HOW THE WASTE LAND BECAME
A FLOWER GARDEN
Philip Rahv
TowARD
THE END OF THE PRECEDING DECADE
Mr. Joseph Wood
Krutch put himself at the head of the "waste land" school of thought by
summarizing its fatigued self-dramatization in a notable volume called
The Modern Temper.
His main point was that the heroic and tragic at–
titudes were things of the past, for man no longer believed in his greatness
and importance. Science and the advance of technology had done away
with the "Tragic Fallacy" of former ages-that "Tragic Faliacy" which
lent man a sense of dignity-and which ultimately depended upon some
form f!f religious belief. As for Communism, that was but a silly faith in
happiness as a concomittant of physical well-being; for his part he in–
sisted that the fundamental maladjustments were "not between man and
society, but between the human spirit and the natural universe."
Art also seemed a lost cause to Krutch. In this bleak universe it
could be nothing else but the
contemplation of negation.
In
Art and Ex–
perience,
his subsequent book, he wrote: "Zola, Baudelaire, and Ibsen;
Gissing, Hardy and Dostoevsky-these men, hardly less than Darwin and
Freud, have disillusioned mankind with the universe and with itself." In–
capable of achieving a self-justifying vision, the literature of our times ap–
peared to him impotent in the face of humanity's need for a self-justifying
image.
By the ·end of 1933, however we find Krutch radiating sweetness and
light. Unable to "weep Fate from its determited course," as an old
poet once put it, he decided to try cheering it off. All at once, the artist,
whom he formerly saw slinking about and peering into dark corners, is seen
as the incarnation of joy and dalliance. In his own words: "The chief
function of fiction, and drama and poetry . • • • is not to improve society
any more than it is to improve morals. Its purpose, rather,
is to make
existence tolerable to those who are compelled to accept Things
As
They
Are." (Literature and Utopia,
The Nation, Oct. 18, 1933. Italics mine.)
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