76
PARTISAN REVIEW
first m his family to think about such things, and he does not
suspect that the departed great could
be
his vocational family. He
does not study the right things. He simply follows the path to ac–
ceptance that seems to be opening out before him. Being a good
fellow, blithely uneducated, a democrat at heart, he is neither wild
enough nor self-controlled enough to forge and temper his soul; and
at the first strain it bends and cracks.
The ultimate cause is that in modern democracies--European
as well as American-the tendency is not to accumulate experience
on such tragic matters, to thicken it by concentration, and transmit
it, strong and bitter, to those who can stomach strength and bit–
terness. The tendency is all the other way-to spread it and make
it bland. And the reason is social: We keep initiating new groups to
the enjoyment of life, which includes a ticket to some cultural lessons.
In effect we are constantly teaching; we use our artists, whether
in
the university or not, as day-by-day teachers rather than as mighty
condensers of life's experience. We spend them in small change, for
every decade brings a new wave of eager virgin minds to whom
once again the first rudiments have to be given.
We institutionalize this process and have gone so far that for
the first time in history higher education includes contemporary
art
and literature in its curriculum. What a loss under an apparent gain,
robbing the young as it does of intellectual adventures, of the dif–
ficulties of choice, and of the exclusive possession of new idioms! We
go still farther and hope that by dint of cultivating the great works of
the past and the fine things of the present, original greatness will
spring up just where we are digging. We forget that art comes not
out of culture but out of life, that it springs not out of the formed
but out of the unformed. We forget that if the masterpiece terrifies,
it is because we feel in it the terrible grip of life and not the gentle
hands of the museum curator.
To be sure, we need gentleness and culture, and it is not wise
to gaze upon the Furies except now and then. Our cultivated con–
sciousness about art remains touching and right, for in our situation
we can do nothing better than to
be
intelligent. But consciousness
bears good fruit only when time has somewhat submerged it, when
our painful effort of thought has become easy habit, or still better,
instinct. And it cannot help but be so with our endeavors to improve
