BEYOND THE TWILIGHT OF REASON
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any question in the minds of many of us who have followed Brodsky's
career, that he could not conceivably have enjoyed the kind of support
and acclaim among non-Russian readers of poetry, if there had not been a
political aspect, a sense of political rescue involved in the kind of acclaim
he received. Nor do I believe would the Nobel judges have conferred
their prize on him ifhe had emerged in non-political circumstances.
Audience:
If you liken the situation today to a dark tunnel with low light,
with the assault against Western tradition, reason, multicultural history
and political correctness, where do you think we are? At the beginning of
a tunnel, inside it, or are we emerging from it?
Hilton Kramer.
My own view is that we are still in the dark.
Denis Donoghue:
I often quote a wonderful passage from Gerard Manley
Hopkins's early journals, where he recalls that as a child he constantly
asked himself, what must it must be like to be different. Now it seems to
me that what our culture, if our culture can be spoken of in these terms at
all, is very much concerned with what it must be like to be the same.
And I'm far more concerned with what it must be to be different, and
what the word "difference" mean. sl don't think the matter can be re–
solved simply by appealing to a rather facile notion of multiculturalism. I
think there's infinitely more to it than anything like that.
Igor Webb:
Rousseau writes about how it would be impossible to present
Sophocles to a contemporary French audience, because they have noth–
ing in common. He was arguing that Moliere and Corneille were passe,
and that what was needed was a kind of extension ofWoodstock festivals,
which would be appropriate for a Republic. So perhaps actually the crea–
tion of a vast audience and of a Republic immediately raises the question
of the kinds of capacities that it is going to produce.
Denis Donoghue:
Of course, I don't agree with this, in one respect. I've
been arguing a little with
J.
Hillis Miller. He has an essay in which he says
in effect, that it is outrageous for the University of California system to
expect that, shall we say, impoverished Mexican immigrants read
Hamlet,
etc. This seems to be a ludicrous argument. Let's assume for a moment
that the students are undergraduates. It seems to me that if such an immi–
grant were assigned to read German, he or she would not only expect to
read and be coached in the mysteries of reading Schiller and Goethe, and
so on, but would feel distinctively cheated if he were not led through the
mysteries of doing so.
