power, demanded that it change the world; no genre has ever had
with our sense of cultural crisis to heap responsibilities upon it, to
so great a burden of social requirement put upon it ( which, inhedge it about with prescribed functions and spiked criteria; as cidentally, it has very effectively discharged), or has been so strictly
things are, the novel feels quite guilty enough.
ordered to give up, in the fulfillment of its assigned function, all
A sentence in Aristotle's Ethics has always been memorable, perthat was unconscious and ambivalent and playful in itself. Our sense haps because I have never wholly understood it. Aristotle says,
of its comprehensiveness and effectiveness has led us to make a
"There is a sense in which Chance and Art have the same sphere;
legend of it: one of the dreams of a younger America, continuing
as Agathon says, 'Art fosters Fortune; Fortune fosters Art.'" Taken
until recently, was of the Great American Novel, which was always
out of its context, and merely as a gnomic sentence, this says much.
imagined to be as solitary and omniseminous as the Great White
It says something about the reciprocation which in the act of com
Whale. Then we have subjected it to criteria which are irrelevant
position exists between form and free invention, each making the
to its nature-how many of us happily share the horror which John
other, which even the most considerate criticism can never really
Gould Fletcher expressed at the discovery that Trollope thought of
be aware of and often belies. Fortune fosters Art: there is indeed
novel-writing as a trade. The overvaluation of love is the beginning
something fortuitous in all ai:t, and in the novel the element of the
of the end of love; the overvaluation of art is the beginning of the
fortuitous is especially large. The novel achieves its best effects of
end of art.
art often when it has no concern with them, when it is fixed upon
What I have called the roughness of grain of the novel, and
effects in morality, or when it is simply reporting what it conceives
praised as such, corresponds with something in the nature of the
to be objective fact. The converse is of course also true, that the novel
novelists themselves. Of all practitioners of literature, novelists as
makes some of its best moral discoveries or presentations of fact
a class have made the most aggressive assault upon the world, the
when it is concerned with form, when it manipulates its material
most personal demand upon it, and no matter how obediently they
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Art and For tune
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have listened to their daemons they have kept an ear cocked at the
reality, but the question is now whether thought and desire have any
crowd and have denounced its dullness in not responding with gifts
longer a field of possibility. No answer can soon be forthcoming.
of power and fame. This personal demand the haughtiest reserve of
Yet, "as Agathon says, 'Art fosters Fortune; Fortune fosters Art.'"
Flaubert and James did not try to hide. The novelists have wanted
There is both an affirmation and an abdication in that sentence; the
much and very openly; and with great simplicity and na'ivete they
abdication is as courageous as the affirmation, and the two together
have mixed what they personally desired with what they desired
make up a good deal of wisdom. If anything of the old novelistic
for the world and have mingled their mundane needs with their
character survives into our day, the novelist will be sufficiently aware
largest judgments. Then, great as their mental force has been, they
of Fortune, of Conditions, of History, for he is, as Fielding said, the
have been touched with something like stupidity, resembling the
historian's heir; but he will also be indifferent to History, sharing
holy stupidity which Pascal recommends: its effects appear in their
the vital stupidity of the World-Historical Figure, who of course
ability to maintain ambivalence toward their society, which is not an
is not in the least interested in History but only in his own demands
acquired attitude of mind, or a weakness of mind, but rather the
upon life and thus does not succumb to History's most malign and
translation of a biological datum, an extension of the pleasure-pain
subtle trick, which is to fix and fascinate the mind of men with the
with which, in a healthy state, we respond to tension and effort; the
pride of their foreknowledge of doom. There are times when, as the
novelist expresses this in his coexistent hatred and love of the life
method of Perseus with the Medusa suggests, you do well not to
he observes. His inconsistency of intellectual judgment is biological
look straight at what you are dealing with but rather to see it in the
wisdom.
mirror-shield that the hero carried. Which is to say, "Art fosters
It is at this point that I must deal with a lapse in my argument
Fortune.''
of which I am aware. My statement of belief that the novel is not
But the shrug which is implied by the other half of the sentence
dead, together with what I have said about what the novel should or
is no less courageous. It does not suggest that we compare our posishould not do, very likely does not weigh against those circumtion with what appears to be the more favored situation of the past, stances in our civilization which I have adduced as accounting for
or keep in mind how History has robbed the novelist of a great role.
the hypothetical death of the novel. To me certainly these circum
What a demand upon the guarantees of History this would imply!
stances are very real. And as I describe the character of the novelist
What an overvaluation of security, and of success and the career, and
they inevitably occur to me again. For it is exactly that character and
of art, and of life itself, which must always be a little undervalued if
what it suggests in a culture that the terrible circumstances of our
it is to be lived. Rather should the phrase suggest both the fortuitous
time destroy. The novelist's assertion of personal demand and his
and the gratuitous nature of art, how it exists beyond the reach of
frank mingling of the mundane and personal with the high and
the will alone, how it is freely given and not always for good reason,
general, his holy stupidity, or as Keats called it, "negative capability,"
and for as little reason taken away. It is not to be demanded or
which is his animal faith-can these persist against the assaults which
prescribed or provided for. The understanding of this cannot of itself
the world now makes on them? If the novel cannot indeed survive
assure the existence of the novel but it helps toward establishing the
without ambivalence, does what the world presents us with any
state of the soul in which the novel becomes possible.
longer permit ambivalence? The novelist could once speak of the
beautiful circuit of thought and desire
which exists beside the daily
The Meaning of a Literary Idea
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though I can conceive that different processes, even different mental
faculties, were at work to make them and to make them different,
I cannot resist the impulse to put stress on their similarity and on
The Meaning of a Literary Idea
their easy assimilation to each other.
Let me suggest some of the ways in which literature, by its very
nature, is involved with ideas. I can be quite brief because what I
. • . T hot1gh no great minist'ring reason sorts
say will not be new to you.
Out the dark mysteries of human souls
To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls
The most elementary thing to observe is that literature is of its
A vast idea before me, and I glean
nature involved with ideas because it deals with man in society,
Therefrom my liberty . . •
KEATS: "Sleep and Poetry"
which is to say that it deals with formulations, valuations, and
decisions, some of them implicit, others explicit. Every sentient
I
organism
T
acts on the principle that pleasure is to be preferred to
pain, but man is the sole creature who formulates or exemplifies
HE question of the relation which should properly obtain
this as an idea and causes it to lead to other ideas. His consciousness
between what we call creative literature and what we call
of self abstracts this principle of action from his behavior and makes
ideas is a matter of insistent importance for modern
it the beginning of a process of intellection or a matter for tears and
criticism. It did not always make difficulties for the critic, and that
laughter. And this is but one of the innumerable assumptions or
it now makes so many is a fact which tells us much about our
ideas that are the very stuff of literature.
present relation to literature.
This is self-evident and no one ever thinks of denying it. All
Ever since men began to think about poetry, they have conceived
that is ever denied is that literature is within its proper function in
that there is a difference between the poet and the philosopher, a
bringing these ideas to explicit consciousness, or ever gains by doing
difference in method and in intention and in result. These differso. Thus, one of the matters of assumption in any society is the ences I have no wish to deny. But a solidly established difference
worth of men as compared with the worth of women; upon just
inevitably draws the fire of our question; it tempts us to inquire
such an assumption, more or less settled, much of the action of the
whether it is really essential or whether it is quite so settled and
Oresteia is based, and we don't in the least question the propriety of
extreme as at first it seems. To this temptation I yield perhaps too
this-or not until it becomes the subject of open debate between
easily, and very possibly as the result of an impercipience on my
Apollo and Athene, who, on the basis of an elaborate biological
part-it may be that I see the difference with insufficient sharpness
speculation, try to decide which is the less culpable, to kill your
because I do not have a proper notion either of the matter of poetry
father or to kill your mother. At this point we, in our modern way,
or of the matter of philosophy. But whatever the reason, when I
feel that in permitting the debate Aeschylus has made a great and
consider the respective products of the poetic and of the philosophic
rather silly mistake, that he has for the moment ceased to be literary.
mind, although I see that they are by no means the same and al-
Yet what drama does not consist of the opposition of formulable
ideas, what drama, indeed, is not likely to break into the explicit
This essay was read at the Conference in American Literature at the University of
exposition and debate of these ideas?
Rochester, February 1949, and first published in the American Quarterly, Fall, 1949.
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The Meaning of a Literary Idea
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This, as I say, is elementary. And scarcely less elementary is the
days are very simple and accurate in their perception of this-much
observation that whenever we put two emotions into juxtaposition
more simple and accurate than are academic critics and aestheticians
we have what we can properly call an idea. When Keats brings to
-and they are as quick to deal with the arts of "pure" form as they
gether, as he so often does, his emotions about love and his emoare to deal with ideas stated in discourse: it is as if totalitarian govtions about death, we have a very powerful idea and the source of ernments kept in mind what the rest of us tend to forget, that "idea"
consequent ideas. The force of such an idea depends upon the
in one of its early significations exactly means form and was so
force of the two emotions which are brought to confront each
used by many philosophers.
other, and also, of course, upon the way the confrontation is con
It is helpful to have this meaning before us when we come to
trived.
consider that particular connection between literature and ideas
Then it can be said that the very form of a literary work, conwhich presents us with the greatest difficulty, the connection that sidered apart from its content, so far as that is possible, is in itself
involves highly elaborated ideas, or ideas as we have them in highly
an idea. Whether we deal with syllogisms or poems, we deal with
elaborated systems such as philosophy, or theology, or science. The
dialectic-with, that is, a developing series of statements. Or if the
modern feeling about this relationship is defined by two texts, both
word "statements" seems to pre-judge the question so far as literaprovided by T. S. Eliot. In his essay on Shakespeare Mr. Eliot says, ture is concerned, let us say merely that we deal with a developing
"I can see no reason for believing that either Dante or Shakespeare
series-the important word is "developing." We judge the value of
did any thinking on his own. The people who think that Shakethe development by judging the interest of its several stages and speare thought are always people who are not engaged in writing
the propriety and the relevance of their connection among thempoetry, but who are engaged in thinking, and we all like to think selves. We make the judgment in terms of the implied purpose of
that great men were like ourselves." And in his essay on Henry
the developing series.
James Mr. Eliot makes the well-known remark that James had a
Dialectic, in this sense, is just another word for form, and has
mind so fine that no idea could violate it.
for its purpose, in philosophy or in art, the leading of the mind
In both statements, as I believe, Mr. Eliot permits his impulse to
to some conclusion. Greek drama, for example, is an arrangement
spirited phrase to run away with hi
m, yielding too much to what
of moral and emotional elements in such a way as to conduct the
he conceives to be the didactic necessities of the moment, for he
mind-"inevitably," as we like to say-to a certain affective condihas it in mind to offer resistance to the nineteenth-century way of tion. This condition is a quality of personal being which may be
looking at poetry as a heuristic medium, as a communication of
judged by the action it can be thought ultimately to lead to.
knowledge. This is a view which is well exemplified in a sentence
We take Arist<,tle to be a better critic of the drama than Plato
of Carlyle's: "If called to define Shakespeare's faculty, I should say
because we perceive that Aristotle understood and Plato did not
superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all in that.'; As
understand that the form of the drama was of itself an idea which
between the two statements about Shakespeare's mental processes,
controlled and brought to a particular issue the subordinate ideas
I give my suffrage to Carlyle's as representing a more intelligible
it contained. The form of the drama is its idea, and its idea is its
and a more available notion of intellect than Mr. Eliot's, but I
form. And form in those arts which we call abstract is no less an
think I understand what Mr. Eliot is trying to do with his-he is tryidea than is form in the representational arts. Governments nowa-ing to rescue poetry from the kind of misinterpretation of Carlyle's
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The Meaning of a Literary Idea
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view which was once more common than it is now; he is trying to
powers of discovery and knowledge which have a particular value
save for poetry what is peculiar to it, and for systematic thought
for the establishment of man in society and the universe.
what is peculiar to it.
But to call ourselves the people of the idea is to flatter ourselves.
As for Mr. Eliot's statement about James and ideas, it is useful
We are rather the people of ideology, which is a very different thing.
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