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PARTISAN REVIEW
Tradition there is so much evoked precisely because of its absence, or
so it seems to the European; while in Europe it is a ruling force which
because of its omnipresence is seldom discussed or even consciously felt.
But at this point in German literature, which
is
clearly marked as a
crisis in tradition, it might be well to remind oneself of its existence.
In American critical writing tradition figures as the most wanted
item. In the same liberal definition it is longingly viewed as "a cultural
base for the free rein of talent" (William Phillips), while the conseIVa–
tives, who seem to. be in the majority, see it as a firmly established order
binding all minds to a supposedly beneficial uniformity of belief. In
the course of their short history, Americans have moved from a whole–
sale rejection of tradition, regarded as the bearer of Old World evils, to
a full acceptance of it; and this is taken as a remedy for all ailments.
Both attitudes are, of course, unrealistic and determined by wishful
thinking. In their often-proclaimed innocence, Americans seem to have
no suspicion that the tradition which is to bring order to the literary
mind might be anything but good; the tacit assumption is indeed that
I
anything produced by time and tradition must be good. I take it that
this is the persisting influence of T. S. Eliot's conception, who in a
tricky tight-rope act between the European and the American idea of
,
it (in his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent") defined tradition
as something "which cannot be inherited" (which is surely the basic
,
meaning of it).
"If
you want it, you must obtain it by great labor."
He also suggested that everybody, particularly the poet, has to discover
I
and select his own tradition and has to fit his work into it. Thus he
created the notion of a voluntary cultural tradition by choice and adop-
tion, depending on learning and self-discipline instead of automatic
[
obedience: democratic (self-elected) as well as ascetic, and altogether
ideal. I want to stress the ascetic element here, because it is always over-
looked by those who lament the lack of tradition in American culture:
tradition in that sense means the voluntary dedication to the hard
work ("great labor") of education in world learning. But this is re-
jected in America both collectively, in the general school system, as well
as individually by the American writer who regards the erudition of an
Eliot, or a Thomas Mann, as a formidable but outmoded tool of writing
for which he has no real hankering.
The chastised European of today knows that tradition is a burden
as well as a blessing, and often of dubious quality. He is now closer than
ever before to the position of the revolutionary-minded Americans of
the eighteenth century who regarded all tradition as corrupted. I be–
lieve that this is one of the reasons, a neglected but powerful one, for
