BEYOND THE TWILIGHT OF REASON
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keeping our minds concentrated on the existence of a work of art. Before
we think of using a work of art for some extraneous purpose, we should
contemplate it in itself, in its being that work and no other.
HiHon Kramer:
Responding to Professor Donoghue's paper will be Don–
ald Kagan, the Hillhouse Professor of History and Classics at Yale
University, author of many distinguished works of historical scholarship,
most recently a book on the origins of war and the preservation of peace.
Professor Kagan is currently a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Institute in
Washington, and he is a member of the Board of Trustees of Adelphi
University.
Donald Kagan:
We must all be grateful to Mr. Donoghue for eloquently
reminding us of the special, autonomous place of art, and especially of lit–
erature, apart from politics and sociology, even from philosophy. Its
power comes from its ability to choose its own subject, style and purpose.
Literature that is shaped merely by its author's time and his place within
his society, by
their
prejudices and purposes, is a poor and weak thing that
deserves the social scientific analysis and pseudo-philosophical mumbo–
jumbo that pass for literary criticism in our day.
But true literary artists are not bound by such things. They see
through and beyond the prejudices and passions of their own time and
place and are bound only by the limits that bind all human beings at all
times in all places: the reality of nature and of human nature. There is a
natural world outside of human will and desire; man's genius can ma–
nipulate it to a considerable extent, and the results can be wonderful, but
they are inevitably constrained by the enormous power and mystery of
nature and by the limits imposed by man's own nature. Mr. Donoghue's
stimulating remarks bring to mind the tragic poet Sophocles and espe–
cially his drama
Antigone.
There his chorus describes the dilemma:
o
wondrous sublety of man, that draws
To good or evil ways! Great honour is given
And power to him who upholdeth his country's laws
And the justice of heaven
But he that, too rashly daring, walks in sin
In solitary pride to his life's end.
At door ofmine shall never enter in
To call me friend.
