444
PARTISAN REVIEW
Brooks does not hesitate to name names, as follows.*
Pri·
mary:
Tolstoi, Milton, Erasmus, Dickens, Rabelais, Dostoievsky,
Socrates, Goethe, Ibsen, Whitman, Hugo, Emerson, Whittier, and
Thomas Mann. (Critics: Arnold, Taine, Renan, Sainte-Beuve.)
Secondary:
Joyce, Proust, Valery, Pound, Eliot, James, Dryden,
Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Farrell, Hemingway, Dos Passos,
and Gertrude Stein. (Critics: Eliot, Richards, Winters, Pound,
Tate, Ransom.)
This is childishness, ignorance, nonsense, what you please,
but it is unhappily symptomatic of much more than Brooks' own
mentality. It is the boldest statement to date of that cultural coun·
.ter-re~olution
opened by Archibald MacLeish's attack on the "irre·
sponsibles."
An~
what are we to make of Brooks' side remark in
his speech that Edmund Wilson, of all people, "partially agrees
with me"? Or of Thomas Mann's extraordinary comment on the
paper, which I think worth reproducing in full:
It strikes me as a piece of daring, intelligent and aggressive
criticism; I have been well entertained by it without considering
myself justified to give it a Yes or No. Above -all I must admit
that I am not sufficiently familiar with Eliot's work to be able to
judge whether the extraordinary hostility which Van Wyck
Brooks feels for this author.is justified or not. I am tolerant by
nature and look at things with an eye to gain from them the best
for my own education; I would never have the courage to ex·
press such contempt for Joyce, Valery, etc., as the author does.
In the main, he is undoubtedly right when he says that in
our present epoch only a few primary and truly great poets and
authors rep:-esen t
Hnd
P.mbody the spirit and the experience of
our time. The others do work which probably also has to be
done, but is not creative in the true sense, and they are certainly
not entitled to lack respect for the great representatives of tradi·
tion. I believe, however, that this difference between the real
leaders of a culture and its average servants and carriers has
existed at all times, and is no particular sign of our epoch.
It is clear that Mann is somewhat uneasy about Brooks' paper;
his comment is the most shameful kind of equivocation. He is
"not familiar" with Eliot's work-what amazing ignorance in one
who aspires to be the 20th century Goethe! He is "tolerant" of
J oyce, Valery, "etc."-what impudent condescension! The second
*For this list I have also drawn on a St)eech Brooks gave a year ago at Hunter
r,olle11e (published as "On
Lite~ature
Today" \ in which he
firM
developed his thesis,
though in much more genial and cautious term•.
