The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Comment (November 1923)

COMMENT

WE are uncertain whether what we observe is a new New Hellenism or merely a higher Hellenism. The Greek spirit is, in any case, with us; and we are charmed.

The Greeks are supposed to have been lovers of beauty and of wisdom; indeed it may be their peculiar and happy character to have been able to love both. But, as an eminent philosopher once informed an undergraduate, their love of beauty would never have led them to tolerate, for a moment, such works of art as were dangerous to the state. Again it would seem that fortune was kind to them; except for peculations they found nothing in the Parthenon hostile to good government and the Established Church.

But if we can't all be happy, we can be active; and it is good to note that even in organizations which are avowedly unpolitical (yet we fancy that a Greek would not have understood "unpolitical" except as a term of reproach) there is a definite tendency to look jealously upon works of art and to discover whether the political organism may not deteriorate because of them. A hero writes a wicked book and it is moved and seconded that he should lose his medals; that is one of those famous first steps which count; we shall presently impeach a President for using too many loose sentences. The great thing for us is that all of the protests against art and letters, protests which fancy themselves purely moral, concede more than they withhold. They are abject in the presence of art—a nice position to maintain—and even if they overvalue the influence of art, acknowledge its legitimacy and its relevance to life.

It remains for the arts to do the handsome thing—and they are doing it. "Life" becomes the touchstone of literary endeavour—not "true to life" but "serving life" the standard of measurement. "Life" in these connexions means the present problem—not the eternal; and it will presently be improper, if not impossible, for a writer to concern himself with a theme which has no bearing on revolutions, applied psychology, or, in general, the moral and physical catastrophe which, we have been assured, impends.

Over Mr T. S. Eliot's initials there appear in the current number of The Criterion, some brief words on this subject:

". . . For in our time the pursuit of literary perfection, and the preoccupation with literature and art for their own sake, are objects of attack, no longer in the name of 'morals,' but in the name of a much more insidious catchword: 'life.' I say 'more dangerous,' because the term 'morals,' at worst, stands for some order or system, even if a bad one; whereas 'life,' with much vaguer meaning, and therefore much greater possibilities of unctiousness, may be merely a symbol of chaos. Those, however, who affirm an antinomy between 'literature,' meaning any literature which can appeal only to a small and fastidious public, and 'life,' are not only flattering the complacency of the half-educated, but asserting a principle of disorder.

"It is not, certainly, the function of a literary review to provide material for the chat of coteries—nor is a review called upon to avoid such appeal. A literary review should maintain the application, in literature, of principles which have their consequences also in politics and in private conduct; and it should maintain them without tolerating any confusion of the purposes of pure literature with the purposes of politics or ethics.

"In the common mind all interests are confused, and each degraded by the confusion. And where they are confused, they cannot be related; in the common mind any specialized activity is conceived as something isolated from life, an odious task or a pastime of mandarins. To maintain the autonomy, and the disinterestedness, or every human activity, and to perceive it in relation to every other, require a considerable discipline. It is the function of a literary review to maintain the autonomy and the disinterestedness of literature, and at the same time to exhibit the relations of literature—not to 'life,' as something contrasted to literature, but to all the other activities, which, together with literature, are the components of life."

The note is entitled The Function of a Literary Review. We recommend the statement to our contemporaries.