494
PARTISAN REVIEW
majority of novelists are not only amenable to this type of criticism,
they demand it. It would be possible, for example, to write of Conrad
entirely in terms of his "vision" (which I would now hesistantly define
as a writer's sensual, emotional and instinctive apprehension of the
world, as opposed to the intellectual superstructure which he con–
structs on top of it). But such a criticism of Conrad, though apt
and instructive would also be grossly inadequate, since Conrad was
a novelist of strong and consciously held moral views. When Mr.
Trilling epitomizes the work of Forster in a single phrase, "The
underdeveloped heart," his epigram is wholly justified. No reader
would be so foolish as to suppose that this epitome
will
absolve him
from reading Forster's novels, that it is an adequate summary of
what Forster has to say. Because he is a good novelist what he has
to say can only be said as he said it. Yet the epitome is justified
because the novels of Forster are the vehicles, the
necessary
vehicles
for expounding, deepening and realizing our inadequate apprehen–
sion of Trilling's single phrase. My point is that no such phrase exists
by which the burden of Henry Green's song can be epitomized.
Earlier in this article I wrote that there is no compassion in
Green's vision. Perhaps it is by this fact that his achievement can be
both understood and "placed."
It
is both his strength and his ultimate
limitation.
Henry Green's almost unique gift is for hallucination. By this I
mean neither fantasy nor obsession, but a bewildering ability to see
far and wide over the landscape, and to see everything through strange–
colored glass. Or one might say that in Green's case one
has
the im–
pression that he has stepped confidently through a looking-glass and
is staring back at us from there with a certain calm and appraising
satisfaction. Or again, to pursue this purely visual analogy, this
writer might be pictured spread out
in
the middle of a ceiling and
seeing the people below him in what they would hold to be distorted
and unnatural shapes. In fact. I do not USe the word hallucination
in opposition to something else which is to be called reality, but
in
opposition to normal vision. What is really amazing about this writer
is that he can comfortably remain in the extraordinary positions he
chooses for the whole duration of a book. Many writers attempt this,
but in most of them one is aware either of the mounting strain which
they are feeling, splayed up there on the ceiling, or of their plain
