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PARTISAN REVIEW
with
reality-real
reality-intelligence, and moral responsibility, and
denies that any of these qualities may be found in Kafka, or if they are
found in Kafka, that they have any bearing upon human thought or
conduct.
In
what, exactly, does literary criticism consist? For example,
no criticism would be possible, given Mr. Barrett's preliminary implica–
tion that literature contains no "facts about ourselves and our world"–
for that matter, no literature would be possible. Or if he means to equate
literature with "the desires of the imagination to participate completely
in ... 'the great images of man,' " some clarification of this troublesome
phrase is needed. Literature is not a desire; it is a structured means of
expression which the critic should examine, not failing to explore the
moral and cultural relevance of what is expressed and to place the work
in historical context. Mr. Barrett, by appearing to say that what we do
with literature is "appreciate" it, would seem to be aligning himself with
the motley legatees of nineteenth-century aestheticism, a somewhat
defunct and useless opinion. One does not ask Mr. Barrett to stop
enjoying
literature by pointing out that the subject of discussion is criti–
cism.
I apprehend Mr. Barrett's negative point very well. There
is
a
danger in using literature as the language of one's own unwarranted
moralizing: Lewis Mumford is not the ideal critic. But surely it is pos–
sible to avoid this error without denying the moral and cultural quality
of literature.
Certainly we must remain committed to the Enlightenment, but with
such a copious and open spirit of criticism that the commitment is not
destroyed by our clinging to our own weaknesses-or to those of the
Enlightenment. Somewhere behind Mr. Barrett's words I hear the voice
of Voltaire, thin and rancorous on this occasion, fulminating against the
myths and fables and declaring that only blockheads take them seriously.
And does one not sense that another dispensable Enlightenment idea
is being unwittingly invoked, an idea of perfectibility, a hope that
if
liberalism is kept pure by being freed of the artificialities and corruptions
of culture, it will prosper out of its own inner virtue?
Finally, I am not so sure that the time has come to call a halt to the
critical reassessment of liberalism. The job is not finished when one has
disposed of Henry Wallace and
The New Republic.
Questions of intel–
lectual economy, public strategy, and the danger that liberalism may be
all but dead anyway are terribly real. But if we are already at such a pass,
there is not much hope whatever we do. We must assume, surely, that
something is to be gained by open and responsible controversy. For my
