Writing and Writing About
The Critical Quarterly. Volume 1, Nos. 3 and 4. (2s. 6d.) The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1959. ($1.) X. Edited by David Wright and Patrick Swift. (Barrie and Rockliff, Gs.)
IN his editorial to the fourth number of The Critical Quarterly, Mr. C. B. Cox, while allowing that 'literature in present conditions is unlikely to effect a social revolution' (when was it ever likely to?), goes on to suggest that the educated minority is none the less an important one, and that 'critics and teachers must consider in detail the nature of this literate audience, and discipline themselves to write in ways which improve standards of read- ing.' Though distressingly put, this is not neces- sarily unpromising and the long list of Honorary Committee members given at the front of the magazine—from Empson to Wilson (Angus) in England, from Bellow to Wilbur in America— creates further expectations of, at least, a ranging liveliness in the contents. The emergent irony is that the only genuinely stimulating critical writing to be found in either of these issues, with the possible exception of Professor Danby's article on Edward Thomas. is writing about the most genuinely stimulating critic of the last thirty years : a symposium by Raymond Williams, R. J. Kaufmann and Alun Jones on the work and in- fluence of Dr. Leavis. The other dozen or so articles—among them, Mr. Cox's gallantly in- adequate attempt to retrieve Virginia Woolf's mislaid reputation; his co-editor Mr. Dyson's solemnly overweight examination of Look Back In Anger; and some plodding exegeses of Jonson, Wordsworth, Marlowe and Lawrence—signally fail to communicate anything more than dispirited interest and a 'knowledge' of the texts in question. It is possible that these are failures of expression rather than enthusiasm : the majority of the con- tributors seem to be dons; and a university lec- turer, conscious of being on display to his fellow- lecturers and loyal students (and it is hard to believe, on this showing, that they will have much more of an audience than that after the next few issues), may tend to 'discipline' himself in the wrong way. One misses the shock that Dr. Leavis characteristically administers in his finest criti- cisms, the start of delighted recognition that Mr. Williams bears generous witness to. One misses, even, the irascibility, the necessary irascibility. that an intelligently concerned man might be expected to show in face of the 'masterpieces' constantly pouring from the. presses. But this unwise delicacy of tone, this absence of edge, is intended. 'The Critical Quarterly will publish few articles which prove that some writer is a failure.' The implications of this seem to be that we can expect further lecture-notes on the safely great, ironed out into essays, more self-convincing deployments of the full critical vocabulary of com- mendation for the insignificantly contemporary.
Those who like trends (or coincidences) will be interested in Dr. Leavis's reappearance in Martin Green's strangely impressive essay 'British Decency,' given pride of place in last autumn's number of The Kenyon Review. Mr. Green finds four men 'who embody most vitally this idea of England and Englishness [not high-brow, four- square, concerned with right and wrong, distrust- ing aestheticism] . . . D. H. Lawrence, F. R. Leavis, George Orwell, and Kingsley Antis.' haven't space to intimate where this uneasy (and too easy) grouping leads him, but there is more sense in parts of Mr. Green's thesis than his emotionally autobiographical incursions would permit you to hope. One of his remarks about Leavis sounds with wry effectiveness in the organ of the Kenyon Critics : 'He does not make you feel there is a lot to be known before you yourself can begin to criticise. Critics like Trilling and Wilson refer you out to politics, economics, psychiatry; critics like Ransom and Tate wield "techniques," precision tools of the intellect. Leavis uses only his own experience.'
This same, otherwise undistinguished number contains an article on Wallace Stevens, 'Absence in Reality : A Study in the Epistemology of The Blue Guitar,' by Newton J. Stallknecht, that man- aged to lend new dimensions of confusion to my apprehension of this poet; a feat that was to be triumphantly capped when I turned to Roy Harvey Pearce on 'Stevens Posthumous' (another trend here?) in International Literary Annual No. 2. One sometimes wonders if certain quarterly critics are really trying to help and not just show-. ing off the contours of their marvellous minds. But then this annual, replete with photographs and lists of prizewinners, would have been a queer context for anything more rewarding. It struck me as little less than an expensive disaster—badly compiled, badly written, badly proof-read—and Mr- Wain seemed only too happy to bow out of it in his choppy preface. The section 'European Intelligence'—with its woman's magazine gush about Aragon; its windy plaudits for Hermann Broch (1886-1951), `one of the profoundest mod ern novelists and poets, philosophers and thinkers of our era'; its scamper through the top names in Swedish literature; and its quick journal- istic glance at the thaw-and-after in Eastern Europe—is matched in futility only by William Cooper's astonishingly wilful and braggart piece, ostensibly on 'Some Aspects of the Experimental Novel,' but actually a direct onslaught on Robbe- Grillet. Mr. Cooper goes whooping into action With his rubber hammer, and burly oaths as if he's really on to something : Mr. Wain is quite tart about it all in his introduction. The most thought- ful contribution is Anthony Hartley's free-wheel- ing.survey of the contemporary English scene, in wit 'eh he attacks our habit of confusing 'culture' with 'a culture,' and suggests the new Left-wing concern with aesthetic rather than directly ethical values may result in a censorious new orthodoxy as philistine as the old. He also has some good things to say about the essential Individuality of the artiste The new magazine, X, has several things to s_1Y, too, about the artist, but they appear in such contradictory contexts, and are so gnomically laid Out, that I'm uncertain as to what exactly blue-white are. This new quarterly is got up on thick I-nue-white paper with excellent reproductions of some Auerbach paintings and a Giacometti draw- All very elegant and quietly decisive, but one mustn't be too intimidated, even if Marks and Spencer have mysteriously taken one of their rare full-Page advertisements. There's an amusing piece of anti-American doggerel by George Bar s r, andwe Logue by Anthony Cronin. Perhaps
should leave it at that and wait for the next %tie.
JOHN COLEMAN
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