theoryofliteratu00inwell

Literature and Ideas 1 2
distinct and discontinuous, and the revolutions which they show
are conceived of as so radical that the Geisteswissenschaftler
ends not only in complete historical relativism (one age is as
good as another) but also in a false conception of individuality
and originality which obscures the basic constants in human na-
ture, civilization, and the arts. In Spengler we arrive at the idea
of closed cultural cycles developing with fatal necessity: self-
enclosed, though mysteriously parallel. Antiquity does not con-
tinue into the Middle Ages, the continuity of Western literary
evolution is completely obscured, denied, or forgotten.
These fantastic card palaces should not, of course, obscure the
real problem of a general history of mankind or, at least, of
Western civilization. We are only convinced that the solutions
offered by the usual Geistesgeschichte, with its excessive reliance
on contraries and analogies, its uncritical presupposition of the
seesaw alterations of styles and Denkformen, and its belief in a
complete integration of all activities of man, have been premature
and, frequently, immature.
Instead of speculating on such large-scale problems of the
philosophy of history and the ultimate integral of civilization,
the literary student should turn his attention to the concrete
problem not yet solved or even adequately discussed : the question
of how ideas actually enter into literature. It is obviously not a
question of ideas in a work of literature as long as these ideas
remain mere raw material, mere information. The question
arises only when and if these ideas are actually incorporated into
the very texture of the work of art, when they become "constitu-
tive," in short, when they cease to be ideas in the ordinary sense
of concepts and become symbols, or even myths. There is the
large province of didactic poetry in which ideas are merely
stated, are provided with meter or with some embellishments of
metaphor or allegory. There is the novel of ideas such as George
Sand's or George Eliot's where we get discussions of "problems,"
social, moral, or philosophical. On a higher level of integration
there is a novel like Melville's Moby Dick where the whole ac-
tion conveys some mythic meaning, or a poem like Bridges'
Testament of Beauty which in intention at least is pervaded by
a single philosophical metaphor. And there is Dostoevsky, in
whose novels the drama of ideas is acted out in concrete terms of
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