WILLIAM PHILLIPS
13
scholar, but his essays bring another dimension into his writing: a graceful
and discursive treatment of a number of literary themes. I do not recall
the reviews the book received on publication, though my impression is
that they were respectful but perfunctory, in keeping with the decline in
prestige of the man of letters.
The essays range from "The Uses of Decadence," in which Ellmann
points to the strain in Yeats, Wilde, and Joyce that separated itself from
the dominant sensibility inherited from the Victorians, to some personal
anecdotes about several writers . There is an amusing and revealing piece
on the relation of Eliot to Pound, which makes the interesting point
that Pound could do for Eliot - either as editor or promoter - what
Eliot couldn't do for Pound. Another essay discusses the gap between
Yeats and Auden and the ambivalence of Auden and his poetic group
towards Yeats. There's an essay on Frank O'Connor that gives him his
literary due without inflating him. One on D. H . Lawrence is refreshingly
irreverent.
Another essay explores the uses of psychoanalysis in the writing of
biography, in which Ellmann deftly observes both the insights that
Freudian doctrine brings to the study of writers and the limitations in
the application of this method. Ellmann calls attention
to
the fact, for
example, that Ben Jonson and Hemingway, two different writers, were
probably anal-erotic. Maybe, says Ellmann, in an attempt to resolve this
dilemma, all writers are anal-erotic. On the other hand, in discussing
Henry James, Ellmann questions the Freudian idea that homosexuality
involves fixation on the mother, by citing Leon Edel, who claims there
was no such fixation by James. Ellmann also makes the interesting point
that though Sartre had important reservations about Freudian theory,
particularly in rejecting the idea of the unconscious, he made consider–
able use of it in his study of Flaubert.
Particularly graceful and informative is Ellmann's account of a visit to
Yeats' widow, George, while working on a study of Yeats. Ellmann's
description of the main women in Yeats's life, his wife, Maud Gonne, his
failed love, and her daughter Iseult, is masterful. Then there is a close
reading of Wallace Stevens in which Ellmann makes a subtle connection
between his life and his work, through the theme of death, which figures
frequently in both.
It is difficult to summarize Ellmann's essays, because he was not an
ideological critic. Unlike Leavis or Trilling or Wilson, he had no the–
matic agendas. Perhaps that removes him from the first order of criticism.
Still, his combination of scholarly and critical perception make him one
of the important figures in the history of the literary essay.
w.
P.
