"BROOKS-MACLEISH THESIS"
41
myself more and more imagining that the epochal thing that has happened
to us is a sudden crisis of language and expression. For the first time in
human history we have pure science, which is pure prose, and that means
that we have pushed language to the point where it is the perfect instru–
ment for science. The esthetic or imaginative elements of language that
used to clutter it-the figures of speech for example-have been spotted
and thrown out. The consequence
is
that literature, with its imaginative
order of knowing, is homeless. It has to make up its own occasions, and it
becomes factitious and technical in a degree that was never known before.
Something like this, I think, determines the difficulties of all sorts of
creativ~
writers, so that it now devolves upon criticism to study it in every
sort of case. But poetry is the core, or the epitome, of all the creative
forms, and in poetry the issue is found most simply. There are now many
men of good will attempting in the name of criticism to analyse the logical
or linguistic element in poetry, a study which is nothing at all if it is not
intensive; believing that perhaps the obscure fate of literature itself may
depend on the issue which they are trying to isolate. I do not know what
is the precise fault which Mr. Brooks finds with my own studies, but I
suppose it is because they take criticism partly in this light. I have been
notified by writers who do not have this particular interest that it is tire–
some. But it may be that literary studies must very soon develop by
policies like those that have served science so well: by a series of close
and small efforts rather than by some single great push. Science did not
begin to flourish in the general before it learned how to succeed in the
minute; but if indeed there is no such thing as science in general there is
also no such thing as literature in general. Writers now are painfully
self-conscious and bewildered. Perhaps they will have to stay with their
self-consciousness, and discover if they can just what literature is calcu–
lated to do, before they will be freed again.
HENRY MILLER
Thanks for asking me to contribute to the controversy. I have just
read the article. I think Macdonald disposes of the issue himself. What
good is there in drawing it out? My impression was that Van Wyck
Brooks was dead-years ago. I see now he's deader than dead. It's too
damned silly to bother about. These people kill themselves off. As for
MacLeish, I never read a line of his- that's significant too.
If
I'm going
to fire a salvo, I'd like something better to aim at- that's how I feel, to be
honest. And
Thomas Mann!- it's
all pitiful. I don't know any intelligent
person who gives these matters a second thought.
LOUISE
BOGAN
The first time I realized Van Wyck Brooks' deficiencies as a critic was
when I consulted his book on Henry James, in the course of writing an
article on
The Princess Casamassima.
I came upon his explanation of the
character of Hyacinth Robinson and knew that it was wrong. It might
