14
PARTISAN REVIEW
Miller's
Death of a Salesman
or Williams'
A Streetcar Named Desire.
The new technique consists in a confrontation of all that may be
wrong, where in the past escape from evil or the denial of evil pre–
vailed. There were exceptions, of course, and of course the literature
of Europe always depended upon the resolutions of tragedy. But in
America since the Gilded Age, happiness was required, as if, one must
suppose, the mere imaginative declaration of the happy ending would
help to make life itself a more successful affair. It was wrong to be
pessimistic, disillusioned, or even gloomy, and it was right and Amer–
ican to be optimistic, to be a booster, and to have fabulous expecta–
tions. The shift is not a complete one, nor is it a mechanical shift
from affirmation to despair, and we can only speculate, we are still
too much in the midst of it, about the nature of the change, its perma–
nence, and its essential quality. We can guess hopefully that perhaps
Americans no longer want to be children and they no longer want
to be told fairy tales: they are mature enough to want the confronta–
tion of reality which tragedy provides. Or we can suppose that there
is so much disruption about us and the sense of crisis is so intense
that an unhappy ending makes possible purgation and relief. Misery
loves company and desperation is reduced by a scrutiny of how much
more terrifying the situation of other human beings may be when
compared to one's own situation. In a period of depression, the image
of a Utopia is welcome; but when civilization itself seems capable
of destroying itself and when the end of the crisis does not seem likely
tomorrow, it is a genuine relief and blessing to be able to contemplate
images of the worst that may happen.
Whatever the explanation of the change, and there are of course
other possible explanations, it is certainly true that the conditions
under which a serious literature can thrive have been advanced in
this one important respect. In other important ways there has been
a deterioration, but the sole repeal of the dogma that the attitudes of
the author must be optimistic, cheerful, and affirmative, at all costs,
creates the possibility of a genuine tragic art. Nobility is quickened
by tragedy and nurtured by necessity. Once the mind is capable of
regarding the future with a sense of tragedy and a sense of comedy,
instead of requiring the forced smiles (and the whistling in the dark)
of dogmatic optimism, the awakened consciousness is prepared to
respond to existence with courage and intelligence.
