THE STATE OF CRITICISM
181
beyond;
yet there were still some controls and boundaries, shared terms
of value. In such circumstances the critic is freed but not wholly freed;
no longer a captive but not yet a wanderer.
To be a first-rate critic you need a first-rate mind, but not many
first-rate minds are likely to be content for long simply to remain
critics. It's an occupational risk, perhaps an occupational disaster. So
critics turn to other things, trying-seldom well-to write fiction and
verse. Or they become, like Winters and Leavis, guru figures of cultural
sects. Anyone who ever heard R.P. Blackmur speak could easily have
imagined him back 150 or 200 years ago as one of those subtle New
England preachers. Philip Rahv was, in half of himself, a Leninist
politician or a Social Democratic parliamentary whip.
If
Harold
Bloom were able to find the sublime anywhere else, he might not be
searching for it so persistently in American literature.
Imprecise, perilous , hard to justify, full of pitfalls, "each ven–
ture ... a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always
deteriorating"-this is our lot. Nothing will save us, not method, not
theory. Our only way is a loving submission to the charms and powers
of the word, a strict training in the observation of the created verbal
object. Andre Gide once spoke disparagingly about critics who search
"for criteria without wishing to go to the trouble of acquiring taste."
T.S. Eliot said, "the only method is to be very intelligent."
If
Eliot was
right, we can understand why so many of us are driven to look for other
methods .
Barbara Rose
I missed yesterday's sessions because I was at the graduation
ceremonies at Andover. The headmaster spoke about criticism. He
apologized to the student body for having inhibited them by teaching
them critical attitudes. Because these young people had evolved critical
faculties, presumably they were inhibited in terms of living in the real
world. I think the feeling that the critical attitude is paralyzing or that
the inhibiting is itself a bad thing is widespread. Criticism in general is
in a state of decline-but nowhere is it declining faster than in the art
world. Part of the reason is the significant discrepancy between literary
criticism, which has been more stable and rooted within a historical
