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PARTISAN REVIEW
Jerome McGann and Karf Kroeber-challenge the critical glibness which
has so conveniently transformed Blake into one more subject for academic
study, rubbing shoulders as it were with far more conventionally educated
types like Milton andJoyce.
Perhaps it will be appropriate, then, to discuss the final book under
review-Morton Paley's and Michael Phillips's collection of seventeen essays
in honor of Geoffrey Keynes-by giving attention to only a' single essay,
F.R. Leavis's attempt to come to grips with the "challenge" of Blake (the
word is his). Presented first as a lecture at Bristol University in late 1971,
Leavis's essay is a striking reminder of how far we have come (and not always
to our advantage) from the critical revolution to which the name of Eliot is
most firmly attached. For Eliot's own view of Blake figures prominently in
Leavis's essay.
Not, I should add quickly, that Leavis is in agreement with the obvi–
ously snobbish side of Eliot's disapproval. On the contrary, there remains
something of that characteristic touch of Leavis at his most committed in
the insistence that "Blake, who died in 1827, . . . is a major living force
today, and that his attitude to life and civilization has a validity, a salutary
and inspiring rightness, that Eliot's hasn't." But there is an implicit en–
dorsement of Eliot's overall judgment in Leavis's assertion that any potential
student of Blake' 'should be told unequivocally that none of the elaborated
prophetic works is a successful work of art." Nevertheless: the most interest–
ing aspect of Leavis's essay is his departure from Eliot to insist on "Blake's
profound indebtedness to Shakespeare." It's a curious kind of insistence,
and the accompanying denial of any real influence on Blake from Milton's
verse surely reflects as much Leavis's long-standing distaste for Milton as it
does any close reading of the Prophetic Books. But with Shakespeare's name
brought into prominence, one can't help regretting that Leavis hadn't been
willing to display a little more rigor in the comparison, particularly with
respect to what may be the most suggestive contrast of all: Shakespeare,
with a vital organic relationship to a national audience, and Blake, the
unparalleled isolate of unparalleled creative gifts. From such a contrast it
just may be possible to conceive of a more complex kind of "tradition"
than the narrowly literary one to which Blake has been consigned during
the past quarter-century.
WILLIAM WALLING
