PARTISAN REVIEW
77
fmal acceptance of the eminence of Western culture in the sciences and
the arts. He, therefore, rejects the guilt which forces
us
to "soil that
legacy" (a touch of aesthetic revulsion which, in view of his previous
arguments of the implications of that legacy in the death camps, is
quite striking). The book turns around and becomes almost a model
of Western superiority - both to other cultures and to those within
it who either deny it or are unequal to its achievements. And as this
reversal takes place, Steiner can make quite sensible arguments serve
purposes utterly alien to the mood and texture of the first part of
his
book. He insists, for instance, on the Westerner's incapacity to be
anything but Western (fair enough), and regards the Western "gurus
and publicists ... who profess to be brothers under the skin with the
roused vengeful soul of Asia and Africa" (caricature and melodrama
take over) as "living a rhetorical lie." The moral indignation of this
final cliche is directed, whether Steiner likes it or not, at the people
who have, however erratically, attempted to follow out the consequences
of
his
own awareness of provincialism. And this rhethoric finds its place
where the immediate threat to the profession, to the teacher and critic
rejecting the cries of "relevance," is most direct.
Steiner is not, at least, asking the impossible - that the West
reject its past. Yet in turning to the art of the possible, he turns to
the tradition of Arnold once more. He asks for what the liberal
humanist tradition has always wanted - a sense of history, the pre–
servation of the great texts: "if we are to understand where, in polit–
ical and social terms, the classic past went wrong, we must not only
acknowledge the incomprehensible human creativity of that past, but
also
our enduring, though problematic, links with it." But at the mo–
ment, at least, "the confident centre is ... unrecapturable."
That cultural center which Frye would capture with his disinter–
ested study of literature, which is mythology, is not available to Steiner.
Yet with
all
his evaluative energy, with all the excess of his formula–
tions and interestedness of study, Steiner finally goes over to Frye's
camp. He is no Luddite, distrusting science and knowledge because it
has
previously led to catastrophe: his faith, finally, is in knowledge
alone, and in .the continuing eminence of Western culture. He differs
from Frye in not being content with the study of the past; he wants
to
construct a new culture to lead us out of the present Hell, though
without any hope of Utopia, or even of a sense of Utopia (which Frye
has),
to provide norms.
Having begun poetically, Steiner is free to end poetically. He
wants a good tragic vision, and finds one. Not for a moment will he
