these middle-aged waife inheriting fromnModernists a principle “codified by thenNew Criticism,… the rigid separation ofnart from life.” “If Lowell hadn’t existed,nsurely the New Criticism would havenhad to invent him.” Of Lowell, whonturned the personal to poetry regardlessnof its violations of persons, Miss Perloflfnmimics his self-justification: “For wasn’tnpoetry, as Ransom and Tate had taughtnhim, wholly unrelated to life?” Well, no.nIt is one thing for Lowell to have misunderstood;nit makes him apathetic figurenin his own poetry. But it is a serious criticalnerror not to distinguish the waywardnstudent from his teachers. CertainlynRansom, Tate, Warren, and Brooks teachnno such thing. (One should read Tate’snessay contemporary to his influence onnthese displaced poets, “The New Provincialism,”nto begin the distinction.) Whatnis taught, at least by the “Southern”nmembers of the New Criticism, is notnthat art is unrelated to life but that it isnone aspect of human Ufe. This lessonnwas unlearned and thus illustrated bynthe pathetic confusion in the lives ofnLowell, Berryman, Blackmur, Schwartz,nand their kindred. It is worth reflectingnthen that Flannery O’Connor and thesenpoets share the same teachers but comento very different understandings aboutnart’s relation to life. The fault Miss Perloflfnlays at the teachers’ door is in the poets, asnmay be briefly demonstrated by lookingnat the “Letter to Teachers” prefece Brooksnand Warren supply to that most influentialnNew Critic book. UnderstandingnPoetry.nIn the “Letter” the argument is that ifnpoetry is to be studied as literature, “onenmust grasp the poem as a literary constructnbefore it can oflfer any real illuminationnas a document.” It must be readnas human artifact before one can withnany safety see its proper correspondencesnas a document to life. Thus the threenprinciples of the anthology:n1. Emphasis should be kept on thenpoem as poem.n2. The treatment should be concretenChronicles of Culturenand inductive.n3. A poem should always be treatednas an organic system of relationships,nand the poetic quality should nevernbe understood as inhering in one ornmore factors taken in isolation.nThe letter closes by quoting with approvalnLouis Caaamian: “More importantn[to the student of literature as opposednto historian], and much more fruitfulnthan the problems of origins and development,nare those of content and significance.nWhat is the human matter, whatnthe artistic value of the work?” Thesenmatters, of course, grew out of historynno less than from immediate human experiences,nin recognition of which onenmay not overlook such poems in thisnrevolutionary text as Donald Davidson’sn”Lee in the Mountains” and Tate’s “Odento the Confederate Dead.” Whatever itsnorigins—immediate or remote in experience—^artnis not here separated from life.nAnd the celebrated concern with paradoxnby these critics in thefr text is onenmanner of homage to the mystery of life,nlest the work of art be reduced to a “document”nwhereby life itself is reduced.n1 hat our latest generation of lost poetsnmisunderstood thefr teachers on thisnpoint is rather conspicuously documentednby thefr lives. Indeed, thefr commonnproblem is a failure to separate lifenfrom art in significant ways. RememberingnSantayana on the question, we maynsay with Miss Perloflf that they are thenlast sons of the Genteel Tradition. Removednfrom the larger mysteries of life,nthey reduce both art and life to the cfrcumferencenof the personal, excludingnin subtle ways other persons. Increasingly,nthey are Unable to distinguish thefrnown life from thefr art. The iUusion theynsuflfer, which gives them a limited energy,nis of the vortex, with art overflowing fromnthe personal. The reality they suflfer, however,nis that of the maelstrom, with thenego self-consumed. There is a religiousnintensity of testimony in them, but it isnthe crying out of lost souls in the desertnnnand prophecy only indfrecdy. Thefr worknhas the force of entropy. Freud, thefrnpriest, combines with the New EnglandnPuritanism in them as they attempt tonrationalize thefr predicament, givingnthem a sense of doom which becomesntoo often a wailing self-justification.nFlannery O’Connor, to the contrary,nsees in the New Criticism a rediscoveringnof artistic principles articulated bynSt. Thomas; conffrmation she finds innGilson and Maritain, particularly innMaritain’s Art and Scholasticism. Shenfinds it also in that very “Southern” writernCaroline Gordon inHow toReadaNoveLnThese recovered principles are conspicuouslynpresent in Mr. Brooks’s book.n(In her letters to would-be writers. MissnO’Connor repeatedly recommendsnBrooks and Warren’s UnderstandingnFiction, sending her copy to one correspondentnand remarking that it is “fiiU ofnmy juvenfle notes.”) The heart of thisnmatter is the distinction between man asncreator and God as Creator, betweennman as Artist and God as “artist.” If art isnnot carefuUy distinguished from life innthe light of this distinction, it becomesninevitable that the poet confuse himselfnwith God. Since he cannot create exnnihilo, he can but feed upon himself.nThe consequence of such confusionnis our general decline into the newngnosticism about which Eric Voegelinn(one of Miss O’Connor’s authors) warnsnus. For man’s assumption of himself asnthe god of being touches not only poetsnbut scholars and politicians and theologiansnas weU. The consequence of thenerror in the poet is that pathetic selfconsumptionntoward nothingness reflectednin sad, wayward poets like Lowellnand Berryman. They may survive morenas epitaphs of the age than as abidingnpoets; that they recognize this likelihoodnis repeatedly revealed in thefr lives andnletters, but nowhere more conspicuouslynthan by the sardonic (not tragic) fronynof thefr poetry. That sort of sad faUure isnwhy it is important to value art as praisednand practiced by Cleanth Brooks andnFlannery O’Connor. Dn