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though in particular cases it might be publicly beneficial, because cen–
sorship, once invoked, is difficult to control and therefore dangerous.
I think this is as far as liberalism need go. To push it further is
to
in–
dulge in a bohemian attitude of liberalism for liberalism's sake, which
can become as unbalanced as the traditional attitude of art-for-art's sake,
or of any part of life for that part's sake as abstracted from the whole.
Liberalism is urged here to countenance things that deny its own right
to exist-and for no other purpose but to show off. There is a kind
of childishly competitive bravado in this need to show that one can out–
liberal all other liberals. One step further, and Mr. Macdonald will be
seeking out for a prize a
bad
poet who expresses antisemitism just in
order to show how liberal he (Macdonald) can be.
Mr. Auden makes his most significant point, I think, when he
argues that because evil is a part of life we have often to place great
value upon works of art that do express evil attitudes. I agree with
him
in this, and I also agree that in his example of Baudelaire's
La Charogne
much of the power of this poem does derive from the fact that the
poet participates, up to a point, in the emotions of necrophilia. For the
aesthetic exploration of his subject matter the poet identifies himself
with the emotions he expresses. But I doubt very much that one can call
Baudelaire a necrophilist in the same public sense in which one can call
Pound an antisemite. Moreover, it seems to me to make a difference that
necrophilia (so far as I know) has not been connected in our time with
any large political movements, necrophiliac speeches have not been
broadcast over the radio, and there are not large numbers of decent
people who feel that their lives are threatened by necrophilists. Thus
Mr. Orwell's remarks about Pound's broadcasts do not seem irrelevant
to the present problem: the antisemitic lines I quoted from
The Pisan
Cantos
simply versify statements made by Pound in his broadcasts to
the effect that the War was brought about by the Jews, for whose in–
terests American soldiers were being killed like cattle. In comparison,
necrophilia still remains a private evil.
Since the discussion has unfortunately brought out some acrimony,
I am glad to resign my part in it on at least one note of unqualified
admiration-and that is for Mr. Karl Shapiro's comment, which is the
kind of courageous and outspoken statement that has become a rare thing
on our literary scene. I would agree with Mr. Shapiro that he has
made a much better statement of the question of form and content in a
literary work than I did in my Comment. I also think with him that
fascism is part of the "myth" of the
Cantos
generally-and that it can be
found in
The Pisan Cantos
too.
