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Belief and Art

Experience and Art by Joseph Wood Krutch. Harrison Smith & Robert Haas

The Nation, November 1932, 536–537

One who has read Mr. Krutch’s The Modern Temper before reading his newest volume, Experience and Art, must be struck by an interesting change in the critic’s point of view. The earlier book was built around the thesis that poetry is dying because “poetry illusions” are dying. The author held that certain beliefs are inherently “poetic,” and that, since we can no longer believe these “poetic” beliefs (as the belief that the world is the center of the universe), the very basis of poetic dignity is destroyed. In contrast with this attitude, he now says, in his introduction to his newest volume: “Whatever man is capable of believing is potential material for literature.” And his volume is built around the ramifications deducible from this shift in position. He relates art to life by showing that art utilizes for its effects the same “premises” as people live by, that the artist moves his readers by exploiting the convictions and preferences which influence their conduct in actual life. Hence, the rise of different schools which stress different aspects of “consciousness” can determine “to a far greater extent than is generally realized both how people are going to act and what . . . it is going to feel like to live.” And by this schema, it is generally the work of the literary critic to study the processes of literary appeal and to orientate these with reference to other biological or social processes.