Edmund Wilson

MARXISM AND LITERATURE

Notes: main points of the essay

(Please note this is not a substitute for the original work)

Meant for S2 MA English Students under Calicut University

·         It opens with a question on the role assigned to literature and art in the system of dialectical materialism

·         All activities incorporated at the “superstructure” level  were possibly to be explained in terms of economics

·         There could be a reciprocal interaction, according to Engels, wherein which a great artistic period can influence to its very economic foundations

·         Marx and Engels never tried to give a socio-economic formula to test the validity of work of art

·         According to Edmund Wilson, they tried to respond to creative works based on their merits

·         They never judged literature in terms of its political tendency

·         They appreciated Aeschylus, Goethe and Shakespeare

·         Marx wrote that “ certain periods of highest development of art stand in no direct connection with the general development of society nor with the material basis and the skeleton structures of its organization

·         Lenin appreciated music, fiction, poetry and theatre

·         Trotsky in his book “Literature and Revolution” discusses about the ‘carry over’ value of literature

·         Trotsky asserts that terms such as “Proletarian literature” and “Proletarian culture” are dangerous, because they erroneously compress the culture of the future into the narrow limits of the present day

·         Trotsky believed that the proletarian dictatorship was not to last. It was to be only a transition phase and to lead the way to a culture which is above classes and which will be the first truly human culture

·         The situation in Russia had changed in between the pre-revolution days and the post revolution days

·         The masters of fiction and theatre, during the Tsar days, use the art of implication to perfection

·         The overt identification of politics with literature led to terrible abuses

·         Under the Stalin administration, having a mass of people who were eighty percent illiterate, a critical review of what was being created in literature, was impossible

·         With contradictory reports emerging on various political issues, provided by the administration, the intelligentsia preferred  to remain silent

·         In this context, Edmund Wilson opines that Marxism by itself can tell us nothing whatever about the goodness or badness of a work of art

·         He complains that the Leftist critic with no literary competence is always trying to measure works of literature by tests which have no validity in that field

·         No creative work is possible through legislation or prescription

·         There is always a futility to make art an effective instrument in class struggle

·         Edmund Wilson proposes two terms; short range literature and long range literature

·         Long range literature attempts to sum up wide areas and long periods of human experience

·         Short range literature preaches and pamphleteers with the view to an immediate effect

·         According  to Edmund Wilson, highly developed forms of literature require leisure and a certain amount of stability

·         The conditions that make possible the masterpieces are apparently not produced by the impending revolution, but by the phenomenon of literary technique in the hands of a writer who has had the support of long enduring institutions, reflecting an age of transition

It is society itself, says Trotsky which under Communism becomes the work of art    

Source: David Lodge(ed.). Twentieth Century Literary Criticism reader, London, Longman, 1972.