New Mexico Quarterly Volume 24 | Issue 4 Article 17 1954 On Kenner's Wyndham Lewis Geoffrey Wagner Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq Recommended Citation Wagner, Geoffrey. "On Kenner's Wyndham Lewis." New Mexico Quarterly 24, 4 (1954). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/ vol24/iss4/17 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Mexico Press at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Quarterly by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Wagner: On Kenner's Wyndham Lewis Geoffrey Wagner )' ON KENNER'S WYNDHAM LEWIS1 I " SA CRITIC Hugh Kenner is alway.s interesting-perhaps provocative would be the better word-and he has fol A lowed his study of the poetry of Ezra Pound with a needed ~ssay on Wyndham Lewis. Admirable in intention this essay is extremely limited, however. It considers ~ewis's literary achievement-less any mention of the reception of his works (the castigations his political books got in the 1920'S being dismissed as "sensationally good reviews")-and it charitably avoids refer- ence to his comparative importance. " Lewis is the English representative of contemporary neo-classi cism. Nearly all his criticism may be found in French predecessors like Massis, Seilliere, Fernandez, Lasserre, to some extent Mau~ ras, and especially Benda.-What is valuable is that Lewis gives a fictional infterpretation of this anti-romanticism which we do n<?t find in Fra!1ce, partly because, on one hand, the great French writ ers of this :century have raised themselves above immediate par tisanship {already in Jean Barois Roger Martin du Gard shows an enviably "classical" detachment on this score) , and partly be cause, on the other ltand, the French neo-classical critics were not great writers.