22
PARTISAN REVIEW
for instance Hitler's racialism.
If
there were no relation, there
would be no reason either why the most perverse or idiotic beliefs
should not be convertible into
great
poetry. They are not." That
some ideas are too prosaic is of course quite irrelevant. Probably no
great or good poetry will ever give an exposition of Goedel's theorem,
but not because it is untrue. And as for Hitler's racialism, Germany
did not produce any great poetry at all under Hitler's regime; and
the reasons are obvious. Moreover, biological, or pseudo-biological,
theories rarely form the subject matter of great serious poetry.
Perhaps dramatic poetry is the genre in which beliefs are most
frequently expressed. Does it bear out Heller's view? On the contrary:
the great tragic poets excel precisely at presenting attitudes which one
would generally consider "outlandish or perverse" with such poetic
power that we experience them from the inside. And in epic poetry,
the attitudes of Homer's heroes, or the poet's for that matter, are
scarcely closer to Christianity than R ilke's elegies. Great poetry does
not fit moralistic preconceptions. It was because he recognized this that
Plato proposed to expurgate Homer and expel the dramatic poets
from his ideal city.
We should ask not only Heller but also Eliot whether there is
any major work of great and good poetry that does not abound in
"outlandish or perverse" ideas, whether even one such work is "Chris–
tian" in the somewhat laudatory sense which determines contemporary
English usage. Dante reached the heights of his poetic power in his
Inferno,
and his beliefs about hell might well strike modern readers
as "outlandish or perverse." And the hero of the greatest Protestant
epic is Satan.
The traditionalist critics take for granted that we know the
truth of beliefs quite independently of poetry, and that the greatness
of a
philosopher
is unquestionably determined by the truth of his
beliefs. Both these assumptions are false.
If
the question were raised
whether
J.
S. Mill was a greater philosopher than Plato, would the
issue depend on how many beliefs of each were true and how many
false? The traditionalists do not understand the function of beliefs
either in philosophy or in poetry.
