36
PARTISAN REVIEW
able to say this. There is no prophetic principle which enables us to foresee
the form which a content
must take.
Content from this angle is a slightly
different thing; for we have abstracted from specifically modulated sub–
stances (in a poem or novel) a general idea of content which is related
to our intellectual approach to the world. I mean that in Auden, for
example, there is a special kind of satire which gets its meaning and v1gor
from his form, whereas satire, in general, as a subject, can have a number
of forms.
If
the preceding analysis is correct, the inevitable conclusion is that
specific content and form determine each other, and that content in its
translated, intellectual aspect conditions or sets a range for form. Certainly
Eliot's values of frustration, restlessness and tension would be weird in
the heroic structures of Shakespeare's plays. But within appropriate
limits an indefinite number of forms seem possible, and it is only after
their appearance that we can see the necessary connections with content.
When confronted with the task of extracting usable elements from
our literary heritage, as revolutionary writers are, the problem is a little
more complicated. Since the days are gone when writers use the subjects
of their predecessors, except in the baldest sense (like war or declassed
intellectuals) and from writers in the same tradition (like factory or
strike scenes in revolutionary literature), the carryover of content
Per se
presents no crtical problem. Certainly the main concern of revolutionary
writers is to utilize the new wealth of revolutionary themes. But many
hairs have been split over the question of utilizing traditional forms.
If,
however, form is to be regarded as a £,unction of perception, and, with
content, a twin aspect of sensibility, it is evident that form alone cannot
be assimilated: the
sensibility
of traditional writers is the assimilable
quality. The task of the revolutionary writer is the forging of a relatively
new sensibility, compounded of his Marxian outlook, j)roletarian experience
and whatever available literary sensibilities exist. But over short periods
of time some constants in sensibility appear to persist. Contemporary
literature, despite its conservative values and ideas, articul atr.s a vast
range of profound perceptions. Look at T. S. Eliot, who has become the
symbol of traditional literature: his reactionary beliefs give his poetry
as a whole a nostalgic waywardness marginal to the decisive issues of
modern life; but his sensibility has produced a trenchant idiom for the
d·islocation of bourgeois perspectives amidst a tightening commercial way
of life. Some revolutionary poets have b:!en chided for their susceptibility
to Eliot's influence.
It
is interesting to note, however, that none of them
has transplanted his complete sensibility; the influence has been limited
largely to Eliot's reaction against the eloquent verbosities of earlier romantic
poetry, and to his sense of pervasive bourgeois melancholy. The latter has
