WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC
The large majority of our fellow-citizens care as much about
literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the
Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to
it. But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their
interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred
thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel
ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather
that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more dream
of reading it again than of reading Bishop Stubbs's _Select Charters_.
Probably if they did read it again they would not enjoy it--not
because the said novel is a whit worse now than it was ten years ago;
not because their taste has improved--but because they have not had
sufficient practice to be able to rely on their taste as a means of
permanent pleasure. They simply don't know from one day to the next
what will please them.
In the face of this one may ask: Why does the great and universal
fame of classical authors continue? The answer is that the fame of
classical authors is entirely independent of the majority. Do you
suppose that if the fame of Shakespeare depended on the man in the
street it would survive a fortnight? The fame of classical authors is
originally made, and it is maintained, by a passionate few. Even when
a first-class author has enjoyed immense success during his lifetime,
the majority have never appreciated him so sincerely as they have
appreciated second-rate men. He has always been reinforced by the
ardour of the passionate few. And in the case of an author who has
emerged into glory after his death the happy sequel has been due
solely to the obstinate perseverance of the few. They could not leave
him alone; they would not. They kept on savouring him, and talking
about him, and buying him, and they generally behaved with such eager
zeal, and they were so authoritative and sure of themselves, that
at last the majority grew accustomed to the sound of his name and
placidly agreed to the proposition that he was a genius; the majority
really did not care very much either way.
And it is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept
alive from one generation to another. These few are always at work.
They are always rediscovering genius. Their curiosity and enthusiasm
are exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being
ignored. And, moreover, they are always working either for or against
the verdicts of the majority. The majority can make a reputation, but
it is too careless to maintain it. If, by accident, the passionate few
agree with the majority in a particular instance, they will frequently
remind the majority that such and such a reputation has been made,
and the majority will idly concur: "Ah, yes. By the way, we must
not forget that such and such a reputation exists." Without that
persistent memory-jogging the reputation would quickly fall into the
oblivion which is death. The passionate few only have their way by
reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature,
that literature matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy
alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements. Do you
suppose they could prove to the man in the street that Shakespeare was
a great artist? The said man would not even understand the terms they
employed. But when he is told ten thousand times, and generation
after generation, that Shakespeare was a great artist, the said
man believes--not by reason, but by faith. And he too repeats that
Shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the complete works of
Shakespeare and puts them on his shelves, and he goes to see the
marvellous stage-effects which accompany _King Lear_ or _Hamlet_, and
comes back religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist.
All because the passionate few could not keep their admiration of
Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cynicism; but truth. And it
is important that those who wish to form their literary taste should
grasp it.
What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature?
There can be only one reply. They find a keen and lasting pleasure
in literature. They enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer. The
recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in
literature very much alive. They are for ever making new researches,
for ever practising on themselves. They learn to understand
themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes
surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy
to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book
tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is
pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the
street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and
permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a
book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few?
This is a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely
answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight, knowledge,
wisdom, humour, and beauty. But these comfortable words do not really
carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined, especially the
first and last. It is all very well for Keats in his airy manner to
assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that that is all he
knows or needs to know. I, for one, need to know a lot more. And I
never shall know. Nobody, not even Hazlitt nor Sainte-Beuve, has ever
finally explained why he thought a book beautiful. I take the first
fine lines that come to hand--
The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy--
and I say that those lines are beautiful, because they give me
pleasure. But why? No answer! I only know that the passionate few
will, broadly, agree with me in deriving this mysterious pleasure from
those lines. I am only convinced that the liveliness of our pleasure
in those and many other lines by the same author will ultimately cause
the majority to believe, by faith, that W.B. Yeats is a genius. The
one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the passionate
few are passionate about the same things. A continuance of interest
does, in actual practice, lead ultimately to the same judgments. There
is only the difference in width of interest. Some of the passionate
few lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is
confined to one narrow channel; they have none left over. These men
help specially to vitalise the reputations of the narrower geniuses:
such as Crashaw. But their active predilections never contradict the
general verdict of the passionate few; rather they reinforce it.
A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is
intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on
because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is
eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of
rediscovery. A classic does not survive for any ethical reason. It
does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because
neglect would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of
pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more neglect it than
a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right
things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the
horse. "The right things" are the right things solely because the
passionate few _like_ reading them. Hence--and I now arrive at my
point--the one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest
in literature. If you have that, all the rest will come. It matters
nothing that at present you fail to find pleasure in certain classics.
The driving impulse of your interest will force you to acquire
experience, and experience will teach you the use of the means of
pleasure. You do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. A
continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest
joys. But, of course, experience may be acquired judiciously or
injudiciously, just as Putney may be reached _via_ Walham Green or
_via_ St. Petersburg.