PARTISAN REVIEW
of a diminishing audience for
poetry
itself. The analysis and inter–
pretation of poetry are perceptions of poetry.
You may not regard these answers as responsive to questions that
contemplate literary tendencies, literary atmosphere, literary interest,
literary criticism, and so on. One's interest is, however, an interest
in life and in reality. From this point of view it is easy to say that the
basic meaning of literary effort, and, therefore, of poetry, is with
reference to life and reality and not with reference to politics. The
basic meaning of the effort of any man to record his experience as
poet is to produce poetry, not politics. The poet must stand or fall
by poetry. In the conflict between the poet and the politician the
chief honor the poet can hope for is that of remaining himself. Life
and reality, on the one hand, and politics, on the other, notwithstand–
ing the activity of politics, are not interchangeable terms. They are
not the same thing, whatever the Russians may pretend.
Lionel T rillinCJ:
If
I am to answer your questions at all, I had bettter begin
by reporting my resistance to them: I have been reading them over
and over during several days and my mind seems to refuse to take
hold of them. This isn't a reflection on their sensibleness, and at one
time or another I have surely raised the same questions myself and
tried to answer them in conversation or in teaching or in writing.
But when I come to answer them formally, and in a body, and to
the end of making a coherent comment on the state of American
literature in this particular year or decade, my mind jibs.
This,
I suppose, is because I am not comfortable about the
idea of literature as an institution, which is what your questions
somehow suggest it is. I feel easy enough with the idea of literature
as a trade, and as a necessity, and as an instrument. And of course
I recognize that it is intellectually quite legitimate to consider litera–
ture as an institution, yet I find that whenever I have to consider
it in
this
way my curiosity wilts and my spirits sink-for me the
886
