WYNDHAM LEWIS
263
catafalque to dead matter ) rather than as an exercise or puzzle to be
figured out after we finish reading. The value of such criticism is
inseparable from the partisan urgency of the beliefs and attitudes im–
pelling it, and from the stylistic force with which the attitudes are
expressed. Unfortunately, few critics in 1927 seemed interested in
taking up the challenge Lewis flung down: the result was that Joyce
became either the high priest of a cult, or a newfangled "difficult"
writer who might well hold unsound views. After the long critique
concludes with some unfriendly remarks about
Work in Progress
("He has fallen almost entirely into a literary horseplay on the one
side, and Steinesque childplay on the other"), Lewis wrote no mote
on Joyce's art but confined
his
efforts to baiting the
transition
disciples of the master.
T. S.
ELIOT
Lewis' critique of Eliot, found wholly in the third chapter of
Men Without Art,
is
still unnoticed;
it
reveals, I think, that Lewis
was more fascinated and annoyed by Eliot's elusive person than by
either Pound or Joyce, who compared to the editor of
The Criterion
were guileless. As distinct from their "mindless" craftsmanship, Lewis
felt that something very purposeful indeed was going on in Eliot's
head at all times, and that the critic had thrown up a number of
smoke screens behind which the (supposedly) anonymous poet could
go on practising his art. Lewis took it upon himself to expose Eliot,
partly it may be out of annoyance at what the writer was getting
away with - what he was taken for by unwary readers, partly
because Lewis was unsympathetic to certain artistic theories Eliot
had successfully promulgated. And, although Lewis himself does not
admit it, because Eliot was the most subtle pretender to "classical"
status of the Men of 1914.
Lewis admits that Eliot's distinction and influence as a poet is
profound, and thinks it not a bad idea that his example has put the
fear of careless writing into young poets - though with Auden on
the scene Lewis correctly prophesied a change of habit. With this
salute out of the way, he says nothing more about Eliot's poetry but,
taking as his text some famous remarks from "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" and the "Dante" essay, he sets out to examine the
"depersonalization" or impersonal theory of poetry, and, bringing-in
