16 / CHRONICLESnADAM AND LILITHnby Thomas FlemingnIt was in a place for lunch last week—nOh potted plants, oh bentwood chair—nI saw her there, I did not speaknbut watched to see if she would stare.nShe did, and with just those lowered eyesnI knew, tried to make up her mind,n(the waitress waved aside the fliesnand cleared the tea and lemon rind);nMy wife ordered lunch, I nursed a drink.nOur talk went stale, the children fussed.nI leaned back in my chair to thinknof times and tide and wasted trust.nOf is and are, of was and were—nthe difference tense and number make—nthe she-in-me, the me-in-hernthat neither one of us can break.nI am not talking now of love,nbut what a man like Paul might termna fact of life: we make part ofneach other’s apple, each other’s worm.nThe things we ought not to have donenwill keep some corner of our minds:nhow her hair is burnished in the sunnthat blinks between the wooden blinds.nSuch nonsense as a wrinkled dressn(yes, you can bring the check now. Please,nher lips, shy still and lipstickless,nher awkward grace of growing trees—nGymnasts out of step with the wind;nadd in a box of unfinished versenand letters, long since left behind. . . .nwhat absurdity to rehearse.nNow I’m past thirty—it’s fifteen years—ntwo half-grown children and a wifen(her boyfriend orders two more beers)nmore than I deserve of life.nAnd although I’m as happy as I oughtnand have no leisure to regretnthe battles of the flesh we foughtnso long ago, and yet and yet.nharder than to distinguish good from bad art. There isnalways the possibility that a competent critic may have somenpersonal ax to grind or has decided to put his pen up fornsale. We must never forget that love of art and beauty is notnthe same as love of justice and fellow man. But note that innnnthis respect the critics are not much different from thenartists. For even among the greatest artists some leave muchnto be desired as human beings.nHistory and society at large have been dismissed oftennenough as less competent judges of art, but such dismissalnproves ambiguous. No one can deny that judgment aboutnwhat is beautiful differs widely from place to place and overntime, or that some artists achieve fame only posthumouslynwhile others are soon forgotten. For instance, the music ofnGustav Mahler is today appreciated much more than whilenhe was alive, and the same goes for the paintings of PaulnGauguin. And were it not for the movie Amadeus, fewnpeople today would recognize the name of Salieri, oncenconsidered a great composer. In the past century or so,nImpressionism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism,nGubism, Surrealism, Neo-Glassicism, Primitivism, Futurism,nImagism, Minimalism, and so on have all come andngone, to mention only the better known schools—ornfashions—in art.nBut is society to blame for this rapid and perhaps erraticnturnover? New styles are invariably introduced by artistsnthemselves, and critics have a lot to do with their socialnacceptance. With greater or lesser degree of inertial resistance,nsociety simply seems to go along. In considering thenvalidity of sociohistorical judgment in art, however, wenshould also note that, albeit again on advice from experts,nmodern societies especially have provided generously fornthe preservation of works of art done in every style imaginable.nDisplayed with pride in museums of art, thesencollections testify to an undercurrent of deeper understandingnof the place of art in communal life. Thus Tolstoyncertainly is right when he observes that art is a necessaryncondition of human life, which has in all societies and at allntimes exacted great sacrifices.nThe most suspect aesthetic opinion would have to be thatnof the so-called independent-minded individual who insistsnthat he needs no guidance because he knows what he likes.nThis seems to be a special problem in modern massndemocratic societies whose ethos encourages assertion ofnomnicompetence by “the man in the street” and producesnwhat critics have called “mass culture” characterized bynwholesale “lowering of standards.” Among writers who havenaddressed this problem, we find T.S. Eliot and IrvingnBabbitt, as well as Tocqueville and Henry Adams, all ofnwhom have complained about the decline of “high culture”nin modern times. But the new “popular culture,” includingnthe hope of spreading ever “higher” culture among thenmasses, also has its highly articulate defenders. HerbertnRead and Susan Sontag, Richard Hoggart and EdwardnShills, among others, have variously questioned the validitynof the distinction between “highbrow” and “lowbrow”nculture. Film is as legitimate an art as theater, they say,nand so is the music of the Beaties compared to that ofnBeethoven.nWhile it may not be exactly the same as going to a livenPhilharmonic concert, listening to records is a genuinelynaesthetic experience. While the working classes have alwaysnpossessed a vital culture of their own, modern technology—helpednby certain appropriate sociopolitical adjustments—nownholds out the promise of a universal highnculture. As Read puts it with some exaggeration in Ton