PARTISAN REVIEW
terests of the educated class, such as it is and such as it may become:
it is of this class that he is, at heart, the guardian and the critic.
Hence he cannot be criticized without bearing this intention in mind.
But given this intention, his use of the medium of literary
criticism is misleading. He advocates literary opinions which would
be immediately repugnant if he did not introduce them and con–
nect them with a critique of social tendencies. And he entertains
social views (and social misgivings ) which would be intolerable if
they were presented nakedly, as social criticism or a political pro–
gram, instead of being united with literary considerations.
The best example of this process of mind, and one directly rele–
vant to his essay on "Manners, Morals and Fiction," is the critique of
liberalism throughout
The Liberal Imagination,
which he makes as
one who is a professed liberal and a professional literary critic. He
uses literary standards and values to establish the weaknesses and
limitations of liberalism when he writes: "The modern European
literature to which we can have an active, reciprocal relationship,
which is the right relationship to have, has been written by men who
are indifferent to, or even hostile to, the tradition of democratic lib–
eralism. Yeats and Eliot, Proust and Joyce, Lawrence and Gide–
these men do not seem to confirm us in the social and political ideals
which we hold."
This is an inaccurate formulation and a false emphasis for a
number of reasons. First, the great authors whom Mr. Trilling cites
do not confirm any social and political group whatever in their so–
cial and political ideals: what group, political or social, has found in
Joyce, Gide or Proust a genuine confirmation of their ideals? Sec–
ond, there is the apparent fact, to which I will return, that Mr. Tril–
ling does not admire these authors very much or with a great deal
of conviction. And lastly, although these great authors are not dem–
ocratic liberals, there is one important and essential element in their
creative work which does literally support democratic liberalism, if
indeed one has to ask whether democratic liberalism is being sup–
ported by any work of contemporary literature: Yeats was inspired
by Irish nationalism, by folk poetry, and by the speech of the people;
Eliot, on the surface the least sympathetic to liberalism, not only
draws upon cockney speech and the music hall, but he presents a
vision of modern life and modern human beings which, despite his
