F'ORM AND HALLUCINATION
641
ary.. Such a conclusion would be neither far-fetched nor particu–
larly :
ndvel~1
suspect that most liberals feel this; though they
shrink from admitting it to themSelves. Lionel Trilling's
The
Liberal Imagination
was a recondite discussion of. the likelihood
that the interests of art--or as he put it with the help of a phrase
of Henry James, of "the vision of the world 'raised to the richest
and noblest expression' "-might be inconsistent with the inter–
ests of progress. Instead of condemning art, which would put
them in uncomfortable opposition to Culture, liberals prefer to
interpret or criticize its
content
and to develop programs for
introducing truth and right-thinking into existing forms. Despite
these efforts, there persists in liberals an embarrassed self-con–
sciousness in regard to what art actually does, and
this
may be
the reason for the strain and suspicion with which progressive
organs such as
The New Republic,
or even
Partisan Review
and
Dissent,
tend to greet formal innovations in painting and writing.
A
generous enough reason: they want to be in favor of art and
to forget that all of it bears the taint that Thomas Mann exposed
in music, that it is "politically suspect."
Art is politically suspect-I mean from the liberal point of
view-not only because it evokes and plays upon moods of sen–
suality and passivity; not only because every creation involves a
descent at least temporary, into superstitions, fixed ideas, perverse
fantasies, self-hypnosis and other outlived areas of the psyche;
not only because, no matter what advances are scored by science,
technology and social organization, art must still be fabricated
by
hand by a single individual in a manner no more efficient
than in the temple of Pharaoh or a medicine man's hut.
Art
is
above all suspect because, besides its
inherited
reactionary ten–
dencies, it constantly arms itself anew against the world of fact;
since for there to be a work of art some degree of reality must
have been conceded to
fo~.
In short, the temptation of
art
to
betrayal of the social conscience is irremediable.
But, you may be thinking, what about revolutionary litera–
ture, revolutionary painting? Is there such a thing? Not only does
