412
PARTISAN REVIEW
using a language more blunt than that of his
Kenyon
elegy, he
levels the charge of excess of liberty against modern art. For he
identifies art with
"Faire"
(to make) and therefore urges that it
"submit to command." Freedom he associates with the antithesis
of art,
"Agir"
(to act; the principle of moral decision in his sys·
tern), and this is the business of the artist as man but not as artist.*
Therefore the invisible
movements
that reach the poet from society
and which cause him to act or to be driven must not be reflected in
his art.
Here we "touch the consuming thing crouched in the depths"
-not of modern poetry but of M. Maritain. Let poetry resist the
vampire of inspiration so that it may resist the force and conscious·
ness of the changing
conscience
of society. Let it learn to sit still
in the dark night and put its "inquisitive intelligence" to sleep.
"It is necessary," said Rimbaud in the concluding paragraphs
of
Une Saison-"it
is necessary to be absolutely modern. No
canticles: hold the position gained." In the poetry of the past
century, it is possible to speak of
progress-not,
of course, in the
sense of improvement from year to year, but with respect to the
accumulation and perfecting of instruments at the disposal of the
spirit "absolutely modern." This progress can be illustrated by
segregating in the work of Poe and, to a lesser extent, Baudelaire
all the left-overs which they could not exclude if they were to speak
at all. Or from the opposite end of the time-segment by trying to
imagine the composition of
Ulysses
or
Finnegans Wake
without
the verbal charges of this hundred years. Every poet truly modern
has increased the capacity of the human spirit to live and realize
itself in its time. When Maritain recalls against modernism its
individual casualties, he tempts us to draw an awesome contrast:
on the one side, the handful of pioneers of the "dark night" who
left indestructible blazes for those who follow; on the other, the
thousands who "deranged their senses" and "drained every
poison" in the caves and deserts of the Dark Ages but without the
intention of or the technique for gathering and handing on what
each had gained. Whatever is done for the poem by the poet,
*There is an ironic parallel between this Catholic view of the artist and that of
the Communist Party and other political organizations.
If
the artist will submit hit
work to control, those above him in decision will take charge of his liberation as a
human being. Wonderful mockery of both art and freedom!
