lOOKS
291
certain
features of his intellectual physiognomy that have not stood
out so sharply in the past.
The earue'<>t 'Piece collected in. the
book
ls
a dia\O'E,Ue \''In.
the
Galapagos") that Mr. Wilson. wrote in. 1925; he reprin.ts it here
be–
cause, as he acknowledges, "I still see these problems in the same terms."
The two protagonists of the dialogue represent a lazy and indolent
sensualism, obviously springing from the revolt against Puritanism, posed
against the busy and exhilarating efforts of science to drive toward
improvement and perfectibility. "Not the artist nor the saint shall save
us,"
excitedly cries the enthusiastic zoologist to the dozing iguana, "but
the scientist-for he alone can perform the calculations and manipulate
the tools." And the scientist paints the future in ecstatically visionary
terms: "Inhabiting in that day a universe which will itself be a master–
piece of imagination, the speech that we use in our daily life will be–
come more compact and quick, electrically conveying its meanings,
and, exulting in our freedom of power, we shall improvise ephemeral
songs beside which the lyrical voices of the Beethovens, the Shakespeares
and the Dantes-those cries of maladjustment and pain-will seem al–
most the stammering of barbarians!" The iguana, it is true, falls asleep
during this paean, and the reader may well have trouble not doing the
same. But though Mr. Wilson pokes a little fun at his scientist in passing,
it is the scientist,
in
the end, who triumphantly carries off the unhappy
iguana by force to serve in the experiments that will bring about
this
Utopia.
Without stretching the symbolism of these figures too far, we may,
it seems to me, use them for guidance in exploring the heterogeneous
impression derived from Mr. Wilson's pages. Let us imagine that the
iguana represents, not only a somnolent sensualism, but also--and there
are hints to this effect in the dialogue itself-a feeling for the special
uniqueness of human experience. The iguana respects and cherishes
all those recurring emotional and spiritual preoccupations that give to
man his specifically human stamp, and which, whatever his Neanderthal
ancestor may have been like, do not seem to have changed much since
the beginning of historical time. The permanence of these preoccupa–
tions still enables the great art and literature of the past, sometimes
thousands of years old, to enter and re-enter the context of human
experience--not only as historical documents, but as a source of vital
and constantly renewed insight into the human condition. No one has
contributed more than Edmund Wilson to keeping these insights and
these values alive; it is because Mr. Wilson has so much of the iguana in
him
that he has written so much good literary criticism and so much
perceptive cultural history.
