VAR I ETY
tacks the writers who went to
Spain and "left a leader (Eliot)
home"-which can only mean that
they should have stayed home and
become Anglo-Catholics like Eliot.
The Spanish Civil War was a
tragedy of confused and divided
loyalties, mixed motives and futile
heroism, but the horrible ineptness
of Shapiro's statement may be seen
if we turn it back upon him and
ask whether he was not leaving
any leader at home when he went
off to war in the South Pacific.
Literature involves more than
the individual writer's going off by
himself to write; as an activity -
within and against society, it invol–
ves the perpetual struggle to keep
standards alive, an audience from
disintegrating, a certain kind of
consciousness alive in a society
inert or hostile to it. Shapiro's
failure, in the last analysis, is that
he does not see this social dimen–
sion of literature, or wants to
escape it. A failure he shares with
the tweedy professors of English,
the Book of the Month Club
businessmen, the nostalgic fan–
tasists of Americana- all his fel–
low crusaders in the anti-modernist
witchhunt. Hence his particular
disdain for the critic (whose reason
for existence is this struggle) as a
purely gratuitous being. There
may be too many critics now writ–
ing, as Shapiro repeatedly protests,
but there are never enough to
complete criticism's tasks--<>ne of
which is to remind the poet from
time to time that poetic license
does not extend to the world of
129
ideas, that when the poet touches
ideas, not everything goes.
Shapiro's whole poem breathes a
pious aspiration towards a simpler
state of literary being. When he
urges poets to "the piety / Of
simple craftsmen for their wood,"
he reveals his own wish that liter–
ature were as simple an occupation
as woodturning or carpentry.
If
only one would chuck it all, go
off by oneself to write poetry un–
troubled by the confusions of mod–
ern life! We may be touched by this
aspiration towards simplicity, but
we must point out the irrespon–
sibility of turning one's back upon
the difficulties of being a literary
man in the modern world. The
supreme irony is that the critical
fraternity in which Shapiro may
now have his pin as a full-fledged
initiate should have applied the
word "irresponsible" to the writ–
ers who have tried to face these
difficulties.
WILLIAM BARRETT
Excellency
M
y
OLD friend Tiburzio Pan–
zironi, the small Roman
bureaucrat, refused to make a bril–
liant career, and yet he constantly
complained about his status. So
one day I said to him: "Why
don't you try to free yourself from
your present condition instead of
complaining? Climb to a better
post and you will find it easier to
endure this kind of life." "What?"
he replied, "free myself by climb–
ing a ladder that is all made up of
