PARTISAN REVIEW
and "English" are synonymous words. (This departmentalization may
be breaking down in some few universities, but nearly all the people
now teaching were trained under the older system.) This is something
for Americans to think about-and in relation to a
quest~on
much more
general than that of the academic organization in our colleges. Obviously
we are bound to English literature more closely than any other for the
simple reason that we are bound to the English language; but we can
distinguish between the English language or literature and the English
mind or character, recognizing that this literature does have certain
horizons set by the national experience of the English themselves. What
we find so often in professors of literature in our universities
is
not
merely that they are experts in the literature of England, but that they
seek to be more English than the English, as if trying to take out some
special and curious kind of English citizenship. They would hardly rec–
ognize that it is perfectly possible for an American-because he is Amer–
ican and not English-to find himself, from the accidents of
his
own
temperament and experience, more definitely oriented to the themes
and style of another literature-French, for example. Multiply these
cases, and this personal orientation becomes something that can be gen–
eralized for the cultural situation of America as a whole
(if
this last ex–
pression has any meaning beyond what goes on in the heads of a few
thousand disturbed persons) ; it becomes one of the complexities, but
also one of the opportunities of our situation as Americans.
All this may seem a rather lengthy preparation for discussing Mr.
Turnell's book, but
it
is just the characteristic of a good book like this
that it provokes one to this kind of generalized comment.
This
is one of
the best examples of recent British criticism that I have seen; Mr. Tur–
nell carries his learning lightly, writes with such an engaging directness,
liveliness, and simplicity that his book can be taken as a rather remark–
able contrast to some of the cramped, self-involved, and limpingly
pedantic products of f\merican criticism. There is something especially
rewarding in an Englishman's approaching French literature when the
Englishman has that particular virtue of his nation, the beautiful English
candor. Probably no American could be a francophile with the natural–
ness of Mr. Turnell, for the American will find himself inevitably getting
too exhibitionistic, self-conscious, or precious. Being English, having this
English candor, Mr. Turnell sounds all the more convincing when he
conveys those virtues of French literature that English lacks. His dis–
cussion of love, in connection with Racine's
Phedre,
can only be described
as charming, for he understands that this is the one subject on which,
in comparison with the French, English literature is almost adolescent.
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