66
GEORGE LEVINE
formulation evokes an older, perhaps dying sense of literary vocation.
But the sense of discomfort with literary things as they are is ev–
erywhere visible. Bradbury, in the midst of a sensible analysis of some
of the pressure leading to the breakdown of the old hierarchical literary
culture, quietly laments that now "equality is more fashionable than
excellence." Although the main point of Bradbury's book is the
im–
portance of seeing literature in a sociological context, he not only fails
to take into account the fact and the reason that Arnold has become
a villain to the New Left, but he takes up a position which reinforces
the older notion of the special and separate existence of literature: "the
only real commitment that good art can have finally is to art itself.
Writers, of course, may commit themselves politically; but their literary
motivation must, if they are serious writers, finally predominate over
their political one when it comes to a declaration of interest. This,
to come back to Matthew Arnold's word, is 'disinterestedness.'''
This kind of argument recalls directly the battle cry of "relevance"
with which we have all been forced to deal in the past years. Frye's
book is in large measure a direct attack on the idea that "relevance"
can be anything but dangerous for the critic of literature. His tone
is frequently tough, even angry, old-fashioned in its defense of rigor:
"For a closed myth of concern, the question of relevance could
hardly be easier to answer: anything is relevant that is relevant to it.
It
is
equally easy to apply. For this kind of relevance relates the subject
to the student: the slithering downward way of mindless educators, not
the flinty uphill path of relating the student to the subject, which
is
the way of genuine education. For the myth of freedom, no built-in
inherent relevance exists in any subject: only the student himself can
establish the relevance of what he studies, and being a student means
accepting the responsibility for doing so. To make such a commitment
in the midst of the confusion of our time is an act of historical signif–
icance, civilization being the sane man's burden." That Frye can adopt
such a phrase for his own purposes suggests, perhaps, something other
than self-consciousness. At any rate, he stands in a very Victorian way
beside Matthew Arnold, defending culture against dogmatists and
skeptics alike. The quality of certainty in the rhetoric is a quality of
dogma as well, a dogma hardened against the experience of doubt while
insisting on doubt and asserting unequivocally the moral superiority
of the guardians of culture over the questioners of it.
Steiner
is,
of course, more hip than Frye, and his relation to the
tradition of Arnold is, therefore, more problematic. He is the only one
of the three writers who allows himself to formulate directly the kinds
