10
PARTISAN REVIEW
general rebelliousness now, promoted a political counterculture by chal–
lenging the prevailing assumptions about life and art.
But a major difference between the past and the present is that in
the past a live body of criticism existed, which succeeded, in literature
at least, in mediating between conflicting cultural claims and goals.
Today, however, one is struck by how little informed and engaged
critical writing there is. The older critics are thinning out, and the
younger ones, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand, feel
like relics of a dying breed. There are obviously many reasons for this
scarcity of critics, but I suspect one of the main causes is the wide–
spread belief in cultural discontinuity. Up to now, each literary gen–
eration, each new movement, spawned a number of young critics able
to spread the new views and generalize the change of sensibility with–
out creating a feeling of utter chaos and incompatibility between the
old and the new culture. The cause of modernism, for instance, was
advanced by connecting it with the more vital strains of the past.
T. S. Eliot's organic idea of literary development and Harold Rosen–
berg's tradition of the new, to take two very different examples, typified
the assumption of continuity shared by radicals and conservatives. At
present, however, what appears to make the contemporary period of
transition so desperate, so frightening, so chaotic is the insistence on
both sides of an abyss between the past and the present. No wonder
the "profession of literature" seems 'so archaic and remote from the
life of literature.
It may be that the idea of continuity is a myth that bolsters the
forces of conservatism. But it does lie behind all our thinking. And
without the principle of continuity it seems to me impossible to or–
ganize either our sense of history or our experience. After all, even so
apocalyptic a thinker as Marx made the idea of socialism plausible by
arguing that it was inevitable. Practical revolutionaries have always
appealed to the logic of history.
I
Israel: A Cause without Rebels.
I had resolved not to rush into
print with my interpretations of life in Israel, after visiting it recently
for the first time, exercising, as it were, the right of "temporary" return.
For I never understood how some journalists could write with such
facility and assurance about a country they had just popped into. Still,
there are some observations I'd like to make without losing my amateur
standing.
I am not the first to note that Israel is not only held together by
its spirit and promise but also torn apart by contradictions. Everyone
can see the miraculous accomplishments, the boastful national pride, the
tribal energy, the messianic leadership. One feels one is witnessing the
growth of a nation, compressed in time. But the contradictions are even
more striking, for they lie at the heart of the achievements as well as
the difficulties, and they cut into the question of one's identity and
allegiances.
One's first impression is that of glaring contrasts: a tiny country
with overgrown hopes; socialist communities within a capitalist society;
a western civilization in an eastern setting; a state of siege psychology
