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PARTISAN REVIEW
an essential part of the critic's business was formed at the start and as early
as 1930. That is the date of his second "argufying," "Obscurity and
Annot.ation," published here for the first time.
As
a f()lIower of I.
A.
Richards,
at least in his early days, Empson might be expected to care rather little
about intention. In fact he saw the case for it at once, which Richards never
did ; and though his case altered and developed, as one might wish and
expect, between 1930 and
The Sl1"11Clure of Complex Words
in 1951, it was
never totally transformed. Nor did Empson's radicalism vanish, as many in–
terwar radicalisms vanished in the anti-Soviet atmosphere of the 1950s. In
fact he was sometimes put to it in his later years to insist on his longstanding
leftwing credentials, which always looked personal to the point of eccentricity,
and in an age when the reverse claim was commonplace: that one had never
really been a revolutionary at all. Nor did the ferocity of his anti-Christianity
ever wane. Under a cloak of urbanity he lived and died a good hater, never
forgetting that literature is about something and that it matters whether that
something is true or false.
His only large fault, perhaps, and one not totally absent from this
fascinating collection, was an abiding lack of magnanimity. That lack was
profoundly connected with an ability to accept that most mortal creatures,
perhaps all, hold incompatible views and perform acts incompatible with their
views, so that they are not, or not necessarily, to be held to the consequences
of their opinions - least of all when those consequences are invisible to
themselves. The true Empsonian marks himself out {i-om the vulgar herd by
refusing to accept any argument in that form ; so perhaps it must now be–
come apparent, to my lasting regret, that I am a mere admirer and not an
out-and-out disciple. Empson never accepted that to believe an evil doctrine is
not, of itself, to be evil. The truth is that it is not even, altogether clearly, to
make it more likely that one might be evil. In the realm of speculative opinion
- religion, politics, critical theory and the like - it is surely rather common to
hold wicked views without being wicked. Empson's intransigence, which
helped
to
maintain the excitemen t of his prose to the very end, never al–
lowed him to accept anything like that. "A man who believes in Hell," he
once wrote in a letter to Frank Kermode (March 1961), "can't help relating
the prospect of it to his feelings about life in general." That remark shows
how little Empson understood religion, or indeed belief itself. Lots of people
who believe in Hell fail to relate it to their lives. It may be silly and inconsis–
tent of them to do so: but then a lot of people are silly, and practically all are
inconsistent. In fact the true believer, at least in our own times, is more likely
to be bothered with the contrary problem: how to
remember
that he believes
in rewards and punishments in the next world as he goes about his daily life.
It
is one of the most difficult tasks of mental life, and one we fail daily, to re-
