PARTISAN REVIEW
387
Douglas Brown's
The House with the Green Shutters,
to such figures
as Heathcliff and Ahab, one is, of course, involved even more
strenuously with consequential value systems in terms of which it is
altogether right and proper for certain kinds of atrocities to be com–
mitted. Hence to expose oneself empathetically to the full awfulness
of those atrocities is to do more than simply expose oneself to "human
nature" in the sense of discovering hitherto unsuspected depths of
possible iniquitousness.
It
is
also
to realize more sharply what may be
logically entailed in the value systems themselves - including how
they overlap with or in a sense emerge from more "acceptable"
ones - and hence to be able to respond to them more effectively.
Shakespeare's major tragedies, I suppose, are the greatest examples
we have of the sort of thing I am talking about; and I suspect that
they are also the supreme examples of "cruel" ,art. In any case, they
and some of the other works that I have mentioned, as well as a
number of obvious ones that I've not mentioned, serve to remind us
that the truly shockmg in art occurs when the artist's gaze has been
turned as firmly and in a sense disinterestedly as possible on concrete
human behavior, and when he himself has been shocked by the
capacity of People to pass violently beyond limits to which he
him–
self has assented. It is ironical when admirers of writers like Sade
or of some of our currently "cruel" authors endeavor to get outrage–
ousness all on their own side, as it were, so that, emancipated and
unshockable themselves, they watch comfortably as other people are
outraged in piquant ways. Good art doesn't shock only the bour–
geoisie, it shocks
everyone.
John Fraser
