theoryofliteratu00inwell

122 Theory of Literature
characters and events. In the Brothers Karamazov, the four
brothers are but carriers, symbols who represent an ideological
debate which is, at the same time, a personal drama. The ideo-
logical conclusion is integral to the personal catastrophes of the
main figures.
But are these philosophical novels and poems, such as Goethe's
Faust or Dostoevsky's Brothers , superior works of art because of
their philosophical import? Must not we rather conclude that
"philosophical truth" as such has no artistic value just as we
argued that psychological or social truth has no artistic value as
such? Philosophy, ideological content, in it proper context, seems
to enhance artistic value because it corroborates several important
artistic values: those of complexity and coherence. A theoretical
insight may increase the artist's depth of penetration and scope
of reach. But it need not be so. The artist will be hampered by
too much ideology if it remains unassimilated. Croce has argued
that the Divine Comedy consists of passages of poetry alternating
with passages of rhymed theology and pseudo-science. 31 The
second part of Faust indubitably suffers from overintellec-
tualization, is constantly on the verge of overt allegory j and in
Dostoevsky we frequently feel the discrepancy between the ar-
tistic success and the weight of thought. Zossima, Dostoevsky's
spokesman, is a less vividly realized character than Ivan Karama-
zov. On a lower level, Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain il-
lustrates the same contradiction: the early parts, with their evo-
cation of the sanatorium world, are artistically superior to the
later parts of large philosophical pretensions. Sometimes, in the
history of literature, however, there are cases, confessedly rare,
when ideas incandesce, when figures and scenes not merely rep-
resent but actually embody ideas, when some identification of
philosophy and art seems to take place. Image becomes concept
and concept image. But are these necessarily the summits of art,
as many philosophically inclined critics assume them to be?
Croce seems right arguing, in a discussion of the second part of
Faust, that "when poetry becomes superior in this manner, that
is to say, superior to itself, it loses rank as poetry, and should be
termed rather inferior, namely wanting in poetry." 32 At least, it
should be granted that philosophical poetry, however integrated,
is only one kind of poetry, and that its position is not necessarily