T. S. ELIOT
asserted that
his
own masterpieces were worthless because they could
not hold the attention of peasants; or when, for that matter, Shake–
speare lost his popularity with Elizabethan audiences because Beau–
mont and Fletcher seemed to be able to turn out the same kind of
thing in a slicker style-but it
is
unnecessary to continue with what
might be an endless catalogue. The point
is
that the more we know
about the history of literary reputation and literary opinion, the m.ore
conscious we are of how unjust and how stupid even the greatest
critics can be, the more likely we are to avoid such errors in our own
experience of literature. The matter is not merely a question of the
reader's welfare; the creative writer himself is crucially involved, for
just as we may suppose that Shakespeare turned to romantic comedy
when
his
popularity declined, so too it seems likely enough that the
failure of "Moby Dick" and "Pierre" reduced Melville to a silence
and inactivity from which he emerged now and again for 30 years
with short novels which suggest how much more he might have done,
given his unquestionable genius, had his greatest work received the
recognition it deserved at the time it appeared instead of some thirty
years after Melville's death. Thus it does not seem to me to be claiming
too much for literary criticism when one declares that upon the good–
n~,
the consciousness, and the justice of literary criticism the very
existence of great works sometimes depends, not to speak of the
existence of great poets, nor to dwell too much upon mighty poets
in
their misery dead. I should add at this point that it is only by a
knowledge of the literary past that contemporary critical practice
can be of much use in preventing new neglect, stupidity, unjustified
admiration, and unwarranted blindness. Two of the best poets of the
19th century, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickinson, went
to their graves with hardly any external recognition; it is quite
pos–
sible that they did not really know that they had written good poetry.
At present Hopkins and Emily Dickinson are much admired but
only at the expense of Wordsworth and Hardy. By reviewing Eliot's
critical career we can envisage a point of view which will free our
scrutiny of literature from many of the sins of the past, while at the
same time illuminating anew all that we have inherited from the past.
And we can, I think, see how it might be desirable to have no literary
dictators.
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