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FRANK KERMODE
GOMBRICH:
Well, human gesture is revealing if you know even the tra–
ditions or the vocabulary of the gesture.
If
you film a Neapolitan try–
ing to sell a fountain pen and splice it into a film where somebody is
supposed to plead for his life, you may think that the Neapolitan try–
ing to sell the fountain pen is pleading for his life. I believe in the
possibility of graphology provided that you know roughly the stand–
ard forms of letters.
If
you don't, I think it's quite clearly impossible.
Well, in these first interviews we've discussed mainly tradition and
the visual arts. They probably represent the most acute and most vivid
aspect of the problem. My own view, I think, is closer to Gombrich's
than to Rosenberg's. I myself doubt if substantial newness is to be had
more easily by us than, by say, Wordsworth or Mallarme. Rosenberg seems
to feel that we have a crisis on: Gombrich is sceptical about it. But
something,
it must be admitted, is on-even if it's only a myth of crisis.
The next interviews will begin at this point-crisis and the need
for radical change. And I want to go on to some of the questions this
raises in the other arts, especially in poetry and music.
