PARTISAN REVIEW
more expert he becomes. There are no substitutes for experience, a
platitude which
is
ignored invariably by the neo-classic critic, whose
essential effort is to deduce from classics of the past a ready-made
formula for judging any new work. Eliot's classicism at its best
is
illustrated when he says that if a truly classic work were written in our
time, it would not be recognized as such by most of us.
It
would
seem so monstrous, so queer and horrifying.
This
remark was made
in 1933, when a good deal of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"
had appeared and had been greeted by Eliot in the following terms,
"We can't have much more of tlns sort of thing." Eliot has since
changed his mind about this work, and though I do not know whether
he considers it truly classical, certainly he admires it very much, and
in this shift from dismay and perplexity to admiration we can see
how the truly classical critic, the true expert, depends upon experience,
and permits experience to correct his errors in appreciation. Experi–
ence
is
thus for the expert, or classical critic, not only the great teacher
but the best text book. Eliot, in revising his initial revaluation of
English poetry, has permitted experience to teach him as no theory
and no authority possibly could.
Having reviewed
tIUs
long and complex critical career, we come
finally to the question of what conclusions we can draw and what
lessons we can gain from it.
It
seems to me that we have reached a
point in our knowledge of the history of taste, the history of literary
reputation, and literary judgment, where we can clearly mark out
some of the most important dangers and pitfalls involved in any
kind of literary criticism. Is it not clear that the kind of action and
reaction which characterizes so good a critic as Eliot may very well
be the expense of spirit in a waste of false discrimination? Is it neces–
sary, in order to praise poets A, B, and C, to condemn poets D, E,
F, G, H, and the rest of the alphabet? Perhaps it
is
necessary, but
if we think concretely of the really shocking blunders in taste which
prevail throughout literary history, then perhaps the very conscious–
ness of these blunders can help us to arrive at a point of view in
which there
is
no mere seesaw of praise and rejection. When Dr.
Johnson declared that "Lycidas" was a worthless literary production,
when Turgenev said that Dostoevsky was a "morbid mediocrity," and
announced that he was very bored by the first volume of "War and
Peace," when Tolstoy ridiculed Shakespeare's "King Lear," and
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