TERREN CE DES PRES
279
point out) much ofcritical energy spends itselfon second. to tenth-rate works.
At some point, however , the pursuit of excellence becomes its own end ; it
fulfills the desire
to
participate in greatness and wonder, and here the critical
enterprise turns back to the deeper need it nourishes . To take at face-value
most of the claims which scholars and critics make in their own defense has
become , to say the least , difficult . Criticism has not purified language or
sensibility , nor established a canon , nor upheld quality; nor has it convinced
students of literature that in the neighborhood of genius , as Matthew Arnold
put it , " the great thing for us is to feel and epjoy his work as deeply as ever we
can ." For the critic himself this may be true, but then his effort is private , and
what it comes down to is an admission of the
need
to
"feel and enjoy .. . as
deeply as ever we can ."
Enjoyment springs from enjoinment , and criticism is the medium
through which we regain connection with art's vitality . Arnold confessed as
much , in his famous essay on criticism , when he concluded that
"to
have the
sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being
alive , and it is not denied to criticism
to
have it ." Criticism becomes a mode of
possession , or of being possessed ; and if I have turned the meaning of
Arnold's statement slightly , I have hoped to touch the source of his admitted
urgency. What troubled him was the loss ofconnection with great art, and the
possibility that contact could be lost completely . Recently Frank Kermode has
voiced a similar fear . He foresees a possible world in which'
'King Lear
will be
forgotten like the tulip mania"; and in "Survival of the Classic" he argues
that criticism is the medium through which the classics remain present .
" Classics ," Kermode says, "are works of art that survive, " and the " urgent
question is, how does survival work?" It wprks because "critics , teachers,
adapters , all , however original , are committed to the transmission of the
classic. " Preservation of the great works is vital because' 'we know that when
they depart the other gods go with them , .so that we can say quite soberly that
they have the quality also of the palladium."
To call literature a
palladium-a
sacred object having the power to
preserve the city , the state , or in this Cilse the spiritual content of a
culture-and then
to
see the crisis ofour time in terms of a struggle to keep art
present , is also
to
suggest the larger context of the problem besetting' 'our
sect ," as Kermode calls those who practice criticism. "Survival of the Classic"
was presumably written in the middle to late sixties, years w)1en the
apocalyptic fury of the young was reaching its peak and the coming generation
seemed bent on a New World having no " communion" with the past . A
world with' 'no place for
Lear"
is of course a fearful prospect; but an end
to
the alienation of man from his own creations is something quite different.
Marx ,
for instance , never for a moment wished
to
sweep away the classics . Far
