles another tune. Mr More, author of the Shelburne Essays, is learned, and steeped hi tradition, the very antithesis of the nihilistic stink-gassing Mr Mencken. But alas, Mr More is remote: somewhat haughty and supercilious at his study table. And even, alasser! with all his learning and remoteness, he hunts out the risky Restoration wits to hob-nob with on high Parnassus; Wycherley, for example; he likes his wits smutty. He even goes and fet
ches out Aphra Behn from her disreputable oblivion, to entertain her in public.

  The humour seems to me that of a man whose insight into human nature and human experience makes egotism impossible, and I find myself, in fact, in thus attributing to him an extraordinary self-awareness and intelligence about himself, seeming to contradict Mr Eliot, who denies him 'the faculty of self-criticism' (op. cit., p. 59). Lawrence docs indeed characteristically exhibit certitude and isn't commonly to be found in a mood of hesitation or self-condemnation (though his art is largely a technique of exploration—exploration calling for critical capacity as well as courage); but in purity of interest and sureness of self-knowledge he seems to me to surpass Mr Eliot, even though he pays no respect to criteria that Mr Eliot indicates as essential.

  A man like Lawrence, therefore, with his acute sensibility, violent prejudices and passions, and lack of intellectual and social training .. . (After Strange Gods, p. 59.)

  I have already intimated that the acuteness of Lawrence's sensibility seems to me (whatever Bloomsbury may have decided) inseparable from tie play of a supremely fine and penetrating intelligence. And if one is to agree that Lawrence lacked intellectual and social training, one would like to be shown someone who didn't or doesn't. It's true that he didn't go to Oxford or Harvard, and that his family was of a social class the sons of which, at that time, had little chance of getting to one of the ancient universities. But few readers of the memoir of Lawrence by E. T. 1 will, I imagine, however expensive their own education, claim with any confidence that they had a better one than Lawrence had. At school, and later at University College, Nottingham, whafr

  ever their faults (and he says some stringent things about the College), he got sufficient stimulus and sufficient guidance to the sources and instruments of knowledge to be able, in intercourse, social and intellectual, with his friends to carry on a real education. They discussed their way eagerly over an extraordinary range of reading, English and French, past and contemporary (Lawrence hit on the English Review, then in its great days), and it is difficult to imagine adolescents who should have read more actively and to greater profit. For, belonging as they did to the self-respecting poor in a still vigorous part of the country, not only was their intellectual education intimately bound up with a social training (what respectable meaning Mr Eliot, denying a 'social training* to Lawrence, can be giving the phrase I can't guess); they enjoyed the advantage of a still persistent cultural tradition that had as its main drive the religious tradition of which Mr Eliot speaks so contemptuously. And the setting of family life (quite finely civilized and yet pressed on by day-to-day economic and practical exigencies) in which these young people met and talked was in sight of—in immediate touch with—on one side the colliery (Lawrence's father was a miner) and on the other the farm (Miriam's father was a small farmer). It seems to me probable that D. H. Lawrence at twenty-one was no less trained intellectually than Mr Eliot at the same age; had, that is, read no less widely (even if lacking Greek), was no less in command of his capacities and resources and of the means of developing further, and had as adequate a sense of tradition and the nature of wisdom. And it seems to me probable that, even if less sophisticated than Mr Eliot, he was not less mature in experience of life.

  Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum.

  Lawrence was not Shakespeare, but he had genius, and his genius manifests itself in an acquisitiveness that is a miraculous quickness of insight, apprehension and understanding. The 'information' that Mr Eliot doesn't deny him (*a lack not so much of information as . . .') is more than mere information; he had an amazing range and wealth of living knowledge. He knew well at least four languages besides his own, and it is characteristic of him

  THE WILD, UNTUTORED PHOENIX 237

  that in reviewing Cunninghame Graham's Pedro de Valdivia he not only shows a wide general knowledge of the Spanish conquests, but, referring to the original Spanish particular instances of Cunninghame Graham's rendering, censures him for *the peculiar laziness or insensitiveness to language which is so great a vice in a translator'. What those qualified to judge think of Lawrence's dealings with painting I don't know, but he certainly shows an extremely wide and close acquaintance with it, deriving from an obviously intense interest. This appears notably, not only in the Introduction to these Paintings, but also in die Study of Thomas Hardy.

  This long Study of Thomas Hardy, perhaps, represents the kind of thing that Mr Eliot has especially in mind when he charges Lawrence with 'an incapacity for what we ordinarily call thinking'. It is an early work, and hasn't much to do with Hardy. Lawrence frankly admits that he is using Hardy as an occasion and a means, and that his real purpose is to explore, refine and develop certain ideas and intuitions of his own. I found the study difficult to read through; it is diffuse and repetitive, and Lawrence has dealt with the same matters better elsewhere. Yet in the persistent integrity of this exploration the genius is manifest, and without this kind of work we couldn't have had the later ease, poise and economy, and die virtues in general that compel Mr Eliot to say:

  As a criticism of the modern world, Fantasia of the Unconscious is a book to keep at hand and re-read.

  If Lawrence's criticism is sound that seems to me to be because of the measure in which his criteria are sound, and because they and their application represent, if not what we 'ordinarily call dunking', an extraordinarily penetrating, persistent and vital kind of thinking. He says (p. 611):

  What good is our intelligence to us, if we will not use it in the greatest issues? Nothing will excuse us from the responsibility of living; even death is no excuse. We have to live. So we may as well live fully. We are doomed to live. And therefore it is not the smallest use running into pis alien and trying to shirk the responsibility of living. We can't get out of it.

  And therefore the only thing is to undertake the responsibility with good grace.

  THE COMMON PURSUIT

  It is Lawrence's greatness that he was in a position to say this; he was, in fact, intelligent as only the completely serious and disinterested can be. Those who plume themselves on being intelligent but find this notion of intelligence uncongenial will prefer Mr Wyndham Lewis—even a Wyndham Lewis who comes out for Hitler.

  I was reminded of Mr Wyndham Lewis by this in Phoenix (p. 271):

  have on him, but he retreats into the intellect to make his display. It is a question of maimer and manners. The effect is the same. It is the same exclamation: They stink! My God, they stink!

  The Lawrence who thus places Wyndham Lewis seems to me the representative of health and sanity. Mr Eliot's reactions to Lawrence are, of course, at a different level from those referred to at the end of the last paragraph, the common petty reactions of the literary world, and the case that Mr Eliot argues does, at its most respectable, demand serious attention. But it is odd that he should, in pronouncing Lawrence Spiritually sick', be able at the same time to invoke Wyndham Lewis's 'brilliant exposure' and 'conclusive criticism' of any side of Lawrence.

  I hadn't intended to end on this note. But my attention has just been drawn to Mr Eliot's essay in Revelation. He treats Lawrence there still more respectfully than in After Strange Gods, but can say:

  For Babbitt was by nature an educated man, as well as a highly well-informed one; Lawrence, even had he acquired a great deal more knowledge and information than he ever came to possess, would always have remained uneducated. By being 'educated' I mean having such an apprehension of the contours of the map of what has been written in the past, as to see instinctively where everything belongs, and approximately where anything new is likely to belong; it means, furthermore, being able to allow for all the books one has not read and the things one does not understand—it means some understanding o£ one's own ignorance.

  Irving Babbitt, all one's divinations about whom have been confirmed by the reminiscences and mem
oirs of him that have appeared since his death! Babbitt, who was complacently deaf and

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  blind to literature and art, and completely without understanding of his incapacity; who, being thus in sensibility undeveloped or dead, can hardly, without misplacing a stress, be called intelligent! Even as Mr Eliot quotes him and comments on him he appears as the born academic (is that what 'by nature an educated man* means ?), obtuse—Mr Eliot seems almost to bring out the word— obtuse in his dogged and argumentative erudition.

  How can Mr Eliot thus repeatedly and deliberately give away his case by invoking such standards e It is an amazing thing that so distinguished a mind can so persistently discredit in this way a serious point of view.

  MR ELIOT, MR WYNDHAM LEWIS AND LAWRENCE

  FTER STRANGE GODS, like the last set of printed lectures, is clearly not a book the author would choose to have written, and one is tempted to pass it by with a glance at the circumstances of production. Yet the weaknesses, the embarrassing obviousness of which is partly to be explained by those circumstances, cannot, after all, be dismissed as having no significance. Mr Eliot is too distinguished, his preoccupations have too representative an importance, and the sub-title of the book, recalling as it does an old and notorious promise, invites us to consider their presentment here as embodying a certain maturity of reflection.

  His themes are orthodoxy and tradition, and, as one would expect, he says some memorable doings. Tradition, for example, he describes admirably as 'the means by which the vitality of the past enriches the life of the present'. And when he describes 'the struggle of our time' as being 'to concentrate, not to dissipate; to renew our association with traditional wisdom; to re-establish a vital connexion between the individual and the race . . .', one again assents with pleasure. But when he goes on, 'the struggle, in a word, against Liberalism', it seems an odd summary.