MASK, IMAGE AND TRUTH
17
tion and counter-revolution than in nightingales, the stream of middle-class
consciousness, or love in Greenwich Village.
It was not Marxist criticism which compelled this transvaluation of
values but
life itself.
Our criticism has only illuminated the abyss of
capitalist existence and, tested poetic images by that all-pervading, mon–
strous reality. To attack Marxist critism as a whole is to attack the
attempt of reason to interpret symbols. The image is a bridge between
reality and emotion. Criticism is a bridge between the image and conscious–
ness. The poet intensifies' and illuminates life by image and fable; ·the
critics intensifies awareness by interpreting art in the light of the whole
of culture. The critic loves art because he loves life; the poet welcomes
criticism because he loves truth. Poet and critic nourish each other as
they nourish the culture which nourishes them.
