BOOKS
THE WRITER AS INTELLECTUAL
THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES. By Robert Musil. Translated by
Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Coward-McCann, Inc. $4.00.
Every
so often we rediscover a poet or writer. Why? Of
course, there are always Ph. D. theses to be written, or a living, possibly
a name, to be made on the academic pastures-which would probably
be incentive enough to send scholars and critics out in search of the
forgotten men of world literature; but this is, fortunately, not the whole
story. After all, there is always the exceptional case of rediscovering a
writer of genius, say Melville, who was neglected, misjudged, and for–
gotten because he was too far ahead of his times, as we say, so that
his contemporaries simply failed to see what he had to say. Such a
rediscovery, then, is a way of catching up by posterity with what the
writer had discovered because he was a genius. Only this
is
the excep–
tional case.
Much more common is another form of literary rediscovery. This is
the case of redressing the critical balance in favor of a writer, or group
of writers, who did not create works of genius which were forgotten,
but who nonetheless displayed an excellence or made a significant con–
tribution which had not been fully appreciated. Such re-evaluations are
the function of the fluctuating trends of the critical market. They may
simply reflect the speculative nature of the market: for instance, instead
of romantic poetry, we suddenly invest heavily in metaphysical poets.
Or they may be a means of launching a contemporary movement in
literature and criticism. Again, such rediscoveries may happen for non–
aesthetic reasons; that is, social, psychological or ideological factors may
call for a revision of the critical estimate of a writer. Or they may be
due to the accidental factor of literary provincialism-regionalism, if
you prefer, so that a writer is quite well known in one part of the world,
and not at all in another. These are perfectly legitimate aspects of criti–
cism, and keep the process going at a prosperous rate. Only we must
remember that these are the normal, common transactions of the market,
