Harold Rosenberg
LITERARY FORM AND
SOCIAL HALLUCINATlON*
Dostoevsky
in
The
Diary
OJ A Writer
complains
about literature that it does not lead to truth. "The apparent
im–
potence of
art,"
he writes, "made me wonder about its usefulness.
Indeed, trace a certain fact
in
actual life--one which at first
glance is not even very vivid-and if only you are able and en–
dowed with vision, you will perceive in it a depth ,such as you
will not find in Shakespeare."
.
Dostoevsky does not, like the Greek philosophers, accuse art
of lying. He uses (assuming that the translation is correct) the
word "impotence," and this means to strive towar'd an objective
but to be too weak, or too distracted, to attain it. For Aristotle,
the trouble with art is not that it lacks the power to present
things as they are, but that it has other interests. .Speaking of
rhetoric, he says: "In fairness we ought to fight our case with
no help beyond the bare facts"; but, he explains later, "the
arousing of prejudice, pity, anger and similar emotions has noth–
ing to do with the essential facts." It has to do with the arts of
language, which were introduced by the poets and which "owing
to the defects of our hearers" win out against mere
~dence.
If,
to the Greek,
art
subordinates the factS to the emotions,
to the modem writer, it subordinates both facts and emotions to
art's own ends. In some remarks on the poetry of Marianne
Moore, T. S. Eliot gives reasons why literature does not, and
*
This text is based on a lecture delivered at Brandeis University as one of
the Ludwig Lewisohn Memorial Series in April, 1960.
