~ODERN
LITERATURE
33
In my distress over the outrage I have conspired to per–
petrate upon a great literature, I wonder if perhaps I have not
been reading these papers too literally. Mter all, a term-essay is
not a diary of the soul, it is not an occasion for telling the truth.
What my students might reveal of their true feelings to a younger
teacher they
will
not reveal to me; they will give me what they
conceive to be the proper response to the official version of
terror I have given them. I bring to mind their faces, which are
not necessarily the faces of the authors of these unperturbed
papers, nor are they, not yet, the faces of fathers of families, or
of theater-goers, or of buyers of Modern Paintings: not yet. I
must think
it
possible that in ways and to a degree which they
keep secret they have responded directly and personally to what
they have read.
And
if
they have? And
if
they have, am I the more content?
What form would I want their response to take? It is a
teacher's question that I am asking, not a critic's. We have de–
cided in recent years to think of the critic and the teacher of
literature as one and the same, and no doubt it is both possible
and useful to do so. But there are some points at which the func–
tions of the two do not coincide, or can be made to coincide only
with great difficulty. Of criticism we have been told, by Arnold,
that "it must be apt to study and praise elements that for fulness
of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong to a
power which in the practical sphere may be maleficent." But
teaching, or at least undergraduate teaching, is not given the
same licensed mandate- cannot be given it because the teacher's
audience, which stands before his very eyes, as the critic's audi–
ence does not, asks questions about "the practical sphere," as the
critic's audience does not. For instance, on the very day that I
write this, when I had said to my class
all
I could think of to say
about
The Magic Mountain
and invited questions and com–
ments, one student asked, "How would you generalize the idea
of the educative value of illness, so that it would be applicable
not only to a particular individual, Hans Castorp, but to young
