Literature and Politics

The Reactionaries, by John Harrison. Shocken Books, $6.00

It is worth while for John Harrison, a young English critic, to have spoken out from a Left position concerning a matter which usually is brushed under the rug—the political emotions of the best modern writers, and, even more important, the political tendencies of their work. It is worth while because a deep contradiction exists in our literary culture, as comprised of writers, critics, teachers, and students, and it is all to the good that we reflect upon this contradiction. Harrison’s book may inaugurate a very useful discussion. On the one hand, the critics and teachers who deal with modern literature are for the most part liberal, and rather routinely so. No one who follows the quarterlies or inhabits an academic department will suppose that this is anything but a plain statement of fact. But, in wild contrast, most of the works they admire and teach are clearly hostile, in their over-all tendency, to such liberalism. Harrison discusses Yeats, Wyndham Lewis, Pound, Eliot, and Lawrence, but his list could have been greatly extended. To Kipling, for example. Or to Proust and James, who adored and luxuriated in all those social distinctions which liberalism hates. Or to Hemingway, atavistic in his fascination with bullfighters, warriors and violent death. Or to Conrad and the mariner’s code; Faulkner and—of all things—Mississippi; Tate and Ransom; Frost, or Waugh, or Mann, drawn as he was to the discoveries to be made on the night side of life. How very little all this “goes with” the familiar temper of liberalism as encountered in the journals, the press, or the faculty lounge. A SERIOUS CONSIDERATION of this centradiction might well be the beginning of illumination, for awareness does characteristically arise out of a perception of contradiction. When two facts aren’t compatible, there must be some reason: thus the mind moves on, as in Hegel’s account of consciousness. Harrison, however, does: little more than view with alarm. If, say, Eliot and Yeats reject as inadequate—inadequate, that is, as informing a Weltanschauung—the optimism, humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and utilitarianism which come down to us from the Enlightenment, and which today constitute the liberal tradition, it does not occur to Harrison to inquire whether there might not, really, be something inadequate about these – things.

The Reactionaries, by John Harrison. Shocken Books, $6.00

It is worth while for John Harrison, a young English critic, to have spoken out from a Left position concerning a matter which usually is brushed under the rug—the political emotions of the best modern writers, and, even more important, the political tendencies of their work. It is worth while because a deep contradiction exists in our literary culture, as comprised of writers, critics, teachers, and students, and it is all to the good that we reflect upon this contradiction. Harrison’s book may inaugurate a very useful discussion. On the one hand, the critics and teachers who deal with modern literature are for the most part liberal, and rather routinely so. No one who follows the quarterlies or inhabits an academic department will suppose that this is anything but a plain statement of fact. But, in wild contrast, most of the works they admire and teach are clearly hostile, in their over-all tendency, to such liberalism. Harrison discusses Yeats, Wyndham Lewis, Pound, Eliot, and Lawrence, but his list could have been greatly extended. To Kipling, for example. Or to Proust and James, who adored and luxuriated in all those social distinctions which liberalism hates. Or to Hemingway, atavistic in his fascination with bullfighters, warriors and violent death. Or to Conrad and the mariner’s code; Faulkner and—of all things—Mississippi; Tate and Ransom; Frost, or Waugh, or Mann, drawn as he was to the discoveries to be made on the night side of life. How very little all this “goes with” the familiar temper of liberalism as encountered in the journals, the press, or the faculty lounge. A SERIOUS CONSIDERATION of this centradiction might well be the beginning of illumination, for awareness does characteristically arise out of a perception of contradiction. When two facts aren’t compatible, there must be some reason: thus the mind moves on, as in Hegel’s account of consciousness. Harrison, however, does: little more than view with alarm. If, say, Eliot and Yeats reject as inadequate—inadequate, that is, as informing a Weltanschauung—the optimism, humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and utilitarianism which come down to us from the Enlightenment, and which today constitute the liberal tradition, it does not occur to Harrison to inquire whether there might not, really, be something inadequate about these – things.