30
PARTISAN REVIEW
the
avant garde
also became politically active, and not by accident;
for precisely those aroused sensibilities that had responded to the
innovations of the modem masters now responded to the crisis of
modem society. Thus, in the early years of a magazine like
Partisan
Review-roughly
between 1936 and 1941-these two radical im–
pulses came together in an uneasy but fruitful union; and it was in
those years that the magazine seemed most exciting and vital as a
link between art and experience, between the critical consciousness
and the political conscience, between the
avant garde
of letters and
the independent left of politics.
That union has since been dissolved, and there is no likelihood
that it will soon be re-established. American radicalism exists only
as an idea, and that barely; the literary
avant garde-it
has become
a stock comment for reviewers to make--is rapidly disintegrating,
without function or spirit, and held together only by an inert nostalgia.
Had the purpose of the
avant garde
been to establish the cur–
rency of certain names, to make the reading of
T he Waste Land
and
Ulysses
respectable in the universities, there would be no further need
for its continuance. But clearly this was not the central purpose of
the
avant garde,
it was only an unavoidable fringe of snobbery and
fashion. The struggle for Joyce mattered only as it was a struggle
for literary standards; the defense of Joyce was a defense not merely
of modem innovation but of that traditional culture which was the
source of modern innovation. And at its best it was a defense against
those spokesmen for the genteel, the respectable and the academic
who had established a stranglehold over traditional culture. At the
most serious level, the
avant garde
was trying to face the problem
of the quality of our culture, and when all is said and done, it faced
that problem with a courage and honesty that no other group in
society could match.
If
the history of the
avant garde
is seen in this way, there is
every reason for believing that its survival is as necessary today as
it was 25 years ago. To be sure, our immediate prospect is not nearly
so exciting as it must then have seemed: we face no battle on behalf
of great and difficult artists who are scorned by the official voices
of culture. Today, in a sense, the danger is that the serious artists are
not scorned enough. Philistinism has become very shrewd: it does
not attack its enemies as much as it disarms them through reasonable
