702
PARTISAN REVIEW
No matter which way we turn, the final drama (or sinister comedy)
of totalitarian orthodoxy takes place in the mind.
If
it proves anything,
the Diamat proves that the mind cannot be made captive except by the
mind, consciousness enslaved only through consciousness. In this sense,
however, the mind is neither a psychological compound nor a philo–
sophical notion; it is the domain of intrinsic evidence and coherence on
which the cogency and inevitability of human beliefs are founded. For
lack of a better term, we might call it metaphysical. Totalitarian mater–
ialism, in any case, proves its reality
per absurdum:
by striving to occupy
precisely those grounds, that is.
"Only the bourgeois persists in
nuances of thought," says Milosz.
JARRELL AS CRITIC
thinking that nothing results from
Nicola
Chiaromonte
POETRY AND THE AGE.
By
Rondoll Jorrell. Knopf. $4.00.
The Summer School Conference on the Novel at Harvard
this year was opened by some rather ungrateful remarks, to the effect
that if a group of poets has been called a Nest of Singing Birds, a group
of critics might as well be called a flock of crows picking each other's
bones. It was more or less boasted that this year they had secured a
group of
writers.
With one or two exceptions, however, the results were
more elephantine than ornithological. Where there was wit, there was
little sense, and where there was sense, there was little wit. One looked
back nostalgically to a memorable address given by Randall Jarrell at
an earlier Conference and reprinted in this first collection of his critical
pieces. Mr. Jarrell is a provoking critic in all senses of the word, one
who can be counted on to scatter the unctuous fog which usually sur–
rounds the middle-academic study of letters. He is, or has been, our
nearly perfect Jacobin, our Tom Paine of the highbrow quarterlies,
keeping alive the great style of the
feuilleton.
One attractive feature of this style in Mr. Jarrell's hands is its
vulnerability. Certainly not a cloak for timidity, no mere "nice bit of
meat for the dog," it placates the occasion rather than the audience.
The
you
Mr. Jarrell addresses is not the lazy ego you actually cherish,
the ego looking for some critical banner whereby to stand and bay, but
rather that ideally generous celebrant in the Jarrellian cocktail-party-in–
the-clouds who
knows
that however deeply his jokes may scar this cor–
ruptible body, they can never touch the incorruptible spirit. "Eyes talk–
ing: Never mind the cruel words,/ Embrace my flowers, but not embrace
the swords." To read through these essays and reviews consecutively is
