Blind Guides
"A STUDY of Misunderstanding," Professor Peyre adds as a sub- title, and the publisher ask on the cover, "Why are scholars and critics so generally blind to the merits of contemporary works of genius?" That is probably the important question, not "Why is the public so impercipient? " since the public, as M. Peyre thinks, will probably follow a good lead ; and at any rate all graduates of universities who have studied a literature ought to be able to judge what is new in that literature. Yet—" but yet is endless," so let us assume that this proposition is tenable, and tackle the problem of why those who ought to know better are even fiercer and more vitupetative against new works of genius than the indifferent crowd, as they have consistently been for the last two hundred years or more. Whether they have always been so, and if they have not been so, what is the reason for the change, M. Peyre does not enquire nor is such an enquiry necessary to his thesis, though if pursued it might produce ftirther illumination. The plain fact is that for a long time now the people whom we now acclaim as great classics were, when they first appeared, greeted with laughter, scorn or hatred ; as imbeciles-, ignoramuses, destroyers of tradition and all the arts, as grossly immoral or as mad. What is the reason and -what is the remedy? And why is it that works of the most sterling mediocrity were often greeted as works of the highest genius?
The last question is fairly easy to answer ; people like what is familiar and what is undisturbing ; moreover, as Ruskin pointed out, some books ae " good " for their day, though not " good " if con- sidered sub specie aeternitatis ; one can think of The Heir of Red- clyffe, which "nobody" reads nowadays but which was quite rightly. very popular indeed for some years after it was written. It filled the need of the age, and each age has a different need, because it has different experiences. Pope, for instance, was popular, because after the experiences of the previous generation or. two what Pope had to give was precisely what the generation of his day felt the want of. And this may give us a clue as to why new, great and original work does not meet with the response that might be expected. It is not so much that the great man is always above his age, as Blake: said, but that he is a little (or a great deal) ahead of it, and it takes time for new ideas, new approaches to life, to be assimilated. Nevertheless, and this is really M. Peyre's theme, that does not imply forgiveness for the illuminati for making the shocking mistakes that they do, though it should perhaps palliate the offence to a small degree. The original Man is, after all, original, and there is nothing that people, especially perhaps scholars and critics, hate so much as having to re-adjust their ideas And that is really the crime, for the failure is thanks to the fact that "critics seem unable to analyse the new into its component elements and to link the alleged ' revo- lutionary ' artists with their predecessors." It is time that they learnt better, for as Mr. Allen Tate said, as quoted here, "The scholar who tells me that he understands Dryden but makes, nothing of Hopkins or Yeats is telling us , that he does not understand Dryden." What then is to be done? For that the usual reaction is harmful to the arts there can be no doubt ; that some struggle may be beneficent is not to be denied ; but, on the whole, there IS too much discouragement, too little chance for the really original person to make a living or to persevere. M. Peyre analyses the reasons (except for the point I have sug- gested above), and makes proposals for a better state of affairs. Much of the book is devoted to proving that the state of affairs assumed teally does exist, and it makes reading that is at once amusing and dismal. He then passes on to a consideration of Critical Platitude, Obscurity and Obscuristh, Search for Standards, the Myth ot Posterity, and concludes with Toward a Reconciliation. The book is longer than it need-be, and a little repetitious ; but it is stimulating and irritating, sometimes original and sometimes platitudinous, and spiced as it is with personal judgements on writers both past and present, one wants to argue with him on frequent occasions. -Since he lambasts especially professors and professional critics, one who is both, as I am, can get perhaps a special flavour' out of the book. But others, I think, would get much the same. Do you, for instance, think that Diderot should be raised in. the scale and Voltaire de- pressed? I do. Do you think that Cowley and Jonson are over- rated? I think that the first is, but that the second is insufficiently loved. Do you think Eugene O'Neill a great dramatist? I do not, because I think that Mr. O'Neill's characters are all both emotionally and intellectually immature? Do you think that Virginia Woolf's novels are negligible? I don't, because she explored a corner of reality nobody had previously touched and added something to the tradition of English prose. An.' so on. But nobody, I think, will argue successfully against the main position that M. Peyre takes up. We must be fresher and freer, all of us, professor, critic and general reader alike ; we must abandon the false standards which he eniunerates and discusses, and find some (Aber. criterion. " Inten- sity " is what he suggests, and I think I see what he means ; hut the word is not the right one, and I doubt if one word is enough. He thinks that among English critics Hazlitt and Pater were most nearly on the right lines, and it may be so ; but then one thinks Of one book Pater singled out for praise, Feuillet's La Morte! At all events, M. Peyre's is a book every responsible- professor or critic should read, and anyone who exercises his individual judgenient in any of the arts. Let them see what word or words to find tor "intensity," and the history of criticism and popular judgement may become a less shamefully laughable thing. BONAMY DOBREE.
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