472
PAR,TlSAN
REVIEW
party. And it has once more brought to prominence the obnoxious
assumption that philosophical naturalism is somehow incompatible
with the deepest relationship to poetry or the profoundest acceptance
of the "tragic view of life." Why life should become any the less tragic
when the supernatural is rejected I do not know, but I do know that
there is something painfully provincial and
au courant
in the view
that the "the proper idols" of the naturalist critic must be Whitman,
Dreiser and Farrell and that Dostoievsky, Kafka and James are be–
yond his province. This, in effect, is to deny an essential value of
literature: that taste surmounts opinion; that in great writing there
is a common secret, a binding thread, which holds us all alike; that the
non-believer can respond to the language and feeling of Donne's
Holy Sonnets because the language and feeling of poetry are ultimate–
ly universal and beyond subject matter.
As for myself: I have no belief in and feel no need for super–
natural sanction or support. More than most intellectuals I remain
loyal, not to one or another doctrine, but to the underlying values
of the 1930's. The religious turn must consequently seem to me,
quite without offense to individuals, part of a historical moment of
sickness-not merely the epochal sickness we all acknowledge, but a
more immediate sickness within our sickness. This view opens me, I
know, to some perils as a writer and human being. I hope, however,
for
.a
vindication from experience-and if that is not forthcoming,
my disappointment will be the least of our troubles.
PAUL KECSKEMETI
Are intellectuals more religiously minded today than they
were in the recent past? One thing seems certain: in the intellectual
circles of the West, unmitigated loathing and derision are no longer
de rigueur
when it comes to discussing religious phenomena. The
typical intellectual of the turn of the century was militantly anti–
clerical and anti-religious. He felt that the battle was joined between
the forces of good, represented by radical social opposition and
materialist humanism on the one hand, and the forces of evil, repre–
sented by vested interests, established authorities, and organized
religion on the other. His place was on the side of the forces of good;
it was his task to combat reaction, darkness and traditional religion.
