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PARTISAN REVIEW
hunt for the evildoer, and the discovery or unveiling of the murderer.
The role of the detective is identified by what Eliot has called the
"vis–
ual imagination." For the term "private eye"--or private "I"-may
be seen as the detective's searchlight or the ego-centered neurotic. The
private eye fluoroscopes the public cavities or crisis-situations. It
must be distinguished from the public eye, which takes in and is
taken in by external sense-impressions.
As
Bassanio says in
The
Merchant of Venice,
"the outward shows be least themselves." The
symbolic role of the public eye has, of course, its focal locus in
The
Great Gatsb
y,
where on the hell of ashes that is modem life, stands
the sign of Dr. T.
J.
Eckleburg's eyes. Note, too, that when the narra–
tor finds Gatsby, he very significantly sees him floating in the water.
The clash between public and private eyes is merely one indica–
tion of the cultural dilemma between seer and seen, I and Thou, indi–
vidual and society, symbol and myth, critic and author. For the mod–
em critic is himself a private eye--or private ear-depending upon
whether he sees with his visual or auditory imagination. The Imagists
in their manifesto set the pattern for the critic as private eye, declaring
that the function of poetry was to exhibit an image, and, by implica–
tion, the role of the critic to identify it. The function of the critic
as word-watcher is explained by Blackmur: "It consists, first, in being
willing to concentrate your maximum attention upon the work which
the words and the motions of the words--and by motions I mean
all the technical devices of literature-perform upon each other."
The critic who watches the work, the motions, the gestures of langu–
age, what is he but a "private eye"?
And the term" private eye" for critics is more appropriate than
seems immediately apparent. Not merely because the critic tracks
language and its motions, or because language is somnambulant and
every recognition a reversal, not even because "private" insists on
the recondite and personal and secret observation of the critic, but
because "private" has a public connotation. For in our culture "pri–
vate" is a substantive as well as an adjective, and, as a result of the
development of militarism, "private" has a status meaning. It repre–
sents that group of the army which is most populous and most anony–
mous. In that sense the term "private eye" exhibits the tension between
public anonymity and private
"1"
and gives to criticism the tug of
paradoxical energies.
