Eliot himself do not allow us to finish with them; and the refusal
the highly developed. No doubt they are: but they are at the same
is repeated by a great many European writers less large than these.
time the means by which a complex civilization keeps the primitive
With exceptions that I shall note, the same thing cannot be said
in mind and refers to it. Whence and whither, birth and death, fate,
of modern American literature. American literature seems to me
free will, and immortality-these are never far from systematic
essentially passive: our minds tend always to be made up about this
thought; and Freud's belief that the child's first inquiry-beyond
or that American author, and we incline to speak of him, not
which, really, the adult does not go in kind-is in effect a sexual one
merely incidentally but conclusively, in terms of his moment in
seems to me to have an empirical support from literature. The ultihistory, of the conditions of the culture that "produced" him. Thus mate questions of conscious and rational thought about the nature
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of man and his destiny match easily in the literary mind with the
But it is impossible for me to feel of this work that it is autonomous,
dark unconscious and with the most primitive human relationthat it goes on existing beyond our powers of explanation. As for ships. Love, parenthood, incest, patricide: these are what the great
Eugene O'Neill and Thomas Wolfe, I can respect the earnestness of
ideas suggest to literature, these are the means by which they extheir dedication, but I cannot think of having a living, reciprocal press themselves. I need but mention three great works of different
relation with what they have written. And I believe that is because
ages to suggest how true this is: Oedipus, Hamlet, The Brothers
these men, without intellectual capital of their own, don't owe a
Karamazov.
sufficient debt of ideas to anyone. Spengler is certainly not a great
Ideas, if they are large enough and of a certain kind, are not
mind; at best he is but a considerable dramatist of the idea of
only not hostile to the creative process, as some think, but are virworld history and of, as it were, the natural history of cultures; and tually inevitable to it. Intellectual power and emotional power go
we can find him useful as a critic who summarizes the adverse
together. And if we can say, as I think we can, that contemporary
views of our urban, naturalistic culture which many have held.
American prose literature in general lacks emotional power, it is
Freud is a very great mind indeed. Without stopping to specify
possible to explain the deficiency by reference to the intellectual
what actual influence of ideas was· exerted by Spengler and Freud
weakness of American prose literature.
on O'Neill, Dos Passos, or Wolfe, or even to consider whether there
The situation in verse is different. Perhaps this is to be accounted
was any influence at all, we can fairly assume that all are in somefor by the fact that the best of our poets are, as good poets usually thing of the same ambiance. But if, in that ambiance, we want the
are, scholars of their tradition. There is present to their minds the
sense of the actuality of doom-actuality being one of the qualities
degree of intellectual power which poetry is traditionally expected
we expect of literature-surely we do better to seek it in Spengler
to exert. Questions of form and questions of language seem of
himself than in any of the three literary artists, just as, if we want
themselves to demand, or to create, an adequate subject matter;
the sense of the human mystery, of tragedy truly conceived in the
and a highly developed aesthetic implies a matter strong enough
great terms of free will, necessity, and hope, surely we do far better
to support its energy. We have not a few poets who are subjects
.,
to seek it directly in Freud himself than in these three literary men.
and not objects, who are active and not passive. One does not finish
In any extended work of literature, the aesthetic effect, as I have
quickly, if at all, with the best work of, say, Cummings, Stevens,
said, depends in large degree upon intellectual power, upon the
and Marianne Moore. This work is not exempt from our judgment,
amount and recalcitrance of the material the mind works on, and
even from adverse judgment, but it is able to stay with a mature
upon the mind's success in mastering the large material. And it is
reader as a continuing element of his spiritual life. Of how many
exactly the lack of intellectual power that makes our three writers,
writers of prose fiction can we say anything like the same thing?
after our first response of interest, so inadequate aesthetically. We
The topic which was originally proposed to me for this occasion
have only to compare, say, Dos Passos's USA to a work of similar
and which I have taken the liberty of generalizing was the debt of
kind and intention, Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, to see
four American writers to Freud and Spengler. The four writers
that in Dos Passos's novel the matter encompassed is both Jess in
were O'Neill, Dos Passos, Wolfe, and Faulkner. Of the first three
amount and less in resistance than in Flaubert's; the energy of the
how many can be continuing effective elements of our mental lives?
encompassing mind is also less. Or we consider O'Neill's crude,
I hope I shall never read Mr. Dos Passos without interest nor ever
dull notion of the unconscious and his merely elementary grasp of
lose the warm though qualified respect that I feel for his work.
Freud's ideas about sex and we recognize the lamentable signs of a
278
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The Meaning of a Literary Idea
279
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general inadequacy of mind. Or we ask what it is about Thomas
quality only, not a total and unquestionable literary virtue-we are
Wolfe that always makes us uncomfortable with his talent, so that
not called upon by our subject to show that particular recognizable
even his admirers deal with him not as a subject but as an objectideas of a certain force or weight are "used" in the work. Nor are an object which must be explained and accounted for-and we are
we called upon to show that new ideas of a certain force and weight
forced to answer that it is the disproportion between the energy
are "produced" by the work. All that we need to do is account for a
of his utterance and his power of mind. It is customary to say of
certain aesthetic effect as being in some important part achieved
Thomas Wolfe that he is an emotional writer. Perhaps: although
by a mental process which is not different from the process by which
it is pr
obably not the most accurate way to describe a writer who
discursive ideas are conceived, and which is to be judged by some
could deal with but one single emotion; and we feel that it is a
of the criteria by which an idea is judged.
function of his unrelenting, tortured egoism that he could not sub
The aesthetic effect which I have in mind can be suggested by a
mit his mind to the ideas that might have brought the variety and
word that I have used before-activity. We feel that Hemingway
interest of order to the single, dull chaos of his powerful self-regard,
and Faulkner are intensely at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of
for it is true that the intellect makes many emotions out of the
life; when they are at their best they give us the sense that the
primary egoistic one.
amount and intensity of their activity are in a satisfying proportion
At this point it may be well to recall what our subject is. It is
to the recalcitrance of the material. And our pleasure in their acnot merely the part that is played in literature by those ideas which tivity is made the more secure because we have the distinct impresmay be derived from the study of systematic, theoretical works; it sion that the two novelists are not under any illusion that they have
is the part that is played in literature by ideas in general. To be
conquered the material upon which they direct their activity. The
sure, the extreme and most difficult instance of the general relation
opposite is true of Dos Passos, O'Neill, and Wolfe; at each point
of literature to ideas is the relation of literature to highly developed
of conclusion in their work we feel that they feel that they have said
and formulated ideas; and because this is indeed so difficult a matter,
the last word, and we feel this even when they represent themselves,
and one so often misconceived, I have put a special emphasis upon
as O'Neill and Wolfe so often do, as puzzled and baffied by life. But
it. But we do not present our subject adequately-we do not, indeed,
of Hemingway and Faulkner we seldom have the sense that they
represent the mind adequately-if we think of ideas only as being
have deceived themselves, that they have misrepresented to themhighly formulated. It will bring us back to the proper generality of selves the nature and the difficulty of the matter they work on. And
our subject if I say that the two contemporary writers who hold out
we go on to make another intellectual judgment: we say that the
to me the possibility of a living reciprocal relationship with their
matter they present, together with the degree of difficulty which they
work are Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner-it will bring
assume it to have, seems to be very cogent. This, we say, is to the
us back the more dramatically because Hemingway and Faulkner
point; this really has something to do with life as we live it; we
have insisted on their indifference to the conscious intellectual tracannot ignore it.
dition of our time and have acquired the reputation of achieving
There is a traditional and aggressive rationalism that can undertheir effects by means that have the least possible connection with stand thought only in its conscious, developed form and believes
any sort of intellectuality or even with intelligence.
that the phrase "unconscious mind" is a meaningless contradiction
In trying to explain a certain commendable quality which is to
in terms. Such a view, wrong as I think it is, has at least the usebe found in the work of Hemingway and Faulkner-and a certain fulness of warning us that we must not call by the name of thought
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or idea all responses of the human organism whatever. But the
willingness to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts, is
extreme rationalist position ignores the simple fact that the life of
not, as one tendency of modern feeling would suppose, an abdicareason, at least in its most extensive part, begins in the emotions.
tion of intellectual activity. Quite to the contrary, it is precisely an
What comes into being when two contradictory emotions are made
aspect of their intelligence, of their seeing the full force and comto confront each other and are required to have a relationship with plexity of their subject matter. And this we can understand the
each other is, as I have said, quite properly called an idea. Ideas
better when we observe how the unconscious minds of Dos Passos,
may also be said to be generated in the opposition of ideals, and in
O'Neill, and Wolfe do not possess humility and wisdom; nor are
the felt awareness of the impact of new circumstances upon old
they fully active, as the intellectual histories of all three men show.
forms of feeling and estimation, in the response to the conflict be
A passivity on the part of Dos Passos before the idea of the total
tween new exigencies and old pieties. And it can be said that a work
corruption of American civilization has issued in his later denial
will have what I have been calling cogency in the degree that the
of the possibility of economic and social reform and in his virtually
confronting emotions go deep, or in the degree that the old pieties
unqualified acceptance of the American status quo. A passivity on
are firmly held and the new exigencies strongly apprehended. In
the part of O'Neill before the cliches of economic and metaphysi
Hemingway's stories8 a strongly charged piety toward the ideals
cal materialism issued in his later simplistic Catholicism. The pasand attachments of boyhood and the lusts of maturity is in conflict sivity of Thomas Wolfe before all his experience led him to that
not only with the imagination of death but also with that imaginacharacteristic malice toward the objects or partners of his experition as it is peculiarly modified by the dark negation of the modern ence which no admirer of his ever takes account of, and eventually
world. Faulkner as a Southerner of today, a man deeply implicated
to that simple affirmation, recorded in You Can't Go Home Again,
in the pieties of his tradition, is of course at the very heart of an
that literature must become the agent of the immediate solution of
exigent historical event which thrusts upon him the awareness of
all social problems and undertake the prompt eradication of human
the inadequacy and wrongness of the very tradition he loves. In the
pain; and because his closest friend did not agree that this was a
work of both men the cogency is a function not of their conscious
possible thing for literature to do, Wolfe terminated the friendship.
but of their unconscious minds. We can, if we admire To:stoi and
These are men of whom it is proper to speak of their having been
Dostoevski, regret the deficiency of consciousness, blaming it for
violated by ideas; but we must observe that it was an excess of inthe inadequacy in both our American writers of the talent for tellectual passivity that invited the violence.
generalization. 4 Yet it is to be remarked that the unconscious minds
In speaking of Hemingway and Faulkner I have used the wor
d
of both men have wisdom and humility about themselves. They
"piety." It is a word that I have chosen with some care and despite
seldom make the attempt at formulated solution, they rest content
the pejorative meanings that nowadays adhere to it, for I wished to
with the "negative capability." And this negative capability, this
avoid the word "religion," and piety is not religion, yet I wished
too to have religion come to mind as it inevitably must when piety
3 It is in the stories rather than in the novels that Hemingway is characteristic
is mentioned. Carlyle says of Shakespeare that he was the product
and at his best.
4 Although there is more impulse to generalization than is usually supposed.
of medieval Catholicism, and implies that Catholicism at the dis
This is especially true of Faulkner, who has never subscribed to the contemporary
tance at which Shakespeare stood from it had much to do with the
belief that only concrete words have power and that only the representation of
things and actions is dramatic.
power of Shakespeare's intellect. Allen Tate has developed in a
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more particular way an idea that has much in common with what
are in our social and political beliefs consciously liberal and demo
Carlyle here implies. Loosely put, the idea is that religion in its
cratic. And I know that I will not be wrong if I say that most of us,
decline leaves a detritus of pieties, of strong assumptions, which
and in the degree of our commitment to literature and our familiafford a particularly fortunate condition for certain kinds of literaarity with it, find that the contemporary authors we most wish to ture; these pieties carry a strong charge of intellect, or perhaps it
read and most wish to admire for their literary qualities demand of
would be more accurate to say that they tend to stimulate the mind
us a great agility and ingenuity in coping with their antagonism to
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