PARTISAN REVIEW
have to it? And above all
what objection has been made to it?
It
has seemed to me that my opponents have not had their hearts in
their work very much and that their articles contain nothing more
than a long scandalized sigh which drags on over two or three columns.
I should have liked to know
in the name of what,
with what con–
ception of literature, they condemned engagement. But they have not
said; they themselves have not known. The most reasonable thing
would have been to support their condemnation on the old theory of
art for art's sake. But none of them can accept it. That is also disturb–
ing. We know very well that pure art and empty art are the same
thing and that aesthetic purism was a brilliant maneuver of the
bourgeois of the last century who preferred to see themselves de–
nounced as Philistines rather than as exploiters. Therefore, they them–
selves admitted that the writer had to speak about something. But
about what? I believe that their embarrassment would have been
extreme if Fernandez had not found for them, after the other war,
the notion of the
message.
The writer of today, they say, should in
no case occupy himself with temporal affairs. Neither should he set
up lines without signification nor seek solely beauty of phrase and of
imagery. His function is to deliver messages to
his
readers. Well, what
is a message?
It must be borne in mind that most critics are men who have
not had much luck and who, just about the time they were growing
desperate, found a quiet little job as cemetery watchman. God knows
whether cemeteries are peaceful; none of them are more cheerful than
a library. The dead are there; the only thing they have done is write.
They have long since been washed clean of the sin of living, and
besides, their lives are known only through other books which other
dead men have written about them. Rimbaud is dead. So are Paterne
Berrichon and Isabelle Rimbaud. The troublemakers have disap–
peared; all that remains are the little coffins that are stacked on shelves
along the walls like urns in a columbarium. The critic lives badly;
his wife does not appreciate him as she ought to; his children are
ungrateful; the first of the month is hard on him. But it is always
possible for him to enter
his
library, take down a book from the
shelf, and open it. It gives off a slight odor of the cellar, and a
strange operation begins which he has decided to call reading. From
24
