50
PA.RTISA.N REVIEW
essays as given, to reflect in their light upon that unanswered question of
the nature and function of criticism in our place and time. What are
these writers doing?
Let us first, then, distinguish in' these essays between statements
made which can appropriately be called true or false, on the one hand;
and, on the other, expressions of feeling, emotion, attitude, evaluings.
This distinction, growingly familiar from the current popularizations of
"semantics" and "scientific empiricism," has not yet figured to any
extent in discussions of critical method. Literary criticism, however, is
no more exempt from the usual rules of discourse than any other field.
The crucial importance of the distinction is seen in this: whereas the
empirically significant statements made by the critics can be verified
by evidence, the expressions of feeling, attitude, evaluings are subject
to no such check. The latter we may accept or reject, label good or bad,
analyze in terms of consequences or implicit assumptions, deem appro–
priate or noble or evil, all in terms of our own sets of attitudes and values;
but we cannot meaningfully assert them to be true or false.
Among the significant statements made in these essays is one group
which refers to the technique and medium of literature. These range
from R. P. Blackmur's listings of the words most frequently recurring
in E. E..Cummings' poems to William Troy's description of the distinc–
tive character of Virginia Woolf's imagery to Edmund Wilson's detailed
analysis of the parallel between Joyce's
Ulysses
and the narrative of the
'Jdysse)'.
Statements of this type ani also notably to be found in Philip
Blair Rice's essay on Paul Valery, in Theodore Spencer on Yeats, and
in Francis Fergusson on Eugene O'Neill.
Nevertheless, in the collection as a whole, these statements dealing
with technique and medium bulk small. Many of the critics are not
at all concerned with them. Many of the remainder delude themselves
with the belief that they are writing such statements, but are found on
examination to be unaware of the difference between significant state–
ment and expression. When Yvor Winters writes of Robert Bridges:
"The quality of language over the gap of time is constant. In restraint,
economy, richness of feeling, in what I should call an extreme generality
or universality of import accomplished with no loss in the specification
of the perception, these poems and a few others in the volume will stand
the most scrutinizing comparison, I believe, with any of Shakespeare's
sonnets"; when Robert Morss Lovett writes: "It is characteristic of
Sherwood Anderson's art that, instead of seeking escape from life and
forgetfulness of it, he grapples with it in an effort to set the tortured
spirit free from its servitude to matter" i-it should be clear that they
are saying virtually nothing. They are expressing their own feelings,
which may be more or less interesting, worthy, or appropriate to context,
but are in no plausible sense true or false.
So long as works of literature (and any other art might be substi–
tuted) are written and read, criticism which consists of significant state–
ments about technique and medium will continue to be made, and will,
I believe, be legitimate, relevant, and valued by at least some persons,
