THE STATE OF CRITICISM
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it against evidence and contrary opinion. Many of my students can,
with considerable effort, muster an opinion. But when questioned,
they either abandon their view and adopt what they guess I think; or
they lapse into uncommunicative privacy, with the parting remark,
"Well, that 's my opinion." This deficiency in thinking is sad commen–
tary on their previous education and mental lives. Despite the conven–
tional view, the problem is not that their memories have been stuffed
with useless facts . In general, they have been left complete blanks. The
problem is that their education left them afloat on a sea of personal
opinion, stubbornly held, where any argumentative grappling for
agreement or disagreement on rational ground seemed merely hostile.
Moreover, the serious discussion of important issues will not flourish if
it is detached from those books which have earned their designation as
classics.
If
I try to answer the question, "What is a good society?" in
ignorance of Plato-and I can try to do this-my answer is likely to be
narrow and impoverished. But at the same time, if I try
to
read Plato
without any thought of my own about justice, I will simply not
understand what he says.
One additional matter may be seen either as a coda or a corollary to
what I have already said. For 2000 years, it was clear to everybody that
to study literature meant to produce it. I am not alluding to the
ingenious claim of contemporary theory that there is no difference in
principle between litera ture and criticism. I mean that when you read
Vergil, you construed the syntax and named the rhetorical figures in
every line, and then you went away and wrote some hexameters of your
own. Doubtless much bad poetry resulted, and where a schoolmaster
imposed the classics as rigid models, great harm was done: we hear
about men of otherwise sound mind who took care never to use in
Latin a word not found in Cicero. But still, the study of literature and
the writing of literature went hand in hand. Is the modern dictum
really true, that we cannot teach literature, only literary criticism?
Should literary theory work out its problems in a region of pure
speculation severed from production? Teaching literature is not just an
issue of critical theory , butalso an issue of social and political analysis.
Hence I want to suggest some commitments, if that is the right
word, I think a teacher of literature should consider making. The first
is a willingness to identify himself with certain larger interests–
without dogmatism, one hopes, but without apology either. By "larger
interest," I mean, for example, the truth (which entails more than
"incidental correctness"). I think I recognize the dangers in suggesting
that an individual might acknowledge the authority of truth and then
