PARTISAN REVIEW
ptanations of the fact spring at once to mind. The first is simply
that the genre has been exhausted, worked out in the way that a lode
of ore is worked out-it can no longer yield a valuable supply of its
natural matter. The second explanation is that the novel was devel–
oped in response to certain cultural circumstances which now no
longer exist but have given way to other circumstances which must
be met by other forms of the imagination. The third explanation is
that although the circumstances to which the novel was a response do
still exist, we either lack the power to use the form,* or we no longer
find value in the answers that the novel provides, because the con–
tinuing circumstances have entered a phase of increased intensity.
The first theory was put forward by Ortega in his essay, "Notes
on the Novel."
It
is an explanation which has its clear limitations,
but it is certainly not without its cogency. We have all had the ex–
perience of feeling that some individual work of art, or some canon
of art, or a whole idiom of art, has lost, temporarily or permanently,
its charm and power. Sometimes we weary of the habitual or half–
mechanical devices by which the artist warms up for his ideas or by
which he bridges the gap between his ideas; this can happen even
with Mozart. Sometimes it is the very essence of the man's thought
that fatigues; we feel that his characteristic insights can too easily
be foreseen and we become too much aware of how they exist at
the expense of blindness to other truths; this can happen even with
Dostoevsky. And so with an entire genre of art-there may come a
moment when it cannot satisfy one of our legitimate demands, which
is that it shall surprise us. This demand and the liability of our artistic
interests
to
wear out
do
not show us to be light-minded. Without
them our use of art would be only ritualistic, or commemorative of
our past experiences; and although there is nothing wrong in using
art for ritual and commemoration, still these are not the largest uses
to
which it can be put. Curiosity is as much an instinct as hunger
and love, and curiosity about any particular thing may be satisfied.
Then we must consider that technique has its autonomy and that
it dictates the laws of its own growth. Aristotle speaks of Athenian
tragedy as seeking and finding its fulfillment, its entelechy, and it
*
This might seem
to
beg the cultural question; yet certain technical abilities
do deteriorate or disappear for reasons which, although theoretically ascertain–
able, are almost beyond practical determination.
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