THE STATE OF CRITICISM
377
not opera ting within standa rd Ma rxist ca tegories, as in his writings
on Kafk a and his famo us piece o n a rt in a n age of reproduction .
T he mos t ambitio us effo rt to reform Marxi st criticism from
within tha t I ha ve seen is Herbert Marcuse's last work,
The Esthetic
Dimension, T oward a Crit ique of Marxis t Esthetics.
(Jameson has
recentl y been a ttempting to fu se Ma rxi sm a nd structura lism , no t too
successfull y, I believe.) Ma rcuse's recognition of the priva te and
marg ina l wo rlds o f a rt is refreshing and long overdue, as he argues
tha t art refl ec ts neither the so-ca lled rea lity of exi stence nor any
specific cl ass interes ts. But hi s bas ic ass umptions, tho ugh no t ortho–
dox, do no t escape the ques tio ns raised by most Marxist criticism.
Marcuse's thes is is essentia ll y tha t a uthentic a rt is revo lutiona ry no t
in its immedi a te po litica l effec ts but in its subversio n o f accepted
notio ns o f rea lity and thus in its adva nce of human consc io usness.
Now thi s view ta kes for g ranted tha t art, like hi story, is an element o f
the movement towa rd a mo re just and ra tiona l socie ty, and, therefore,
expresses a deeper and higher truth .
In
short, art is conceived to be a
transcendent form o f truth , morality, justice, progress-an instru–
ment, as it were, of soc ia l and intell ec tua l libera tion. Des pite its
radica l perspec tive, thi s is clea rl y an outmoded view of litera ture,
though a popula r one- a nd res ts on two fa llacies. It ass umes tha t
there is a g iven know ledge o f po litica l and human truths aga inst
which a rt can be tes ted and whi ch the highest art refl ects.
It
also
assumes tha t art is therapeutic and ca tha rtic, and thus bas ica ll y
moral-and who lesome-in its na ture. This is a view, to be sure, tha t
has come down to us from Aristo tl e, and has been reinforced by the
Christian stra in in Wes tern civili za tion. But it has been reitera ted
large ly as a kind of ethical or theo logical cant-a mora lizing ritual,
rarely fo ll owed in critica l prac tice, and one which few knowledgeable
critics fee l o bli ged to go in for today. Such a view of the nobl e a ims of
art expresses no t the fac ts of litera ry life, but the popular-a nd
pious-res istance to the idea tha t a rt may have no thing to do with
educa tio n, or uplift, or with wha t is commonl y supposed to be the
" truth. " And such a high-minded pos iti on seems pa rticul a rl y inap–
propria te to the interna lized , capricious, wayward , often perverse
turns of modern art. T o be consistent, one would have
to
exclude
from the literary ha ll o f fame, as a mora list like J ohn Gardner in fact
does, many outstanding and representa tive works . This is not to deny
that in the broades t sense of these terms, certain human and ethical
va lues do enter into the mind of litera ture, but not directl y, nor in the
form of popula rl y accepted no ti ons of mora lity.
But, in rela tion to the movement of modern critica l thought,
