152
LEE BAXANDALL
all the cruelty and pain rooted in the definable past - and I felt once
more that the ordinary should be more central to his vision. His voice
need only break through a distracting patter of accomplishment to be
heard again.
Maureen Howard
MARX AND ANTI-MARX
MARX, ENGELS, AND THE POETS. By Peter Demen. (Trans. by Jeffrey
L
Sammons.) Univ,ersity of Chicago Press. $7.95.
Marx once criticized an historical drama written by
his
friend
Ferdinand Lassalle for "Schillerizing." Lassalle, he said, failed to find
those representative elements of his material which could then organically
be developed into a rich and profound yet concrete portrayal. Rather
than employ a self-effacing method which Marx termed Shakespearean,
Lassalle had merely imposed his own, abstract (and mistaken) lessons,
in the manner of Schiller's "spokesmen" of ideas.
Peter Demetz of Yale has now Schillerized on the subject of Marx's
aesthetics. By imposing mistaken, often seemingly malicious lessons,
Demetz manages to reveal little or nothing of the actual conclusions
and methods of Marx and Engels. In a word, his scholarship is scandal–
ous, for it omits where it does not distort the salient elements of the
material. It won't wash; except, perhaps, among the totally uninformed,
and obviously among Cold Warriors for whom it is useful to "destroy"
Marxist aesthetics, even at the cost of objective research. Demetz' ap–
proach to the subject is indicated by his dismissal not only of Marx's
views on the
arts
but of the entire Hegelian heritage as so much
structural claptrap. The dust jacket fails to mention Demetz' having
worked for Radio Free Europe, yet it is the outlook of this organization
which informs the book.
Demetz comes out for the complete autonomy of the arts and of
aesthetics. They have their "own proper spheres"; and to be "legitimate
and concrete" must have no relation to "politics." One hesitates to link
Demetz' position with that of the New Critics, who seldom displayed
such vague rhetorical flourishes with so little effort at proof. However,
it does amuse one to note that Demetz' lust for autonomy in aesthetics
has itself a political bias. The emergence of a social exegesis of literature,
he says, coincides with the mobilization of the French to protect the
1789 Revolution and a "melancholy" awakening of political activity
