10
LIONEL TRILLING
what he called the style of the "doctor" rather than in the style
which he called that of the "explorer." In describing the re–
jected style as that of the doctor, Arnold very likely had in mind
the Scriptural injunction which he liked to quote, "Be ye not
called Rabbi," that is to say, Be ye not called doctor-be ye not
one who claims to have the doctrine.
At this distance of time from him, we incline to think of
Arnold as the doctor
par excellence,
as the man above all others
writing in English who fixed the critical doctrine and handed it
down. But he thought of himself in quite the opposite way, as a
spirit
ondoyant et divers,
flexible and various, as a mind pecu–
liarly individual and personal, asking the question which, as he
said, Goethe had taught modern Europe to ask: "But is it true?
Is it true for
me?"
In his own sense of himself as a critic, he was
the explorer, with all that the word may suggest of freedom,
curiosity, risk.
I shall presently recur to Arnold's lecture in a substantive
way, but I refer now to Arnold's remarks about its style in order
to find sanction for the mode in which I shall deal with my sub–
ject. I have the intention of talking about ,a certain theme which
appears frequently in modern literature-so frequently, indeed,
and in so striking a manner, that it may be said to constitute one
of the shaping and controlling ideas of our epoch. I can identify
it by calling it the disenchantment of our culture with culture
itself-it seems to me that the characteristic element of modem
literature, or at least of the most highly developed modem litera–
ture, is the bitter line of hostility to civilization which runs
through it. It happens that my present awareness of this theme
is involved in a personal experience, and I am impelled to speak
of the theme not abstractly but as it actually exists for me, with
the husks of my experience clinging untidily to it.
If
Arnold is
right, if the critic should be the explorer rather than the doctor,
then the avowedly personal mode cannot be wholly unbecoming
to him, it is not inappropriate to the critic's function to talk
a};>out his personal experien(:e
of
i.\ll
id~<l.
And
I shall go so far
