Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 9

RECONSIDERATION I1

The Achievement of F. R. Leavis


G. Singh

THERE IS NO GREAT POETRY, there are only literature and the social and cultural con-
great poets, said John Sparrow, the late text from which literature is born.” Such
Warden of All Souls, in his British Acad- dedication is rare in any critic. In Leavis
emy lecture on “The Idea of Great Po- it was his second nature, something com-
etry” (1958). Looking back on Dr. F.R. pulsive and overriding, so that criticism
Leavis’s life, achievement, and charac- for him was, t o use T.S. Eliot’s words, “as
ter, one can say that “there is no great inevitable as breathing.”
criticism; there are only great critics.” Controversy dogged Leavis all his life,
Leavis was such a critic, just as Dr. as it continues even after his death, but it
Johnson, Coleridge, and Arnold were-a did not distract him from his proper job
great critic who was, like great writers, as a critic. And even though he some-
according to Leavis himself, also a great times responded to it-‘‘I am used to
man. His commitment to literature and being misrepresented, but I am not re-
literary criticism went far beyond what is signed to it”-it neither diminished his
merely professional or academic; it was stature nor impaired his vision or au-
both moral and spiritual, a way of living thority as a critic.
as well as of thinking. He could have said As the century draws to its close, in
with Henry James: “I urn damned criti- any objective and dispassionate stock-
cal-for it’s the only thing to be, and all taking Leavis’s figure will be seen to
else is damned humbug.” This explains emerge over and above any other
the fervor, the intensity, and the depth twentiethcentury critic-leaving aside
and sincerity behind everything Leavis the criticism of the three creative writ-
wrote or argued about. It was a commit- ers-Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, and T.S.
ment the nature of which both Leavis Eliot. Already in his lifetime, Leavis’s criti-
and his wife identified in their dedication cal revaluations, placings, and determi-
of their Dickens book: “We dedicate this nations-once regarded as heretical and
book to each other as proof ...of forty revolutionary-had come to acquire or-
years and more of daily collaboration in thodox currency. Establishing what con-
living, university teaching, discussion of stituted the majorness of the major writ-
ers of this century-Hardy and Yeats
G. SINGH has edited two posthumously p u b (but only on the basis of not more than
lished volumes by I;: R. Leauis and three by Q. half adozen poems of theirs), Pound (but
D. Leauis. He is also the author of F. R. Leavis: solely as the author of Hugh Selwyn
A Literary Biography (1995). Muuberley), the Joyce of Ulysses, D.H.

Modem Age 39 7

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
Lawrence, Henry James, Conrad; and at and sensibility; developed the technique
the same time-an inevitable corollary- of reading a novel as a dramatic poem,
debunking such, according t o him, and took the interpretation and evalua-
bloated reputations as the Joyce of Work tion of a poem, as well as the analysis of
in Progress, the Pound of the Cantos, what is creative about its style and lan-
Auden, C . Day Lewis, E.M. Forster, Vir- guage, beyond scholastic exegesis on
ginia Woolf, and, of course, C.P. Snow- the one hand, and philosophy, philology,
these were the tasks Leavis set himself as and linguistics on the other. Terms such
a critic. In so doing h e was solely moti- as “close criticism,” “practical criticism,”
vated by his belief in the value and im- “new criticism,” meant nothing more and
portance of literary criticism no less than nothing less to Leavis than criticism in
in the value of creative writing itself-the practice-criticism achieved through
two being essentially linked. From the analytical sublety, delicacy and percep-
outset-his own Ph.D. thesis at Cam- tiveness while reading a poem or a novel.
bridge being on the relation of journal- Leavis neither followed nor founded
ism to literature-Leavis was conscious any theory or schoolof criticism. He was,
of the difference not only between the in principle, against any theory or meth-
two, but also between the journalism of odology, and would have fully agreed
the Sunday papers and literary criticism with T.S. Eliot, that in criticism the only
properly so called. One aspect of the method is to be very intelligent-and,
modern technologico-Benthamite civili- Leavis might have added, very mature.
zation he lost no opportunity of castigat- However, in some of his essays, Leavis
ing was the inordinate influence the mass comes very close, if not t o defining or
media exercised; and “the journalistic formulating his theory or method of criti-
addiction of our intellectuals-and jour- cism, at least to characterizing the way
nalism (in one form or another),” he he read and analyzed poetry. In his cel-
noted, “is now the menacing disease of ebrated reply t o criticisms of his book
university ‘English.”’It is such intellectu- Revaluation by Rene Wellek, Leavis tells
als-or “intellectuals without intellect,” him that by the critic of poetry he under-
as h e would call them-who, in review- stands “the complete reader,” the ideal
ing Leavis’s books, attacked not so much critic being the ideal reader; that the
what he wrote, as what he was, what he “reading demanded by poetry is of a
believed, and what h e stood for. different kind from that demanded by a
This brought about what one might philosopher,” that “philosophy is ab-
call the general anti-Leavis stance of the stract and poetry concrete,” and that
reviewers in newspapers and weekly “words in poetry invite us, not to ‘think
periodicals, who chose to ignore o r mis- about’ and judge but to ‘feel into’ or
represent the critical revolution Leavis ‘become’-to realize a complex experi-
brought about through Scrutiny, as well ence that is given in words. They de-
I
as through his epoch-making books- mand, not merely a fuller-bodied re-
New Bearings in English Poetry (1932), sponse, but a completer responsive-
Revaluation (1936), The Great Tradition ness”-a responsiveness that is incom-
(1948), The Common Pursuit (1952), D. H. patible with the judicial oneeye-on-the-
Lawrence: Novelist (1 953, Dickens the standard-approach suggested by Dr.
Novelist(l970,together with Q. D. Leavis), Wellek‘s phrase: “your ‘norm’with which
, and The Living Principle (1975). you measure every poet.”
Leavis’s writings gave a new force, a Practical examples of this kind of read-
new significance and a new relevance t o ing, analyzing and evaluating poetry are
literary criticism asa discipline of thought Leavis’s comments on Act I, Scene VI, of

398 Fall 1998

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
Macbeth, Macbeth’s speech which opens Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence was the
scene VI1 of Act I; Donne’s “The Sun Ris- twentiethcentury successor-Lawrence
ing’’; the passage with which Milton’s each of whose great novels is “a compre-
description ofthe Garden of Eden closes hensive and intensely ‘engaged’ study of
(Paradise Lost, Bk IV, 1.268); passages modern civilization.” In tackling such
from Dunciad, Prelude, and Excursion as novels Leavis’s own style and language
well as The Ruined Cottage; Matthew attain that psychological and creative
Ar n o 1d ’s s o n n e t “Shakespear e”; sublety and perceptivity in the use of
Hopkins’s The Wreck of the Deutschland; language that he attributes t o Lawrence.
Hardy’s “After a Journey”; Yeats’s “Sail- Lawrence, Leavis tells us, “compares the
ing to Byzantium,” “Byzantium,” and individual life to a mountain tarn that is
“AmongSchool Children”;Pound’s Hugh fed from below, no inlet being percep-
SelwynMauberley;Eliot’s The WasteLand, tible. The promptings of true spontane-
Ash Wednesday,and Four Quartets;and- ity-those, for instance, in which the cre-
in Italian-Montale’s Xenia. ativity of an artist is manifested-come
In the field of the novel, too, Leavis’s from the hidden source, which ‘it is the
celebrated critiques are based on the hardest thing in the world’ to learn how
“close reading” of Dickens’s Dombey and to draw from.” However, analysis of style,
Son, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit; George language, and imagery was never under-
Eliot’s Romola, Middlemarch, and Daniel taken by Leavis for its own sake; it always
Deronda; Henry James’s The Portrait of a subserved a larger and more important
Lady, The Europeans, and What Maisie scope-that of placing and evaluating
Knew; Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, Vic- the poem or the novel in question.
tory,and 7’heSecretAgent;D.H. Lawrence’s Close analytical and evaluative criti-
Women in Love, The Rainbow, and The cism that determines the tone and the
Captain’s Doll; Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead substance of Leavis’s essays on the po-
Wilson;and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. In ets, novelists, and prose writers (from
such critiques, Leavis invariably displays Milton to T.S. Eliot, and from Dickens to
” that masterly grip on the complexity of D.H. Lawrence), also informs his essays
the issues raised by aparticular novel, or on the classical English critics-Johnson,
dramatically enacted by a particular char- Coleridge, Matthew Arnold-or on mod-
acter-in other words, on the “criticism ern critics such as Henry James, D.H.
of life,”society, and the Zeitgeist implicit Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot. In criticizing
in the novel-as a result of which his other critics, Leavis sifted what was his-
reading of the novels achieves a better torically important in their work from
criticism and a better history of the so- what is intrinsically and permanently so,
cial and cultural milieu in which the novel and evaluated it in terms of the criteria
was written than any historian of that habitually embodied in his own criticism.
period. And this, among other things, is Johnson’s criticism, for instance, in
because of his disciplined literary and contrast with Dryden’s, is considered to
critical sensitivity to the novelists’ cre- belong to “‘the living classics’.... It can be
ative use of the language, which corrobo- read afresh every year with unaffected
rates the truth of his own proposition pleasure and new stimulus. It is alive and
that in the Victorian age “the poetic life-giving.’’Leavis analyzes the secret of
strength of the language goes into the the vigor and the weight of Johnson’s
novel,” and that “the great novelists are critical writings as residing in “a power-
the successors of Shakespeare.” ful mind and a profoundly serious na-
If Dickens and George Eliot were the ture,” and resulting from “bringing to
nineteenth-century s u c c e s s o r s of bear at every point the ordered experi-

Modern Age 399

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
ence of a lifetime.” Equally penetrating Literaria, Coleridge is seen to be at his
are Leavis’s comments on Johnson’s limi- best in his analytic evaluation and inter-
tations, even though such limitations pretation of Shakespeare’s Venus and
have their “positive correlatives.” How- Adonis and Lucrece, so that, as Leavis
ever, “they are not the less limitations, points out, “thereis nowhere in Coleridge
and seriously disabling ones.” One limi- anything more impressive to be found
tation is Johnson’s “ c e n s u r e of than this.” And though he was “much
Shakespeare’s indifference to poetic jus- more brilliantly gifted than Arnold.. .
tice and Shakespeare’s general careless- nothing of his deserves the classical sta-
ness about the duty to instruct.” In dis- tus of Arnold’s best work-a judgement
cussing Johnson’svirtues and limitations, a t o d d s with T.S. Eliot’s claiming
Leavis arrives at an admirably balanced Coleridge as “perhaps the greatest of
view of Johnson’s achievement as a critic: English critics, and in a sense the best.”
“The subtlety of analysis that Coleridge, In dealing with Matthew Arnold-in
with his psychological inwardness, is to many respects the critic most akin to
bring into criticism is not at Johnson’s him-Leavis observes that when we read
command. But it can besaid that Johnson, Arnold’s classical essay “‘The Study of
with the rational vigour and the direct- Poetry,’ it is impossible not to recognize
ness of its appeal to experience, repre- that we have to do with an extraordinar-
sents the best that criticism can d o be- ily distinguished mind in complete pos-
fore Coleridge.” session of its purpose and pursuing it
In Coleridge’s own case, Leavis em- with easy mastery-that, in fact, we are
phasizes the discrepancy between “a reading a great critic,” even though the
rarely gifted mind,” which Coleridge un- essay “dates” in various ways; as, for
doubtedly possessed, and what, with his instance, when, in the “famous”opening,
gifts, he actually achieved in the field of Arnold suggests that religion is going to
literary criticism, as distinguished from be replaced by poetry. As to Arnold’s
his “philosophy of art,” his theoretical “best-known tag” from this essay-“criti-
criticism, his “metaphysics, poetry and cism of life”-Leavis, instead of saying
facts of the mind,” Coleridge’s “darling with Eliot that Pater’s doctrine of “Art for
studies,” which, according to Leavis, fall Art’s sake” is the offspring of Arnold’s
outside the range of the literary critic. “criticism of life,” argues how the latter
Nevertheless Coleridge had the capac- expresses “an intention directly counter
ity, as some of the passages Leavis quotes t o the tendency that finds its consumma-
to illustrate, for “a kind of sensitive ana- tion in ‘Art for Art’s sake.”’ For, as Leavis
lytic penetration such as will hardly be as a literary critic-cum-literary historian
found in any earlier critic.” Why he could points out, “Aestheticism was not a mod-
not bring this capacity to fruition is ana- ern development: the nature of the trend
lyzed by Leavis in a way that demon- from Keats through Tennyson and Dante
strates his own capacity for “sensitive Gabriel Rossetti was, even in Arnold’s
analytic penetration” as well as for criti- midcareer, not unapparent to the critic
cal evaluation. It is, Leavis tells us, “what who passed judgement on the Great Ro-
starts out as inthesynopsis ofBiographia mantics.” Leavis interprets Arnold’s
Literaria-the disorderliness, the lack of “criticism of life” in a way that throws
all organization or sustained develop light on his own critical principles and
ment: locally too, even in the best places, criteria. “We make (Arnold insists) our
he fails t o bring his thoughts to a sharp major judgements about poetry by bring-
edge and seems too content with easy ing t o b e a r the completest and
expression.” In chapter XIV of Biographia profoundest sense of relative value that,

400 Fall 1998

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
aided by the work judged, we can focus and no escaping the appeal of life, how-
from our total experience of life (which ever much one may suppose oneself to
includes literature), and our judgement believe in the ultimateness or self-
has intimate bearings on the most seri- sufficiency of art.” Hence James could
ous choices we have to make thereafter not help pointing out that Maupassant
in our living.” Hence the Leavisian expo- “never, in the score of values, presents a
sition of what Arnold meant by the fa- gentleman”; that the default of intelli-
mous phrase “criticism of life” sums u p gence in the artist as artist (uiz, the au-
his own critical philosophy and valua- thor of Madame Bouary) is a default of
tion as well as the grounds for his belief intelligence about life;that for all its popu-
that “thejudgements the literary critic is lousness Balzac’s world struck him “as
concerned with are judgements about dauntingly empty.”
life”and that the study of literature is the Among other things which distinguish
best means of improving one’s capacity Leavis’s critiques of Dr. Johnson,
for living-a belief that is central t o Coleridge, Arnold, and James from his
Leavis’s writings and to Scrutiny. Thus, critiques of Eliot (in “T.S. Eliot as a Critic”)
for all the defects and limitations Leavis is his sense of contemporaneitywith Eliot
found in Arnold’s The Study o f Poetry- and the particular kind of indebtedness
for instance the lack of the “gift for con- on Leavis’s part that that entailed. Yet,
sistency and definition”-Leavis was neither the sense of contemporaneity
closer in spirit to Arnold than to Coleridge nor that of indebtedness prevented him
or Johnson, and possessed and prac- from making searching criticisms of Eliot
’ ticed with notable success the more posi- as critic. Leavis had nothing but praise
tive values he attributed to Arnold: “a for Eliot’s early essays, including the “In-
belief in keeping in sensitive touch with troductory Essay” on Dr. Johnson’s Van-
the concrete and an accompanying gift ity o f Human Wishes and London, which
for implicit definition-virtues that prove he considered to be one of Eliot’s fin-
adequate to the sure and easy manage- est-“in fact a model of critical writing.”
ment of matured argument and are, as we Nevertheless he found certain ideas, atti-
see them in Arnold, essentially those of a tudes, and valuations in those essays
literary critic.” This, in part, accounts for “put into currency by Eliot to be arbi-
Leavis’s considering Arnold not only trary.” For instance, Eliot’s doctrine of
“compellingly alive,”but also “decidedly impersonality and of the separation in an
more of a critic than the Sainte-Beuve to artist between “the man who suffers and
whom he so deferred.” the mind which creates”; his reducing
Coming to Henry James-“a great Vic- the tragedy of Hamlet “to a matter of an ’
torian Anglo-Saxon”-Leavis justifies his inexpressible emotional state, one of dis-
place among the classical critics by vir- gust, occasioned in Hamlet by his
tue of his essential value-judgements, mother”; his bracketing Measure forMea-
especially those concerning the theme sure with Hamlet as an “‘artistic failure’
of “morality” in art visa-vis Maupassant, dealing with ‘intractable material.”’ For
Flaubert, and Balzac. A disciple of Leavis, Measure forMeasureis “awonder-
Flaubert, Maupassant also considered fully sure, direct, profound and delicate
art to be an absolute or ultimate, and treatment of sex,” which constitutes its
James, “irretrievably an Anglo-Saxon,” “intractability” for Eliot just as the “dis-
could not but ask questions about the gust” of Hamlet does. Hence, according
value and significance of the perfectly to Leavis, Eliot’s fundamental defect as a
done, and could not but bring home t o critic is this negative attitude towards
his readers that “there is no eliminating life, “attitudes of disgust and fear and

Modern Age 401

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
rejection, that play a part of which h e is In Shakespeare’s mature plays, and espe-
not properly conscious.. ..They portend ciallyin thelaterplays...itis the burden to
a radical failure of wholeness and coher- be delivered, the precise and urgent com-
ence in him, and consequently a defeat of mand from within, that determines ex-
intelligence.” pression-tyrannically. That i s Shake-
As a judge of modern poetry, too, speare’s greatness: the complete subjec-
tion-subjugation-of the medium to the
Eliot’s performance is judged t o be “con- uncompromising complex and delicate
sistently disastrous”; as, for instance, his need that uses it.
backing Joyce and Wyndham Lewis, his
dismissing Lawrence, his overestimate Milton invented a medium the distinction
of Virginia Woolf, his considering David of which is to have denied itself the life of
the living language.
Garnett as a “significant writer, a master
of English prose,” his stating that “he is Bunyan’s religion, like his art, comes from
not interested in what, in the Cantos, the whole man. And the man,we can’t help
Pound says, but only in the way that he telling ourselves as we reflect on the na-
says it.” All this, according to Leavis, ture of the power of his masterpiece, be-
exemplifies Eliot’s weakness in value longed to a community and to a culture, a
culture that certainly could not be divined
judgement. And for Leavis the rightness from his theology.
and perceptiveness of one’s own value-
judgements is the hallmark of a literary Pope is as much the last poet of the seven-
critic. “Any reading of a poem,” Leavis teenth century as the first of the
tells us,-and, for that matter, of a novel eighteenth.. .his wit is metaphysical as well
as Augustan, and he can be at once polite
as well-“involves an element of implicit and profound.
valuation. The process, the kind of activ-
ity of inner response and discipline by He [Wordsworth]had, if not a philosophy,
which we take possession of the created awisdom to communicate.. ..His heart was
work, is essentially the kind of activity far from “unoccupiedby sorrow of its own,”
and his sense of responsibility for human
that completes itself in full explicit value
distress and his generously active sympa-
judgements. There is no such thing as thies had involved him in emotional disas-
neutral possession.” ters that threatened his hold on life. A
Leavis’s belief in the importance of disciplined limiting of contemplation to
critical value judgements was the inevi- the endurable, and, consequently, a with-
table consequence of his belief in signifi- drawal to a reassuring environment, be-
cant art and how “it challenges us in the came terrible necessities for him.
most disturbing and inescapable way to The pain with which his [Keats’s] heart
a radical pondering, a new profound real- aches (in “Ode to a Nightingale”) is not
ization, of the grounds of our most im- that of a moral maturity, of a disenchanted
portant determinations and choices. wisdom born of a steady contemplation of
Which is what Arnold meant by things as they are; it is itself a luxury.
saying.. .that literature is to be judged as The Victorian-romantic addicts of beauty
‘criticism of life.”’ It is such a belief, held and transience cherish the pang as a kind
with a passionate conviction and disin- of religiose-poetic sanction for defeatism
terested zeal, that gave life and authority in the face of an alien actual world-a d e
to Leavis’s key pronouncements on vari- featism offering itself as a spiritual superi-
ous poets, novelists and writers, .and ority. Hopkins embraces transience as a
their works-pronouncements which necessary condition of any grasp of the
enable us to see them in a new light, from real.
a new angle, and in a new perspective. How much of the fully achieved thing is
Here are some examples: there in Yeats’s oeuure-what proportion

402 Fall 1998

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
of the wholly created poem that stands the “personal” nature of a judgement. A
there unequivocally in its own right, self- judgement, he would say, “iseither per-
sufficient? I have in mind the period of his sonal or it is nothing; you cannot take
work in which he challenges us to think of over someone else’s.” No wonder this
him as a major poet. And it seems to me gave his critical reasoning and conclu-
that the proportion is not large.
sions the air of dogmatic categoricalness,
Any real claim he [Thomas Hardy] may but the Johnsonian phrase “not dogmati-
have to major status rests upon half a cally but deliberately” served him, too,
dozen poems alone: “Neutral Tones,” “A in explaining the whole drift and ethos of
Broken Ap p o i nt ment , Th e Se 1f -
” “
his critical scope and procedure. Cour-
Unseeing,”“TheVoice,”“Aftera Journey,”
age and integrity were the hallmarks of
“DuringWind and Rain.”
Leavis both as a critic and as a man who
The rhythms [in Pound’s Hugh Selwyn would have wholeheartedly endorsed
Mauberfey], in their apparent looseness both what D.H. Lawrence says: “A critic
and carelessness, are marvels of subtlety: must be emotionally alive in every fibre,
“out of key with his times” is being said intellectually capable and skilful in es-
everywhere by strict rhythmic
means.. ..Mr. Pound’s regeneration of po- sential logic, and then morally very hon-
etic idiom is more than a matter of using est”-and what Pound says: “If a man is
modern colloquial speech....The whole not ready t o take any risk for his ideas,
[Hugh Selwyn Mauberley] is great poetry, either his ideas are worth nothing o r he
at once traditional and original. Mr. is worth nothing.”
Pound‘s standing as a poet rests upon it, As the numerous hurdles in his aca-
and it rests securely. demic career at Cambridge, where he
The poet [T.S. Eliot] is as close to the never achieved a full professorship and
contemporary world as any novelist could was made a Reader only in the last two
be....By means of such references and years, prove, Leavis did take many such
quotations Mr. Eliot [in The Waste Land] risks. “The only way to escape misrepre
attains a compression,otherwise unattain- sentation,” he would say, “is never to
able, that is essential to his aim; a com- commit oneself to any critical judgement
pression approaching simultaneity-the that makes an impact-that is, never to
co-presence in the mind of a number of say anything.” Both in his books and in
different orientations, fundamental atti- his Scrutiny reviews and articles, Leavis
tudes, orders of experience....[FourQuar- had much to say and he said it with
tets is a] tour-de-force of disciplined think-
ing. characteristic force and frankness. For
instance, concerning the charge of cru-
It is a tribute to Leavis’s powers of elty and the destructive “attack” against
style as well as of critical thought and Sir C.P. Snow, Leavis said: “The
perception in their concreteness and unanswerableness is the ‘cruelty’ and is
concentratedness that such pithy com- what has wounded Snow. It would have
ments can sum up with such dramatic been less ‘cruel’ if it had been accompa-
aptness the merits and qualities of a nied, as it is not, by the animus that
particular poet or poem. But behind the impels the intention t o hurt.” Leavis’s
efficacy of Leavis’s style and idiom, be- criticism, even at its most drastic and
hind what he manages to convey so suc- severe, was never tainted by such an
cinctly, lay the force of his critical con- animus.
victions rooted in firsthand experience But if Leavis had no such animus ac-
and insight. Academic, philosophical, and companying his criticism, it did not fol-
linguistic methods and approaches had low that his critics, too, would be free
little use for one who firmly believed in from it-critics who did not so much

Modem Age 403

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
attack him, what he had written, and gested that “neither democratic zeal nor
what he stood for, as misrepresent it. For egalitarian jealousies should be permit-
instance, even though he had written ted to dismiss or discredit the fact that
with critical acumen and insight on Mark only alimited portion of any young adults
Twain and T.S. Eliot, the Ezra Pound of is capable of profiting by, or enjoying,
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, as well as about university education. The proper stan-
“The Americanness of American Litera- dard can be maintained only if the stu-
ture,” where he referred to the “Ameri- dents the university is required to deal
can c e n t r a1 tradition ” (Cooper , with are-for the most part, at anyrate-
Hawthorne, Melville, and James) “carry- of university quality. If standards are not
ing with it the promise of a robust con- maintained somewhere the whole com-
tinuing life” and suggested that “in Jane munity is let down.” The more you ex-
Austen, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, tend higher education, Leavis propheti-
George Eliot, Henry James, Conrad, and cally foresaw, “and especially in an age of
D.H. Lawrence we have the successors of technological aids and open universities
Shakespeare,” he was accused of being ...the more insidious becomes the men-
anti-American. And this because, among ace to standards and the more potent
other things, he contemplated, as he calls and unashamed t h e animus against
it, “the nightmare of the intensification of them.” Looking around as he saw the
what Matthew Arnold feared,” namely, upsurge of the democratic mass univer-
the danger of England becoming a greater sity in the seventies he realized that al-
Holland or a little America; interpreted ready there was no redeeming it-there
the general acceptance, in England, of was no redeeming it because, as he wrote
Hemingway as a great writer, as a sign of just four years before his death, “the
the collapse of standards; and showed civilization it represents has, almost over-
his astonishment at American academ- night, ceased to believe in its own as-
ics writing on novels from Jane Austen to sumptions and recoils nihilistically from
D.H. Lawrence with “utter insensitive- itself .”
ness t o those refinements of perception, Still another misrepresentation Leavis
distinction, valuation and interest which suffered from all his life concerned his
imply the collaboratively created human English style. He was frequently accused
reality they depend on, and, voided of of “clumsiness of expression,” “nervous
which the novelist’s theme becomes a mannerisms of style,” “ramshackle use
mere opportunity for such gratuitous- of language.” One critic compared his
ness of ‘interpretation’as the critic’s need English to “athird former’s translation of
to be original may prompt him (or her) to Cicero”; another described it as “coke-
contrive.” like in its roughness and chill”; and still
Another misrepresentation concerned another blamed him for his “imprecise
Leavis’s views on university education. prose and bad temper.” A reviewer in the
H e was accused of being both elitist and Times Literary Supplement quoted a long
anti-democratic, when h e protested sentence from Leavis’s comment on
against “the transition from quality to Milton’s influence in the nineteenth cen-
quantity in education,” against the uni- tury, and simplistically paraphrased it-
versities “turning out hordes of ‘substan- a paraphrase where the subtlety and
dard’ would-be researchers,” thereby cogency of Leavis’s reasoning disappears
debasing ”research,”and against the ac- and what remains is an inert, skeletal
celerating drift of Americanization lead- account of what Leavis was conveying.
ing us headlong towards the Compre- So closely tied u p Leavis’s thought pro-
hensive University; and when he sug- cess is with his style that it is impossible

404 Fall 1998

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
t o improve upon or modify his English subtlety and complexity. If there is any
without blunting the edge and losing the critic in this century of whom it may be
characteristic nuance of irony and the said that his was “an individual mind,” it
sophisticated subtlety of intellectual is no doubt F.R. Leavis-a mind that in-
statement. When Leavis’s book on evitably creates its own individual style.
Lawrencewas being published in America There is no important critic who did not
by Knopf, the publisher’s “stylist” wrote have such a style-the personal quality
to Leavis suggesting that he clarify a and peculiarity of style reflecting the
particular sentence in the book. Leavis’s individuality and independence of his
reaction was: “I am not going t o attempt mind and thought. It was so with Dr.
that kind of paraphrase for the American Johnson, Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold,
or any other reader. It’s like being asked and it is so with Leavis whose place is
to have a different kind of mind and to surely with them-and not with the culti-
have written a different kind of book. vators or lovers of elegant English. It is
There I stand and, as Luther said, ‘I can ironic that with all his “sensitizing famil-
no other.’ I tried the sentence on Q.D. iaritywith the subtleties of language, and
Leavis (my severest critic), and she says the insight into the relations between
it would give no trouble to anyone who abstract or generalising thought and the
can read the book.” concrete of human experience” acquired
Those who accused Leavis of the ob- through a long and assiduous frequenta-
scurity and incomprehensibility of his tion of such masters of prose as Dickens,
English should have asked themselves George Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence, Leavis
some very simple questions-and they, should be considered incapable of writ-
of course, did not. How could Leavis’s ing “good English,”as Dame Edith Sitwell,
criticism, couched in a “ramshackle,” while dismissing his Two Cultures? The
“convoluted,” and “incomprehensible” Significance of C.P. Snow (1962), clearly
English, have had the vast impact it had? implied: “Dr. Leavis only attacked Snow
How could he have been such an effec- because he is famous and writes good
tive teacher and such a lively and arrest- English.”
ing public lecturer? How could he have A critic of life as well as of literature, of
given to the English language, more than society, and of what he called “certain
any other twentiethcentury critic (T.S. menacing characteristics of our civiliza-
Eliot included), except Ezra Pound, so tion,” as well as of university education,
many pithy, pregnant, and memorable Leavis may be said to have worn in this
critical maxims and formulations, if his century the mantle of Matthew Arnold,
English had been so bad? And lastly how so that one can say of him what A.E.
can one account for the success and Housman said of Arnold after the latter’s
numerous reprints on both sides of the death: “He leaves men behind him to
Atlantic of his books, if those who bought whom we cannot refuse the name of critic;
them could not easily make out what he but then we need to find some other
was saying? name for him and to call him more than a
Clarity of expression, A.E. Housman critic, as John the Baptist was called
said, is not a virtue but a duty. But so is more than a prophet.”
fidelity to one’s own thought in all its

Modem Age 405

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

Вам также может понравиться