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PARTISAN REVIEW
besides. Among the reviews my own work has received, there have been
several which seemed to me well-studied, careful and probably useful to
readers. One was useful to me in showing me that two lines ought to
be
dropped from a poem; but not very useful, since the poem will probably
never be reprinted. One, by its fine misunderstandings and general fertility,
was a spur to do a particular kind of thing better next time (this was a
review by Edmund Wilson of Fitts' and my translation of the
Antigone).
But public criticism must always, I should think, have its function in
accurately informing and awakening readers and by analysis reminding
them of the exactions of fine art. This is a difficult and peculiar labor, and
the conditions of newspaper reviewing are unfavorable to it. They are not
so unfavorable, however, as to justify the assignment of important poetry
to the New York
Times'
Percy Hutchinson or the publication of such full·
blown, miraculous nonsense as Robert P. T. Coffin recently achieved in a
review of a Millay book for the New York
Herald-Tribune.
Taking these
two as examples, I cannot attribute either directly to corruption through
advertising; editorial hum-drum and literary insanity in the reviewers are
as much or more to blame. Likewise in the weekly liberal journals, the
quality of a specific review may be attributed largely to the person who
writes it. It is his own fault, nobody else's, if he yields to "political pres·
sures" and writes dishonestly; it is also his fault if his writing lacks taste
and precision. It seems to me unfortunate to shift too much responsibility
from individuals to the abstractions of "politics" or "advertising," prev–
alent though these admittedly are. Sainte-Beuve had his staggering super·
ficialities. It is true that the newspaper supplements badly need invigora·
tion and that belle lettristic and Marxist myopia need equally to be cor·
rected. It is also true that to discuss works of art with clarity and justice
is a job that exceptional men only will ever perform. But it is scarcely
true that serious literary criticism has now become an "isolated cult,"
whatever that means. There is nothing any more Eleusinian about Wilson,
Eliot and Blackmur than there was about Erasmus and Scaliger, Arnold
and Brunetiere.
4. No. Yes, obviously.
5. Groups, classes, organizations, regions, religiOns and systems of
thought have, like the starry universe, environed me since birth, and to
those of my immediate environment I have paid whatever allegiance seemed
appropriate or necessary. Even were my writing a chemically pure expres·
sion of myself as an individual it yet must yield out the elements of those
allegiances: my family (a group); my occupations of baby, child, student,
etc. (classes); my university (an organization); my regions, religions and
systems of thought. The question poses false alternatives.
6. As I have indicated before, I cannot discuss "American writing as "
