Criticism in America

<^^J» C^sS CRITICISM IN AMERICA II. THE REVIVAL OF THE ANTI-HUMANIST MYTH hy Seward Collins ^=|riHE journalistic blockade against Paul Criticism informed the academic world that Elmer More, Irving Babbitt and their some of its ablest minds were taking their allies, which had lasted from the time principles from the same source. This double the Nation turned liberal in 1918—except attack of the two books, one in scholarship for the almost secret last years of the Unpop and one in free-lance journalism, had ulti ular Review and the fleeting career of the mately a great effect in preparing public Weekly Review—was finally broken at the opinion for the later events though at the beginning of 1928. A young pupil and ad time few could have realized their symptom mirer of Babbitt engineered a scries of ar atic importance. ticles in the Forum in which Babbitt, More, If no need was felt as yet for a concerted and Sherlock Bronson Gass, in discussions attack on the incipient movement, individual of current literature, presented the humanist replies to the Forum series and to the two position for the first time that it had been books were not lacking. More's penetrating seen in American journals in a decade. Two survey of current writers was not commented more articles followed discussing the deeper on until its appearance in book form the problems involved in humanism, written following year, but Babbitt's discussion of from the religious point of view by T. S. American criticism and Mencken's short Eliot and Michael Williams. The articles, it comings drew instant fire. A liberal professor is true, made very little stir. They were of English, Mr. Howard Mumf9rd Jones, doubtless thought by most readers to spring rushed a hot reply to the New Republic from a quaintly misguided search for topics (March 21, 1928) which might have served on the part of a magazine of controversy. But as a model for the New Republic's later ef they augured a new era in American criti forts along the same lines in its self-assured cism, and there were those who grasped the ignorance, its misrepresentation, and its spe- fact. ciousness. Mr. Jones revived with energy the While the Forum articles were progressing unfounded notion—which no one can hon through 1928 two books appeared which estly hold who has read the first paragraph made unmistakeably clear to the alert-minded and a half of Rousseau and Romanticism— that new forces were entering the critical that Babbitt considers Rousseau the cause of modern evils. This method of debating by scene. Gorham B. Munson's Destinations ascribing an absurdity and then proving it showed that the young men of the latest absurd, so popular in the offices of the New generation were turning to More and Babbitt Republic and elsewhere, made it easy for for leadership. Norman Foerster's American 400 PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED CRITICISM IN AMERICA by SEWARD COLLINS 401 him to convict Babbitt of "deterministic stration, but the world still awaits this con naturalism" and "the post hoc ergo propter tribution to scholarship. hoc fallacy". If the academics wtll play these silly word Similar tactics led Mr. Jones to decide, for games, Mrs. Colum will teach them how it no visible reason, that two unrelated phrases should be done. "It clearly behooves me at used by Babbitt ("inner control" and "gen this point to produce some definition in an eral critical intelligence") had the same attempt to clarify the confusion with which meaning. The lengthy passage in which he Mr. Babbitt, Mr. Munson and the younger proved this absurdity to be absurd was al demi-academic minds have bewildered us." most worthy of Allen Tate's genius for imi Accordingly, out comes a definition: "A tation subtlety. By suggesting that Babbitt romantic literature is a literature which places would find it difficult "to explain the precise more importance on will, desire, and emotion difference between the gloom of Sophocles than upon intellect. A classical literature, on and the gloom of Theodore Dreiser ... be the other hand, places most importance on tween the hopelessness of Antigone and of the intellect". I am sure that the academics, QEdipus, and the hopelessness of An Amer both full and demi, were carried away by ican Tragedy", Mr. Jones demonstrated that the originality and profundity of this defini only lack of space prevented him from antici tion. Though I daresay some of them con pating the colossal fatuity along these lines cluded that Mrs. Colum's description of which we shall see later in the case of the Rousseau and Romanticism as amorphous New Republic's own Edmund Wilson. Mr. and bewildering arose from an unsuccessful Jones concluded by finding "hopeless con , attempt to wrestle with it. fusion" and "a naive world-scheme" in the It is not surprising to learn further from fact that Babbitt admires much in both the Mrs. Colum that Babbitt, with his disorderly classical and the Christian traditions, pro mind, and More, with his fake classicism, ceeding to break the news to Babbitt that the "have really never understood English litera two traditions are not without conflicting ele ture". But their chief disabihty is that they ments. are academic, and for the most part Mrs. Mary Colum did the honors for the ro-. Colum finds that "what passes as devotion to mantic naturaHsts in the case of Destinations Classicism in universities and halls of learn {Saturday Review of Literature, June 30, ing is nothing more than an inclination to 1928). She pronounced Mr. Munson "pecul wards thin and meagre forms of life, a iar" for urging classicism in American litera temperamental desire to be on the safe side". ture, and rebuked him for reviving "the old How the journalist loves to take all life for quarrel between classicists and romanticists his exclusive province! Mrs. Colum quickly so beloved of the academic mind". Further reveals that her anti-academicism is, as usual, more, his ideas on these themes are wrong: but a part of a general anti-respectability. She "Unfortunately for Mr. Munson he takes his informs us that the terms romantic and clas ideas of romanticism from Irving Babbitt's sic "have no real application" in America, disorderly mind, and particularly from his since our literature has been neither classical amorphous book Rousseau and Romanti nor romantic but instead (do not blame me cism". Mr. Munson's other guide is equally if Mrs. Colum's logic eludes you) has suf unreliable: "It would be very easy to show fered from the fact that not only our profes that Mr. Paul Elmer More has far more of a sors, but American writers in general, "are tendency towards Romanticism than towards meagre in their experience of life and litera Classicism". Mrs. Colum has been urged on ture". She makes her meaning clear in the several occasions to make this easy demon question that forms her concluding para- PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 402 THE BOOKMAN for JULY I93O graph: "How many American writers are misses as "exclusion", and urges Professor. there whose most extensive awareness of life, Foerster to forget the humanist "clichSs of has been bounded by crude or elementary thought" and discover "that Walt Whitman sex experience, or limited to helping their was a far better humanist than Mr. Babbitt". wives to wash the baby, sow the flower seeds, If Mumford at such moments recalls to us mow the lawn, and do a little house work?" the dear dead days of 1918, an even earlier Make note of the critical principle that Mrs. period was heard from in the Saturday Re Colum reveals here: that normal family life view of Literature, where American Criti is fatal to a writer. It recurs in nearly every cism was entrusted, rather unaccountably, to one of her critical writings. that pale, ineffectual ghost of pragmatism, We saw in Part One of this article how Horace M. Kallen. It is amusing to see Pro generous Mr. Lewis Mumford could be to fessor Kallen, a life-long academic, join Mary Babbitt when Babbitt seemed safely dead. Colum and Lewis Mumford in scoffing at But when Professor Foerster's American the "preoccupations of professors, doctrines Criticism proved Babbitt to be very much and disciplines of the schools". More in char alive, he dashed to do battle in the "New acter, if no more cogent, is his description of Republic, proclaiming against "the tedious humanism as "the last faint gasp of secular party war-cries and the empty party labels ized Calvinism, the frayed latter end of the ... the solecisms and the narrow, acerbities genteel tradition". By way of clirnax Profes of the 'new humanists'". Improving on Mrs. sor Kallen, pronounced humanism "a lot of Colum, he insisted that "except as historical boloney", which would seem to be the frayed catchwords, classicism and romanticism mean latter end of the Jamesian tradition of enliv nothing at all". But he is with her in his ening philosophical discourse with informal main line of attack: "The new humanism is ity and bounce. not humanism at all: it is the old academi cism". And everyone knows what academics are. "Their fear of 'expansiveness', their dis II trust of spiritual audacity, their high regard But these preliminary rumbles of the spring for.correctness, their curious belief in restraint of 1928 were isolated. It was only during the as the ultimate ethical principle—what are course of the following year that the sense of these qualities but the petty requirements of real power from the direction of Babbitt and their academic environments?" It might have More began to circulate among critics, editors been a sentence out of Letters and Leader and publishers.

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