PARTISAN
REVIEW
13
it has a certainty and finality lacking in history itself. But in a recent
issue of
Commentary,
Hilton Kramer carries the position one step fur–
ther, arguing not only that the "adversary" stand associated with mod–
ernism has become a meaningless gesture with nothing to pit itself
against since the middle class enemy has surrendered, but also that the
"adversary" aspect of modernism is only one half the equation, the other
half being a strong tie to tradition. And, according to Kramer, the
avant-garde has become an " academy of innovation," because it has
dissociated itself almost entirely from tradition. Kramer's piece is strongly
argued, but I think he underestimates the genuine "adversary" sensi–
bility today and inflates the past by equating it with tradition. It is
true, as Kramer (quoting T . S. Eliot) maintains, that serious modern
works, however advanced, did not so much destroy as remake tradition,
but the fact is they recreated it in a radical way and through a highly
selective idea of tradition. And even though, as Kramer reminds us
again, many vanguard and modernist figures were not radical in their
political views, still they were part of an "adversary" culture in their
elitism and their general antipathy to conventional values and ideas.
The trouble with talking about tradition unselectively is that it
fails to distinguish between what is usable and what is unusable.
If,
as
Kramer feels, new writing today should have stronger connections with
tradition, the question still remains what that tradition is. Does it, for
example, include the conventional or the unconventional figures of the
last few decades? Does it mean a return to the subversive sensibility of
the earlier modernists?
I think a serious adversary spirit does exist among a number of
writers in this country, particularly among countless poets whose values
are not those of the media or the official culture. But lacking an im–
mediate tradition they have to invent one, and thus create an impression
of shrillness, discontinuity, and posturing that the upholders of tradition
find both frivolous and menacing.
W. P.
