The Common Pursuit
Page 34
Mr Mankowitz does a close analysis of that very fine early poem, Gerontion. But the contribution I read with some marked pleasure and stimulus was Philip Wheelwright's on Eliot's Philosophical Themes, which, it will be noted, doesn't offer a point-by-point elucidation of any poem, and won't, I think, be among the aids most resorted to.
It will be gathered, then, that I shouldn't like to think of this book's being accepted (it very well may be) as a standard
introduction and guide-book to Eliot. It contains some respectable things, but it seems to me calculated in sum to promote, not the impact of Eliot's genius—a disturbing force and therefore capable of ministering to life—but his establishment as a safe academic classic.
THE PROGRESS OF POESY
IN 1930, in the shadow of, but not too close to, Mr J. Alfred Prufrock, the Poems of Mr W. H. Auden first appeared. Mr T. S. Eliot's Waste Land had prepared the way by showing out the Georgians as gracefully but as finally as his Bloomsbury lady pours out tea.
There is a recurrent embarrassment facing anyone who is concerned for the contemporary function of criticism: the call for certain observations and judgments comes endlessly, and certain things have unavoidably to be said again and again, or there is no point in offering to deal with the contemporary scene; yet there is a limit to profitable reiteration, and—is this (comes the question) once more an occasion that, after so much abstinence, must not be ignored ? The passage quoted above opens a full-page review in the Times Literary Supplement (Oct. 23, 1948) of W. H. Auden's The Age of Anxiety, and the review does seem an occasion that one must take.
The effect of die passage is not, as might have been supposed, an unfortunate accident of expression. The critic himself doesn't actually say, as die acclaimers of that Poetic Renaissance in which Mr Auden played the leading part did, that Auden superseded Eliot, but his commentary may fairly be said to be in resonance with that view. That is, if we are to grant that what he offers is serious criticism, then die fashionable relegation of Mr Eliot that marked die advancing nineteen-thirties was critically respectable: it was die supersession, as die reigning power in poetry, of one creative genius by another, who understood better how to satisfy the needs of the time. 1
As a matter of fact, we are left in doubt whether the critic considers Mr Eliot a really major poet: he speaks of his 'grey unruffled language' and his 'gende and exquisite language'. However, it is hardly worth while to pursue the evaluative
1 It was interesting to observe in the universities how, at senior levels, conventional taste that had continued to resist Eliot was able to leave him behind and achieve a superior advancedness by acclaiming Modern Poetry in Auden-
implications of these astonishing phrases. We need do no more than contemplate the way in which the critic gives as grounds for treating Itr Auden as a great poet the very characteristics that make him so decidedly not one—and make him something not seriously co be compared with Mr Eliot. Mr Auden's poetry, we are told,
was pbilds aphy undigested but illuminated by a poet's intuition. It was poetry tafcen from the same events as those recorded in the daily newspapers. Its range was as sensational, its attitude as unpedantic, its acute-ness in reading the signs of the weather a hundred times greater For
good measure he threwinto his verse, like toys, the names of Freud and Rilke; le made the Mother-symbol smart; he made poetry out of dance lyrics.. . .
Of this poetry we are told that it was 'politically honest and self-searching', that it 'could shame a generation into political awareness, a personal guilt' and that it 'diagnosed the causes of the struggle correctly and clear-sightedly'. Mr Auden's honesty there is no need to question; it may perhaps be said to manifest itself in the opeon*ess with which his poetry admits that it doesn't know how serious it supposes itself to be. He was no doubt 'self-searching ', just as a thousand public-school boys going up to the university in those days were 'self-searching'. But to talk of his being' correct' and 'dear-sighted' in 'diagnosis' is about as absurd a misuse of words as can be imagined. It was not clear-sightedness that mad«fc him an irresistible influence. The 'political awareness' and the s personal guilt' into which he 'shamed a generation' were of a kxnl that it cost them very little to be shamed into. They asked fin nothing better, and his poetry stilled any uncomfortable suspicion chat there might be something better (if less comforting) to ask for. There it was, flatteringly modern and sophisticated, offering an intellectual and psychological profundity that didn't challenge them to any painful effort or discipline, and assuring them dm in wearing a modish Leftishness they could hold up their heads in a. guaranteed rightness—for the play with Depressed Areas, rusty machinery, and the bourgeois Dance of Death had essenti ally not the function of destroying complacency. No wonder they took mo re kindly to him than to Mr Eliot, who had no such attractions to offer.
The conditions that account for the arrest of Mr Auden's remarkable talent at the stage of undergraduate 'brilliance' are not, we are disconcertingly reminded, less potent now than they were. Our critic says that Mr Auden * was the Oxford intellectual with a bag of poetic squibs in his pocket', without seeming to realize that he was the undergraduate intellectual—permanently undergraduate and representing an immaturity that the ancient universities, not so long ago, expected their better undergraduates to transcend. It is the more disconcerting in that one can't avoid the suspicion (the signs are strong) that in this criticism we have a voice from the university—and not, of course, a junior one. It judges Mr Auden's last book a failure ('his one dull book, his one failure'), but we get no hint of any perceived relation between this failure and the earlier career that the reviewer has described.
If Mr Auden's successor doesn't become acquainted with serious criticism and die standards of maturity at the university, he will not readily find help towards remedying the lack when he enters the larger literary world. The Times Literary Supplement critic's way of seeing in Mr Auden's bright topicality the major poet's kind of authority called to mind a number of Horizon (July, 1947) that had been lying by some months among the 'documents' and signs of the times. In an editorial 'Comment' we read:
In order to prepare an edition of essays from Horizon for translation into German it was necessary last week to run through all ninety-odd numbers ... many of the fireworks in earlier numbers which achieved immediate popularity are now inclined to appear superficial and shoddy. One is also conscious of a change of policy which would appear to be justified. This change is expressed in our belief that the honeymoon between literature and action, once so promising, is over. We can see, looking through these old Horizons, a left-wing and sometimes revolutionary political attitude among writers, heritage of Guernica and Munich, boiling up to a certain aggressive optimism in the war years, gradually declining after D-day and soon after the victorious general election despondently fizzing out. It would be too easy to attribute this to the policy of the editors, their war-weariness, ana advancing years. The fact remains that a Socialist Government, besides doing practically nothing to help artists and writers (unless die closing down of magazines during the fuel crisis can be interpreted as an aid to incubation), has also quite failed to stir up either intellect or
imagination; the English renaissance, whose false dawn we have so enthusiastically greeted, is further away than ever.
Here, in these guileless reflections and avowals, we have an idea of the function of an intellectual literary organ corresponding to the Times Literary Supplement writer's idea of the poet. The nature of the' acuteness in reading the signs of the weather' lauded in both cases is obvious. The consequences for criticism of Horizon s idea of its own function are manifested on a large scale in the later pages of the same number. Further on in the 'Comment' we read:
In the light of the comparative failure of the 'progressive* movement of the last few years to rise above intelligent political journalism into the realms of literature, we must look elsewhere, either to the mad and lonely, or to those who have with a certain
angry obstinacy meticulously cultivated their garden. Among these the Sitwells shine out, for during the darkest years of the war they managed not only to produce their best work and to grow enormously in stature, but to find time to be of immense help to others. Many poets and writers were consoled by their encouragement as well as by their intransigent example, and so this number, at the risk of the inevitable accusations that we support a literary clique, is wholeheartedly dedicated to diem. It includes a new poem by Miss Sitwell, an essay on her later poetry by Sir Kenneth Clark which mentions her most recent work. The Shadow of Cain (published by John Lehmann, and among much else a magnificent anti-atomic protest) and a new fragment of Sir Osbert*s autobiography in which the Father-Son conflict is treated with bis engaging aigre-douceur de vivre.
Dr Edith Sitwell, then, is a great poet, with an established acceptance that would have seemed incredible if foretold ten years 50 (there are now—Yeats being dead—Edith Sitwell and T. S.
Eliot) and Sir Osbert's autobiography is a glory of contemporary English literature. 1
If a serious attempt should be made to assert a different (and traditional) idea of die function of criticism in a world in which Horizon's idea of it reigns, and in which the intransigence of the
1 'Next week Sir Osbert and Miss Edith Sitwell begin a lecture tour in America described as *a lecture-manager's tragedy* on account of its briefness compared with the thirst of the American public to Lear and see these two " irly English geniuses.'— Sunday Times, November 7,1948.
Sitwells avails to such exemplary effect, then it will appear as it does to the writer of another document that lies to hand: Mr John Hayward. In Prose Literature since 1939, published for the British Council, he refers in a passing mention to the 'minority group' of critics (led apparently by the 'cold intellectual', Dr F. R. Leavis), 'whose methodical and uncompromising destruction of reputations periodically enlivens the pages of the hypercritical but bracing magazine Scrutiny?
It would of course be hypercritical to suggest (though Americans and foreigners in the present writer's hearing have said it) that nothing could be worse for the prestige and influence of British Letters abroad than Mr Hayward's presentment of the currency-values of Metropolitan literary society and the associated University milieux as the distinctions and achievements of contemporary England.
No work of the period, at all events, has provoked livelier or more intelligent discussion among the critically-minded. Its merits and faults have been widely debated—to the dismay, doubtless, of its detractors, who, having dismissed the book in its original limited issue as the darling of a coterie, were to see 20,000 copies of two ordinary editions sold out on publication. By that time 'Palinurus* had been identified as Cyril Connolly, editor of the literary monthly Horizon, and leader of the intellectual avant-garde.
Few contemporary writers care so much about language as Connolly; know so much about its resources; use them with such respect.
Here we have the approach, but no quoting can suggest the completeness and consistency with which the job is done. Among the many names receiving distinguished mention is that of the Warden of Wadham:
Like David Cecil, Bowra is above all concerned with the writer as artist, and with his books as works of art. His criticism is essentially humanistic, deeply rooted in and nourished by the civilization of ancient Greece. It is as unusual as it is welcome to find a professional classical scholar competent to write with authority as well as enthusiasm on subjects as various as the European epic and contemporary European poetry.
The Warden of Wadham, it can now be added, has just applied
his classical scholar's ripeness and percipience to an extended appreciation of the poetry of Edith Sitwell (Edith Sitwell, Lyrebird Press).
Mr Hayward's survey ends on this note of uplift:
The integrity of the individual writer can best be defended from all the forces currently arrayed against it, by an attitude of absolute intransigence towards the philistine and all his works. Not only in the immediate post-war era but during die years of man's painful spiritual recovery which lie ahead, such an attitude must be preserved if, out of disintegration, a scheme of values is to arise and out of disillusionment a dynamic faith in the power of the printed word to express the finest operations of human thought and sensibility.
We may rely on the Sitwells to tell us who the philistine is. Can we rely on Horizon and Mr Hayward's majority array of warm 1 British intellectuals (backed by the British Council) to foster uncompromisingly the necessary attitude of absolute intransigence ?
1 The warm intellectual is not, like the cold kind, offensively highbrow: however intransigent, he promotes cosiness.
1948
ABBOTT, PROFESSOR CLAUDE COLUBER, 59, 60
Abercrombie, Lascelles, 38 Abinger Harvest (E. M. Forster), 276 Addison, Joseph, 192 'Aesthetic', use of term, 89 After Strange Gods (T. S. Eliot), 45,
235, 238,240, 242,245, 246, 284 Age of Anxiety, The (W. HL Auden),
293
Akenside, Mark, 42 All for Love (John Dryden), 191 Altar of the Dead, The (Henry James),
230 Ambassadors, The (Henry James), 224-
226 American, The (Henry James), 225,
229
Anderson, Quentin, 223-232 Anderson, Sherwood, 244 Anglo-Catholics, 252, 278,287-288 Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), 197 Antony and Cleopatra, 132 Approach to Shakespeare, An (D. A.
Traversi), 175-176 Arcadia, The (Sir Philip Sidney), 40 Archer, William, 177-179, 283 Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (Jonathan Swift), 74-75 Aristotle, 126 Arnold, Matthew, 29,31* 44-45. 47-
49, 51,54, 69, 242 Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (E. E.
Stall), 155,158 Ash-Wednesday (T. S. Eliot), 216,278,
287 Aspects of the Novel (E. M. Forster),
263,276 Auden, W. R, 37.2517 291,293-295
Augustans,63, 81, 84, 87, 90, 92-93,
95, 97-H5,130,185-186,192 Austen, Jane, 115, 203, 261-262 Awkward Age, The (Henry James), 230-231
BABBIT, IRVING, 238
Barnes, Djuna, 284 Basic English, 284 'Battle of the Baltic, The* (Thomas
Campbell), 60 Battle of the Books, The (Jonathan
Swift), 79
Baudelaire, Charles, 246 Beaumont and Fletcher, 156, 283 Behn, Mrs Aphra,235 Beljame, Alexandre, 198 Bennett, Arnold, 263 Bentham, Jeremy, i34-*35,226,259 Bible, The, 166, 201, 204,207 'Binsey Poplars' (G. M. Hopkins),
48-49 Black Book, The (Lawrence DurreD),
284 Blake, William, 38, 55, 87, 186-188,
192,216-219
Bloomsbury, 235,255,257,276,293 Bodkin, Maud, 38 Books and Characters (LyttonStrachey),
179
Bostonians, The (Henry James), 231 Boswell, James, 98-101,115-116 Bowra, C M., 297 Bradbrook, M. C, 278-290 Bradley, A. C., 136-140,143-147,*52~
159,174,177-179 Bridges, Robert, n, 44-4<5,51,55,5<5,
58-65, 67-68,70,72 British Council, The, 297-298
THE COMMON PURSUIT
Brooks, Cleanth, 286-287 Browning, Robert, 31, 34, 49, <$4,
201, 203 'Bugler's First Communion, The 1
(G. M. Hopkins), 51 Bunyan, John, 188-192, 204-210 Burney, Fanny, 101 'Burnt Norton* (T. S. Eliot), 14, 50,
290 Byron, Lord, 29, 38, 185
CALVINISTS, 190, 206 Cambridge, 255-260, 278 Cambridge English Faculty, 278 Cambridge Review, The, 279 Campbell, Thomas, 60 Carew, Thomas, 38-39 Cecil, Lord David, 51, 297 Celestial Omnibus, The (E. M. Forster),
261-263,266 Cenci y The, in ' Certain Noble Plays ofjapan' (W. B.
Yeats), 131
Chambers, Sir Edmund, 160 Chambers, R. W., 166-168,171 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 38, 42, 195-197,
199, 203
Chesterton, G. K., 281
Christianity, 248-254
'City Shower, A' (Jonathan Swift), 90
Clark, Sir Kenneth, 296
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 29, 137-139, 152-155, 160, 171, 185
Collins, A. S., 198
Collins, Churton, 74
Comfor
t, Alex, 249, 251
Communism, 70
Communist Manifesto, The, 204
Compton-Burnctt, Ivy, 249
Comus, 21, 36
Congreve, William, no
Connolly, Cyril, 297
Conrad, Joseph, 194, 263
Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Canon Richard Watson Dixon, 55, 59, 61, 67
Corvo, Baron, 234 Courthope, William John, 198 Cowper, William, 42, 60 Crabbe, George, 38, 115 Crashaw, Richard, 52 Criterion, The, 254 Cymbeline, 158, 163, i73-*79
DAISY MILLER, (Henry James),
229
Daniel, Arnaut, 288 Dante Alighieri, 121-122, 125, 165,
288 Dictionary of the English Language, A,
see Johnson's Dictionary Dies Irae, 71 'Difficulties of a Statesman' (T. S.
Eliot), 286
Digression concerning the Use of Madness in a Commonwealth (Jonathan
Swift), 80, 82, 83, 89 Dixon, Canon Richard Watson, 54-
55, 59, 61-62, 64, 67, 72 Donne, John, 33, 34, 38, 40, 42, 93,
282
Doughty, Charles Montagu, 71 Drummond of Hawthornden,
William, 42 Dryden, John, 45, 72, 104, no, 113,
156,185,188,191, 279-282 Duncan, Ronald, 251 Dunciad, The Fourth Book of the,
88-96,104,113 Duns Scotus, 48, 52 Durrell, Lawrence, 284
' EARTH'S ANSWER* (William
Blake), 218 Economic Consequences of the Peace,
The (J. M, Keynes), 260 Edda and Saga (Dame Bertha Phill-