stephen owen - what is world poetry

8/10/2019 Stephen Owen - What is World Poetry

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bureaucrat whose sole artistic policy

consists

of

placating

the

Helmsites

on

the Hill.The report ofthe independent

commission evaluatingtheNEA notonly

proposed that peer panels include

more laypeople and multicultnrists

and fewer artistsbut also suggested

that

the

chairman take mo re responsi-

bilityfor thegrants. Therewas no wis-

dom ineitherof these proposals. They

have helped

to

create

a

serious crisis

in

the arts.

T h e a n x i e t y o f g l o b a l in f lu e n c e .

W h a t I s W o r l d P o e t r y ?

B Y

S T E P H E N O W E N

L

et

me

begin with

a

gentle

heresy, that no poet has

ever madeapoemforhim-

self or herself alone. Poems

are made only

for

audiences. And unlike

the audiences

for

the mo re lucrative arts,

the audiencesforwhom poems are made

are always imaginary ones.Iconfess that

this heresy is itself

imaginary:

itforcesus

to

see an

Emily Dickinson who dreamed

into being

a

century that could

so

richly

appreciate her work. Still,it is a useful

heresy, because it helps us to un derstand

the forcesatworkin theformation ofa

creature that never existed before:

"world poetry."

The imaginary audiences

of

poets

are

ruthless

in

their capacity

for

scorn

and

extravagant

in

their capacity

for

approv-

a l The real audiences tend to be far

milderinboth.Itfollows thatthe imagi-

nary audience, bythesheer intimidating

force

of

its suspected likes

and

dislikes,

has the greater power to shape the direc-

tion that a poet's work will take.The

imaginary audiences also have the ten-

dency to grow swiftly and immodestly.

The poet

may

begin

by

imagining

the

responses

of a

small group

of

friends

who profess interestinpoetry,andwho

will,for friendship's sake, probably read

and like whatapoetbaswritten. Pretty

soon local poetry prizes are being award-

ed while crowds cheer,

and

they

are fol-

lowed in quick succession by national

fame, a place in the canon, and

immortality.

American poets bavetbeprovincial's

sweet giftofneeding to dream no further

than

an

eternity

of

Englisb-speaking

au-

diences.

To

write

in the

dominant

lan-

guageoftbe ageis tohavetheluxtiryof

writingvvithunshaken faitb in tbe perma-

STEPHEN OWEN, professor of Chinese

and comparative literature at Harvard

University, is tbe author most recentlyof

Mi loii: Poetry

and the

Labyrinth

of

Desire

(Harvard University Press).

nence

of a

culture's hegemony.

But

poets in many otber countries and

languages must,

as

tbeir imaginary audi-

ences swell, dream of being translated.

And tbus they must write envisaging

au-

diences w bo will read their work in trans-

lation. For a poet, such speculation runs

the fine margin

of

nightmare.

Not to

imagine being read and admired beyond

one's linguistic borders, however,

is to

accept a painful limitation, a senseof

provinciality. A few ofthe hardiest poets

can

do

this;

but

those

are the

ones

we

never read in translation, and tbuswe

know very little about tbem.

The August Sleepwalker

by Bei Dao

translated by Bonnie

S

McDougall

(New Directions. 144 pp..

$16.95,J)8.95 paper)

The Nobel Prize playsan interesting

rolein shaping "world poetry," particu-

larly

the

poetry

of the

Third W orld.

Its

lure can som etimes be immense:

it

is "in-

ternational" (tbat is,W estern) recogn i-

tion tbat casts gloryonone's nationand

promisesamom ent w hentbeprovincial

can stand

in tbe

global center

of

atten-

tion. Tb ere is a waiting line

for

the prize,

and a general opinion tbat every country

ought to have its turn,

on

tbe assumption

that literary talent should be as fairly dis-

tributed

as

seats

in tbe

United Nations.

Tb e most interesting aspect

of

the Nobel

Prizeforliterature, however,isthatit is

commonly givenforliteratureintransla-

tion. W hen the Nob el Prize is awardedto

a poet, tbe success

of

that poet's work

in

translation

is

inevitably

an

important,

perhaps evena deciding, factor.

This need to have one's workap-

proved in translation creates, inturn,a

pressure

for an

increasing fungibility

of

words.

Yet

poetry

bas

traditionally been

bttilt of words witb a particular history of

usage

in a

single languageof words

that cannot be exchanged for oth

words. Poets

who

write

in tbe

"wro

language" (even exceedingly populo

wrong languages, like Cbinese)noton

must imagine tbemselves being transla

ed in order to reacb an audience o

satisfying magnitude, they must also

e

gagein thepeculiaract ofimagining

world poetry and placing themselv

within

it.

And, although

it is

supposed

free of all local literary bistory, th

"world p oetry" turns out, unsurprisin

ly,to be a version of Anglo-Americ

modernism

or

Freneb modernism,

d

pendingon whicb waveoftolonialeu

ture first washed over the intellectuals

the country

in

question . Tbis situation

the quintessenceof cultural begemon

when

an

essentially local traditi

(Anglo-European) is widely taken f

granted

as

universal.

I

bave a friend who writes poe

ry

in

classical Cbinese

a

"new poetry"

in

vernacul

Cbinese. He tbinks of bis cla

sical poetryas"Chinese,"asdeeply em

bedded

in its

history,

as

immense

pleasing to him in the crafting, but not

an entirely serious endeav or.Itis the p

etryhewritesfor hisfriends. His n

poe try," by contrast, is what permits hi

to tbink

of

himself

a s a

Poet, what offe

bim

tbe

hope

of

eventual recognitio

He sees tbe "new p oetry " as simply poe

ry,as ifithad nonationalityor histo

He does not recogn ize the weight of loc

European literary bistory tbat lies behin

some

of

tbe conventional moves that

makes

or the

babitual images tbat

uses.

Tbe formation ofa world poetry tb

anyone

can

write

and

tbat

can be

tran

lated into som ething still recognizable

poetry requiresa corresponding rede

nition oft he "local." W ithin "worldp

etry,"inother words,thepoet must st

find an acceptable means

to

declare

b

or

her

nationality. Instead

of

a true

n

tional poetry, all poetries beco me mere

ethnic. Poets often appealtonames,i

ages,andtraditions that servetobols

local pride, and to satisfy tbe intern atio

al reader's desire

for

"local color."

tbe same time, the intricate learning p r

sumed in traditional poetries is forb

den. Elementsof local color in apoe

are the verbal flags of nationality;a

like a well-packaged cruise, tbey will gi

the international reader

an

altogeth

safe and quick experience of anoth

culture.

Apart from this carefully circu

scribed "local color," tbere is a stro

preference for universal images. Th

poetry tends

to

be studded with concr

tbingspreferably tbings tbat

are f

quently exportedorimported,andtb

readily translatable. Phrases

of

lo


2/6

weight or objects rich in local lore are

avoided, or tbey are framed, that is, they

are held up for poetic consideration and

provided with little commentaries that

explain them within the poem. There is

an illuminating contrast to this piactice

in the profligate use of American slang

and the fashions of popular culture by

many contemporary American poets,

who write heedless ofthe fact that in fifty

years not even American audiences will

be able to understand the allusions and

the wordplay.

W

e should finally intro-

duce ourselves into tbe

strange cultural drama

oflyricpoetry that is un-

folding in the last part of the century.

IV e

are tbe real internationa l a udience,

as opposed to tbe imaginary one. We

bave come to occupy some of tbe seats

left vacant for tbe imaginary interna-

tional audience. There are only a few of

us scattered widely througb a buge au-

ditorium. We shout to one anotber

across tbe empty chairs. We have been

assuredwe read it clearly in the adver-

tising on the back of tbe books' dust

jacketsthat if only tbis performance

were taking place wbere tbe poet was

"at home." the auditorium would be

packed to overflowing witb cheering

crowds. Meanwhile, back bome, it often

bappens that the local audiences have

been assured that the international per-

formances always play to cheering

crowds, and that only at home is the

poet inadequately appreciated.

W hat are we seeking when we come

into this auditorium? International audi-

ences,

real and imaginary, are usually

daunted by the strenuous demands that

are made by the traditional poetries of

otber cultures. At the same time, audi-

ences do not want poetry from wbicb all

traces of nationality or etbnicity bave

been erased. Tbey want the poetry to

represent tbe otber country or culture.

Fbey seek some show of local color and

local issues within a kind of poetry that is

essentially familiar, easily accessible;

they seek a cozy ethnicity. And, if that is

the case, then we, as international read-

ers,

must recognize that this poet from

ano tber land and from a different culture

is writing at least in pa rt for

us,

writing at

least in part wbat he imagine s will satisfy

us.

He is writing m an idiom tbat bas

been formed from reading our ou

n

poet-

ry. Moreover, these "new poetries"

new (Ibinese poetry, new Hindi poetry,

new Japa nese poetry have often been

formed by reading W estern poetry in

translations, sometimes in very poor

translations. W bich is to say tbat we,

the Anglo-American or P^uropean part of

the international audience, are reading

translations of a poetry tbat originally

grew out of reading translations of our

own poetic heritage. If poetry is, as the

cliche goes, wbat gets lost in translation,

this is a most troubling situation.

Or it may be that tbe international

readers of translated poetry do not come

in searcb of poetry at all, bui rather in

searcb of windows ttpon other culttiral

phenomena. Ihey may be looking for

some exotic religiotts tradition or politi-

cal struggle. The se W estern fasbions in

exotica and causes are ephemeral things.

W ho now reads lago re? He is a bargain

that fills the shelves ol poetry sections in

used book stores. In contemporary Cbi-

nese poetry, tbe international reader is

likely to come looking for a reference to

the recent struggle for democracy. The

struggle for democracy in China is in

fashion, while otber ongoing struggles

for democracy bave won tbeir moments

of attention and faded from notice.

Quite apart from our political opin-

ions, and quite apart from effective polit-

ical action, tbere is a thrill at tbe repre-

sentation of sufferingthe traditional

experien ce of pity and fear, coupled with

virtuous indignation. The suflcring of

oppression, however, does not guaran-

tee good poetry, anym ore tban it endows

tbe victims of oppression witb virtue.

And tbere

is

always a particular dan ger of

using one's victimization for self-inter-

est: in this case, to sell oneself abroad by

wbat an international audience, bungry

for political virtue, whicb is always in

short supply, finds touching. W riting on

the struggle for democracy has very little

to do with tbe struggle for democracy,

and if anything vvortb reading comes o ut

of tbe writing about it, we won't know for

a whilenot until we can separate it

from its function as a selling point.

F

rom the broader case of

"world poetry," we may

turn to the particular case of

modern Chinese poetry.

Tb e tradition of classical poetry in Cbina

was a long and very com plicated one. By

the end of the imperial period, in the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,

this was a sharp, often witty, highly nu-

anced and allusive poetry, and a poetry

much ove rburdened by its own bistory. It

was

a

weary poetry at a dead end. Perbaps

it was for th e Cbin ese tradition as a whole

that Bei Dao, wbo was born in Beijing in

1949,

offered tbe following beautifully

elegiac image in "Random Tho ughts" :

steles wrapped in moss soft as silk

are like extinguished lantern.s

Althougb China had perbaps the

deepest sense of tbe encumbrance and

the attenuation of its tradition during the

encounter with the West, tbat encounter

was no less an upheaval in the poe tries of

many other great Asian cultures. W est-

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gether with the reality of VVe.stcrn mili-

tary and technical power. W estern

poetry, in most cases Romantic poetry,

entered these traditions like a breath of

fresh air. Ihe excitement at the strange,

exotic poetry of Europe was not unlike

the W est's excitement on encoun tering

Asian literary traditionsbut in this

case the excitement was coupled with

cultural shock, and often with national

humiliation.

Romantic poetry opened up a whole

new range of topics and modes of treat-

ment, a whole new sense of what poetry

is.Yet Roman tic poetry usually arrived in

translation, or through an imperfect

knowledge of the original languages.

Thu s it came to China, as to other cotm-

tries.

with little sense ofthe weight ofthe

cultural and literary history that lay be-

hind it. It appeared as a poetry free of

history, which was the very lie that Ro-

mantic poetry told ahout

itself,

that it was

a miraculously new ihing. Nobody who

knows English poetry well can believe

that particular myth about English Ro-

mantic poetry (China's particular colo-

nial poetic import), but to the outsider

the claim of novelty was credible, and it

gave a hope of escape from a history that

seemed to have failed.

F

rom that first hope for a po-

etry free of history, for

words that could be trans-

parent vehicles ofthe liber-

ated imagination and pure human feel-

ing, many early twentieth-centnry poets

in Asian traditions created new poetries

that sought to break with their past. It

was a grand hope, but it was rarely real-

ized successfully. After the initial en-

counter witb Romantic poetry, Chinese

poetry of this century has continued to

grow by means of the engagement with

modernist W estern poetry; and as in any

cross-cultural exchange that goes in only

one direction, the culture that receives

influence will always find itself in the sec-

ondary position. It will always appear

slightly "behind the times." The VVest-

ern tiovel was successfully assimilated

and transformed, hut the new poetries of

Asia often seemed thin and wanting, par-

ticularly in comparison to tbe glories of

traditional p oetry.

Tbe fate of contemporary' poetry in

Cbma could easily serve as the figure for

a more profound sense of cultural loss

and decline, a fall from the center of tbe

universe to an uncertainty about wbere

and who one is in a world that no longer

has eitberacenter or clear boun daries by

wbicb to orient oneself. Bei Dao writes

well of this in "An End or a Beginning":

Ah, my beloved land

Why don't you sing any more

Can it be true that even the ropes of the

Yellow River lownien

Like sundered luie-strings

Reverberate no more

'Iruc that lime, thi.s dark minor

Has also turned ils back on you forever

Leaving only stars and drifting clouds

behind

Sentimentality was one of the conse-

quences ofthe deceptive promise of im-

mediacy and purity in the new poetry.

PoetiT will always try to speak tbe diffi-

cult truths of tbe heart, and to break free

of the tribe's cliches that involuntarily

rise to tbe lips to take tbe place of every-

thing that is hard to say. But a successful

poetry recognizes that this process is a

struggle, that such words do not come

easily. As a culture acquires more his-

tory, credibly simple words seem more

and more difficult to acbieve; tbose

beautifully simple pbrases can only break

througb the cracks in poems, like tbe

vegetation that grows only in the cracks

of the mou ntains. W hen a poet achieves

such a phrase or line, it seems like a

miracle.

S

ucb eruptions of simplicity

are one thing. They occur in

modern poetry, and when

tbey occur, we honor tbem.

But when a poet tries to write sucb word s

without baving won tbem, without hav-

ing earned tbe right to say them, we are

in the presence ofapose. W e have senti-

mentality. We wince. I wince when Bei

Dao hegins a poem:

Aperpetual siranger

am I lo the world

I tbougbt I destroyed the only copy of

that poem wben I was 14, a year after I

wrote it. I thought we ali did. We de-

stroyed it tbe mom ent we discovered ihe

immense difference between writing and

reading wbat we bave written. Such sen-

timentality (or, perhaps, self-conscious

posing) is, however, the disease of mod-

ern Chinese poetry, and a deception far

deeper than all the stifling weight ofthe

past in classical poetry. In modern Chi-

na, it appears in polilical poetry and

apolitical poetry alike. It appears a few

times in the poems translated in Bei

Dao ' s The.ingust

Sleepwalker.

It may he a

poet's single most important task to

learn to avoid passag es like tbe following

from "Rainy Nigbt":

Even if tomorrow morning

the muzzle and the bleeding sun

make me surrender freedom youth and

pen

I will never surrend er tbis evening

I will never surrender you

let walls stop up my mouth

let iron bars divide my sky

as long as my heart keeps pounding the

blood will ebb and flow

and your smile be imprinted on the

crimson moon

rising each night outside my small window

recalling memories

or i n "7be Orange i s Ripe" :

Lei me into your heart

to (ind my shattered dream

D

espite these painful quo

tations , it is o Bei Dao

credit (and to Bonn

McDougall's) that The A

gust Sleepwalkn

is freer of large doses

Nutrasweet tban virtually any other mod

ern C hinese poetry I bave read. Bei Dao

talents, and McDougall's considerabl

skill as a translator, make these am ong th

oniy translations of modern (Chinese poe

ry tbat are not,byand large, embarrassin

Bei Dao is one of a group of talente

younger poets to rise out of the upheav

als of tbe Cultural Revolution into tb

shaken and much changed China tha

followed. The se new po ets were consid

erably more daring in their images, an

in their collocations of images, tban w e

tbeir predecesso rs. Tbey also grew m or

daring in the topics that tbey look up an

in the sentiments that tbey declared. A

though W estern readers of twentieth

century poetry may find little that is da

ing in tbeir clusters of images and the

sentiments, daring is a notoriously rela

tive quality. In the context o fthe intens

conservatism of C hinese literature, sue

poetry gave the kind of tbrill tbat Wes

ern readers of the late nineieenih an

early twentieth century must have expe

rienced in tbe birtb of poetic mo dernism

(This comparison would be merely con

descending if tbese poets were not seek

ing to prod uce precisely such a tbrill, an

to do so precisely on the model of mod

ernist W estern poetry.) The thrill of da

ing does not last long, to be sure; h

after tbe sm oke blows away, real poetry

often present. Altbough it is difficult t

see Bei Dao and his contemporaries a

"major" poets, there is real poetry her

From anotber point ofv iewas well, th

work of Bei Dao and so me of bis contem

poraries represents a welcome move i

contemporary Chinese poetry, a mov

away from a narrowly defined and obv

ous version of political engagement. It

a great misfortune tbat the state's capac

ty for real btutality forces us to be inte

ested in what is so inherently uninteres

ing. The scars of the state's brutalit

appear here and tbere as topics in tb

poems of The August

Sleepwalker

and B

Dao writes sucb poetry well (as in "A

End or a Beginning"). Still, if there

heroism in Bei Dao's poetry, it is not i

his overt opp osition to a regime that is

ludicrous in its transparent lies as it

vicious in enforcing them. Such oppos

tion is a political position that is, at th

strongest, unsurprising. His herois

lies,

rather, in bis determination to fin

otber aspects of buman life and art tb

are wortby of a poet's attention.

To write som ething valuable that is no


4/6

overtly and topically politicalis asmall lit-

erary trimnpli in the I'etiplc's Republic of

China, tbough

it is

hardiv teinarkahle

in

ibe context ofou r hypothetical w orld |)o-

etry.

In ber

introduction. McDougall

makes tbe wise and essential point tbat

a

Irtily apolitical poetry

is

impossible

in

sucb a highly politicized world, that an os-

ten.sibly apolitical poetry is itself a strong

political statement.

Bei

Dao pays

bis

po -

litical dues

in the

more conventional

coinage,

in

poems that demonstrate

his

"political correctness"

in

opposing

tbe

regime. Btit he is also capable o[ more.

W

estern readers will

gen-

erally welcome

tbe

apolitical dimension of

Bei Dao's poetry as more

perfectly represen ting the range

a

"world

poet" should have.

Vet an

interesting

problem arises here. Chinese readers

of

"new poetry" wiib whom

I

have spoken

tend

to

admire

Bei

Dao's earlier, more

engaged political poetry, and thev tend to

deplore

his

turn a uay from politics

lo

more private concerns.

Wbo

decides

what is valuable, what is a good tenden cy,

in

a

poet's worktbe W estern reader

or

tbe Cbinese reader? W bose stump

of

ap -

proval carries more weight? Scbolars

of

modern Chinese literatureoften object

U>

ibe imposition oi W estern criteria of liter-

aryjtidgment on Chinese literature. Itis a

wise caution.

Bui is

ibis Chinese litera-

ture,

or

literature that began

in

ibe Chi-

nese language? For wbat imaginary attdi-

fiicc bas tbis poetry been written?

Success in creatinga"world poetry "

is

not wiibotil its costs. Bei Dao lias, by and

large, written international poetry. Local

color IS used,

but

sparsely.

Nor is

sucb

truly imernaiional poetry merely

the

achievement of'ibc translator,

as

skillful

as sbe is: most

of

these poems translate

ibeinselves. Tbese could just as easily

be

translations from a Slovak or an Estonian

or

a

Pbilippine poet.

It

could even

be a

kind

of

Am erican p


5/6

flake in the han d, caught and carried by

the wind of a poet's whisper and blown

into an abyss, where there are no mar-

gins and no frontiers. This may be a

darker and more frightening vision of

the truly international poem. National

poetry had a history and a landscape: the

shape o fthe poem was more or less fixed

and defined by its place in such a topog-

raphy. The international poem, by con-

trast, is an intricate shape on a

blank background without frontiers, a

shape that undergoes metamorphoses. It

achieves moments of beauty, but it does

not have a history, nor is it capable of

leaving a trace that might constitute a

history:

the book lying open on the labte

makes a rustling noise, like

ihc sound of a fire

or fan-like wings

gorgeously opening, flame and bird

together

in the space above the abyss

Th e poem is always in passage, the book

that is flame atid bird.

McDougall observes of Bei Dao's po-

etry that "the language on the whole

does not rely heavily on word patterns,

a particular vocabnlary. or special musi-

cal eflects." In the passage above, the

book that hovers like a bird above the

abyss is a brilliant image in the translat-

able sense. The image in itself would

probably have beanty in almost any lan-

guage. McDougall, however, has trans-

lated this world poetry of fungible im-

ages into true English poetry, which

does mdeed rely heavily on word pat-

terns, on a particular vocabulary, and

on musical efTects (not to mention sev-

eral loud echoes of Anglo-American po-

etry).Any English reader who reads the

passage above ont loud should recog-

nize a real mastery of this language,

which is a mastery of particular words

and tlieir placement. We smile reading

it, and our smiles are no more for the

uuage Itself than for the way in which

the image is embedded in the rhythms,

in the placement of caesuras, and in the

particular choice and arrangement of

words.

It is only fair to offer this instance,

when the poet's brilliant image meets

the translator's magical touch for her

own langnagc. to counterbalance a fur-

ther and troubling aspect of this new

world poetry, which is the power and

the conseqnences of the approval of

the international audience, that is, the

W estern audience. I have in mind the

way in which the attention of a W estern

audience is a function of successful ad-

vertising. Bei Dao is a well-known con-

tempotary poet in China, bnt he is by

no means pre-eminent. By writing a su-

premely translatable poetry, by the

good fortune of

a

gifted translator and

publicist, he may well attain in the

West the absolute pre-eminence among

contemporary Chinese poets that he

cannot qnite attain in China itself. And

the very fact of wide foreign (W estern)

recognition could, in turn, grant him

pre-eminence in China. Thus we would

have the strange phenomenon of a

poet who became the leading poet in

his own country because he translate

well.

The international andience admir

the poetry, imagmmg what it might be

the poetry had not been lost in transl

tion. And the audience at home admire

the poetry, knowing how much it is a

preciated internationally, in translatio

W elcome to the late twentieth century.

T h e S a v i n g R e m n a n t

BY

C H R IST O PH E R L A SC H

T h e F e e l in g I n t e l l e c t S e l e c t e d W r it in g s

b y P h i l i p R i e f f

e d i te d w i th a n i n t r o d u c t io n b y J o n a t h a n

B.

I m b e r

(University of Chkago Press, 41 6 pp., 55 , 19 ,9 5 paper)

W ;

hy publish?'" Philip

Rieff asked himself

not long ago. "W ith

so many authors, who

remains behind to read ?" Almost twenty

years have pa.ssed since Rieff brought

out his last book, Fellow Teachers; evi-

dently he meant what he said when he

urged authors to file away their best

ideas instead of adding o the "babel of

criticism" that threatens to deafen ns

all.

If others exercised the same self-

restraint, we might have less reason to

regret it in RiefT. Since there is little

hope that his example will become con-

tagious, however, it is a good thing that

Jonathan Imber, a former student and

now a teacher of sociological theory at

W ellesley C ollege, has given us this an-

thology of RiefFs uncollected essays to

set against the rising flood of books

that continue to clamor for ill-deserved

attention. We need this book at a

time when we are besieged by lesser

booksbooks announcing breathtaking

methodological and conceptual break-

throu ghs, recycling old ideas in new jar-

gon, rediscovering the obv ious, refusing

to acknowledge any predecessors or

worse, betraying no awareness of their

existences.

Readers who have not yet made

RiefPs acq uaintan ce will find in this col-

lection something of what makes him

indispensable, and will be led to read

not only Fellow Teachers (1973), but also

his earlier books,Freud: T h e Mind ofthe

Moralist

(1939) and

TheTriumph of Ihe

Therapeutic (19(>6). Those who already

admired him will find that their admua-

tion was not m isplaced. These essays re-

veal an intelligence at once biting and

unfailingly courteous; generous to ad-

versaries and demanding of allie

solemn and playfnl: pessimistic an

hopeful.

According to

Rieff,

the collapse of r

ligion, its replacement by the remors

lessly analytic and critical sensibili

exemplified by Ereud, and the degene

ation of the "analytic attitude" into a

all-out assault on ideals of every kind

an impulse to drag everything lofty in

the dusthave left onr culture in a so

ry state. He does not expect immedia

improvement, nor does he advance

program oi cultural renovation, but h

seldom speaks in the voice of doom

and despair. Bad as things are, h

thinks it is still possible to make a mo

est contribution to the canse of trut

and justice. It is possible, for instanc

to find honorable employment as

teacher, provided that teachers do n

give in to the temptation to becom

"armchair prophets." Ihe universit

notwithstanding its present disarray,

a "sacred institution," and teachers ca

set an example for others if they a

proach their calling in a spirit

reverence.

Acertain ambiguity lurks in this exa

ed conception ofthe intellectual life.

it the teacher's calling itself that is s

cred, or the culture historically pr

served in the university? Rieff is al h

best when he leans to the first of the

positions, when he argues that the offic

ofthe devoted teacher is not to deify

even defend a "dying culture" but

resist the "downward identification

that threatens any form of culture at a

His advice to teachers, which consis

largely of negative commandments, r

flects his belief that intellectuals betra

their vocation when they give in to t


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stephen owen - what is world poetry

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