A COMMUNICATION
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The academic method of literary criticism which Richard Chase
analyzed so well in a
Report from the Academy
tries for complete
democracy. Its problem, therefore, is to increase production and diminish
meaning to the vanishing point. The best way to increase production is to
create the illusion of originality and prestige on a huge scale, and one
way to achieve this is the "clue" method of research. In the vast modern
accessibility of literature, there are surely enough clues so that each
Ph.D. candidate and each professor can have a handful. The "clue" is
the device, or "key" that is supposed to crack open the work of a dif–
ficult writer-it is a leading abstraction on which one takes out an
unwritten copyright. I understand well enough that no literary criticism
is possible without leading abstractions; I am only criticizing their
special appropriation to create the illusion of an impartial democratic
standard of specialization.
The Kafka Problem
is perhaps the most blood-chilling example of
this mania in recent years. James Burnham, in the March-April, 1947
PR, does noble battle against the book and all it stands for. I am going
to be ungracious enough to point out how he is overcome by his efforts
· and falls into the same habit he is denouncing. He is, after all, a pro–
fessor himself and can hardly be expected to shake off his classroom
mores completely. The professor is a person who, of all other people in
the world bar none, finds it hardest to enjoy writing-art-for its own
sake. Who can blame him when the spiritual condition of his charges
cries out for shock, for the utmost sympathy at the same time? A sense
of responsibility is indivisible, and the professor who has it to a high
degree is racked, no less than the Church was in its day of intellectual
leadership, by a dual allegiance to souls and to art. The academicians
who, in an old PR symposium on The Future of American Writing,
praised the academic life because it kept 'them close to the classics were
hardly being candid. They are no less near to the terrible darkness and
possessiveness in the mind of the young American animal. Nothing can
minimize the absolute claim made upon them by this light-seeking, light–
fearing creature. No, envy and blame must be kept out of the question
when we are criticizing the sins of our best academic criticism.
It
is
essentially as thankless a business in its way as hand-to-mouth
B~hemia.
Professor Burnham, in other words, has his clue to Kafka. Let's work
backward through the article from the clue, which is Manichaeism.
Earlier in the essay Burnham writes, "At the allegorical level, it seems
to me an error to try to reach a single, consistent, and final interpreta–
tion of Kafka's meaning." And yet, by scrutiny of his writing alone,
Burnham has come to the conclusion that Kafka held a perfectly ex–
plicit coherent theological doctrine known as Manichaeism, a doctrine
that caused Augustine a great deal of spiritual suffering. We are told
that "As a Manichaean, Kafka's aim must be to create an art that is
