Literature and Propaganda
Author(s): Joseph Wood Krutch
Source: The English Journal , Dec., 1933, Vol. 22, No. 10 (Dec., 1933), pp. 793-802
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
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The ENGLISH JOURNAL
Vol. XXII DECEMBER 1933 No. 3o
LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA
JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
Ten years ago the young writers of America were vigorously de-
fending the freedom of the artist. Their opponents were those con-
ventionally minded persons who complained that the new literature
was, in various ways, unwholesome, and to them the poets and
novelists were replying that it was not their business to teach, but
only to reveal and create. They were determined, they said, to di-
vest themselves wholly of all preconceived notions, to present life
as they saw it, and to let the chips fall where they might. Didacti-
cism had been the curse of American literature, and the one thing
they had resolved not to be was didactic.
Today the question of the relation between literature and propa-
ganda has come to the front in a new form. A goodly portion of con-
temporary writing youth has adopted notions more or less colored
by communist dogma, and it is busy with the production of novels,
plays, and poems deliberately designed for the purpose of expressing
political and social convictions. These young men are not, to be
sure, on the side of the conventions, but they have taken up the
position once maintained only by the conventional. They do, that is
to say, insist that it is the business of literature to teach and they
have nothing but scorn for any art which professes to be detached
or neutral.
Perhaps most of these young men have done more talking than
writing, and John dos Passos is the only one to produce a novel
which has found any wide acceptance. Nevertheless, the influence of
793
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794 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL
their opinion is very great. Mike Gold in the
Masses and V. F. Calverton in various books and articles have ham-
mered persistently away with sufficient effect to win many converts
to their attitude, and the much-touted "Marxian approach to litera-
ture" is the subject of the liveliest contemporary literary debates.
"Humanism," which had its brief hour a year or two ago, is pretty
thoroughly dead, but any general discussion of the arts is pretty
certain to come around, rather sooner than later, to a consideration
of "the Marxian position."
Now it is not very easy to define exactly what this position is. So
far as I know there is no extended official statement of it and the
communist, when pushed into a corner, is very likely to declare that
he does not really mean what he seems to have been implying.
Nevertheless his position may be summed up somewhat as follows:
All religions, science, philosophies, and arts are determined by eco-
nomic factors. The most important economic reality today is the
class struggle and therefore all human activities are influenced by
this class struggle. The so-called disinterested pursuit of truth or
beauty is a bourgeois delusion when it is not a bourgeois hypocrisy.
Everyone is defending the interests of his class, and if he pretends
to be neutral or to be concerning himself with matters which have
nothing to do with the class struggle, he is, in reality, merely a cow-
ardly defender of the capitalist oppression.
Sometimes the communist will admit that a piece of bourgeois
literature may have purely technical excellences, and sometimes he
will call a work like Proust's Remembrance of Things Past great
because, so he says, Proust was unconsciously giving a true picture
of the social structure. But the general tendency of his attitude
is narrow, dogmatic, and intolerant. The value of a work of art
depends upon the effectiveness with which it teaches and, since
there is only one thing worth teaching, upon the effectiveness with
which it promotes the class struggle.
Now I have no intention of discussing the Marxian philosophy as
a whole. No sensible man would deny the influence of economic
conditions upon many things, but to maintain that thought, art, and
science are nothing but economically conditioned phenomena seems
to me to fly in the face of all human experience. Keats did not
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LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA 795
write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" because he was born over a
stable. It is neither a defense of capitalism nor an attack upon it.
It simply has nothing to do with either, and a part of its value lies
just in the fact that it can be equally valuable to the son of a
millionaire and the son of a ditch-digger.
What I do want to discuss is the more general contention tha
literature must teach something; that its value lies in the effective
ness with which it teaches. Is or is not propaganda, of some sort an
for something, its raison d'&tre?
II
The first thing which one will have to notice is that a good three-
quarters of all the attempts to define the function of literature have
resulted in the conclusion that it does teach. The early Christian
church rejected the literature of Greece and Rome because it did not
see how that literature could help to make men better Christians.
And when the Renaissance discovered the delights of literature
again and felt the need to justify its interest, the rhetoricians elabo-
rated what is called the theory of "the sugar-coated pill of philoso-
phy." Poetry, they said, is a form of instruction which goes down
easily, and this thought of theirs has survived even to the present
day. You may find it charmingly stated in English in Sidney's
Defense of Poetry, and it bobs up again time after time. Sometimes
feeble protests have been made against it; more often it has been
simply disregarded as, one may imagine, Shakespeare disregarded
it. Yet the theory not only survives but gets a new birth every time
some writer of unusual force adopts it, as Tolstoi did when he wrote
"What is Art?" and as Bernard Shaw did when he proclaimed in
The Revolutionist's Handbook that "Beauty and Pleasure are by-
products"-meaning, as he elsewhere explained, that great litera-
ture is merely the skilful and impassioned teaching of some moral
truth.
To the common man this theory seems, moreover, the only ten-
able one. He likes "inspiring" poems or novels, and by that he
means rhymes or tales which reinforce his own moral or political
opinions. Hence the Marxian who insists that literature cannot be
good for anything unless it teaches "the truth" is merely following
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796 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL
in the footsteps of whole generations of earnest reform
insisted that literature is not good for anything unless
to convert the world. When a modern communist says
cannot be great because it helps no one to become a
munist, he is merely repeating the protest of the reli
who has protested against most of the world-literatur
he said, it would not help anyone to become a better Ch
Marxian, like the Puritan, is obsessed with the idea that
saved, and impatient with anything which does not co
primarily with a discussion of the ways and means of h
The real lover of literature does not generally bothe
these arguments or protests. He has found in the almost in
ety of the world's great books a source of delight so viv
that he does not need to prove them good. He knows tha
of these books were men of many minds who could not
agree with one another upon any conceivable moral,
religious subject. But he knows also that they have som
common, something which makes each of them recogn
great writer, and he knows still further that it is thi
which delights him. Obviously it cannot be their teach
that is too varied, and obviously, therefore, doctrine i
sence of literature.
Incautious critics have always had an unfortunate tendency to
identify literature with some one quality. The result of such a tend-
ency is usually to rule out three-fourths of the world's greatest
works, and against that absurdity the man of taste rebels. Nor does
it make much difference whether the narrow critic sets up as his
criterion the presence of Christian or of Marxian teaching or wheth-
er, as is equally often the case, he chooses some other quality. He
may prove that Pope is not a great poet because Pope has no "sense
of wonder." He may just as easily prove (as Bernard Shaw does)
that Shakespeare is not a first-rate poet because Shakespeare took
his philosophy from the Elizabethan man-in-the-street. But it makes
no difference. Pope continues to give delight to generation after
generation, and Shakespeare asserts his greatness too unmistakably
for anyone to bother whether or not Shaw has "proved" him to be
only a second-rater.
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LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA 797
It would, of course, be as foolish to maintain that literatu
attempts to teach anything about morals or economics a
maintain that it ought to do nothing else. Certain grea
have written great books which profoundly affected the s
political attitude of their readers. Milton would not be Milt
were not a Puritan and a republican. Nor is there, to co
to the present, any reason why a convinced communist sh
write a great novel in which society was pictured from the
nist point of view and in which, perhaps, there was some co
admixture of communist propaganda. But such a novel is n
only kind of great novel possible today, and if it were wr
would not be great because of the propaganda it contained
There, indeed, is the point. Propaganda is not incom
with literature and no subject is impossible for it. But nei
the other hand, is either propaganda or any special class o
matter essential to it. Ten or twelve years ago I was one o
who gave enthusiastic praise to such writers as Sinclair Le
Theodore Dreiser. At that time it was necessary to defe
critical treatment of American society from those esth
maintained that such realism and such implied "propagand
foreign to literature. I maintained then the novelist's
choose the subject which seemed to him most interesting o
tant, but I feel bound to add that the right to discuss subje
social implications is a right and not an obligation. The art
give us what he can. "Society" is a perfectly proper subject
ature. But so, too, is the individual soul, and it is as absur
that a good artist must be a Marxian as it would be to say
must be a Baptist or a Presbyterian.
Conceivably, of course, he might be either of the three. M
have some political as well as some religious convictions an
are likely enough to color their vision of the world. But t
such convictions obtrude themselves, the less the artist's ac
life is obviously edited and arranged for the purpose of d
these convictions the better. But the very fact, first that
is a narrow creed and, second, that most of its defenders
verts with all the convert's intemperate zeal, makes it a p
dangerous philosophy for the artist to embrace. Propag
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798 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL
repeat, not incompatible with literature; but it impo
work of art a heavy handicap.
III
So much for the negative side of the argument. It is easy to
what literature is not. It is easy to pick out certain of the qual
which certain great works have and to say "These are acciden
not essential, qualities." But it is not so easy to say what literat
is, what qualities or attitudes are common to all great books, an
give some unity to the apparently infinite variety discoverable
the great poems and novels and dramas of the world's literatur
But if literature is not primarily a "sugar-coated pill of philosoph
Marxian or otherwise, some attempt must be made to say what i
and one may best begin, perhaps, by saying that all great literat
seems to be interested to some extent at least in experience for
own sake.
Your reformer wants to get something done. Things as they are
do not please him and he is determined that somehow or other they
shall all be made different. "This," he says, ."is no time to fall in
love or to find in the meanest flower that blows a thought too deep
for tears." Contemplation, enjoyment, and self-realization are all
criminal wastes of time, and in so far as a particular great writer has
some of the reformer in him he shares this attitude. He wants his
book to prove something and teach something; he wants it to change
men and to make them change conditions. Hence his work contains
a certain element of propaganda and his conscience would not be
easy if it did not.
But no artist is pure reformer, or rather, perhaps, no pure re-
former can be an artist, because a certain delight in pure experience,
a certain ability to see beauty and wring joy from things as they
are, is necessary to art. Your artist may be all sorts of things in addi-
tion to being an artist. He may be, like Dante, overwhelmed by a
sense of the sinfulness of the world or, like Theodore Dreiser, over-
whelmed by a sense of the world's social injustice. But just in so
far as he is also an artist he will be fascinated by the spectacle,
determined to represent it, and capable of making others realize it
with the vividness of his own experience.
This, I think, suggests the quality which all great art has and
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LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA 799
which, indeed, constitutes its art. The opinions and even th
of the artists may be poles apart. The things they choose
and the things they choose to say about what they have s
be entirely different. But they are interested in looking an
ested in saying for the sake of looking and the sake of sa
world is not merely something to be made over, and sensa
emotion is not merely a stimulus to action. Both are also s
for contemplation and realization. Like Faust, the artist
whelmed by the impulse to say to something seen or felt, "
moment, you are so beautiful!" When he says that he has
pulse to art and when he succeeds in making us say the sam
then he has created a work of art. From the whole work
come away, as we come away from some novels, with chan
victions about virtue or justice. On the other hand, we ma
been, as is the case with most poems, merely elevated for a
without having been taught anything at all. But the essen
is that, incidentally in the novel or primarily in the poem,
found the possibilities of human life worth while in thems
The real business of literature is, therefore, not propagan
but the communication of an aesthetic experience, and
striking characteristic of an aesthetic experience is a cert
terestedness. In its purest form, this disinterested experi
not stimulate us to any action, and the reformer is quite
maintaining that it does not promote reform. To read Ham
to become any more determined to fight the injustices of t
To enter in that great tragedy is not to be led to want any
humanity. Neither is it to be made to want anything for o
The experience is disinterested and complete in itself. Ham
seems its own justification and the privilege of sharing his
seems enough to make life worth living.
Some natures are undoubtedly almost wholly incapable of
experience. They belong to the people who must always
something or going somewhere. Everything must be a
something else; nothing can be worth while for its own s
live wholly in the future, never in the present, and life seems
valuable only as a preparation for heaven if they are Chris
preparation for communism if they are communists. The
incapable of undergoing an aesthetic experience as a deaf m
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800 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL
be of enjoying music, and it is no wonder
hear of a thing called literature they sho
terms of something which they can und
tation misses the essential part. They ma
tain of its incidental qualities. They may
propaganda, which is often mixed up wit
do not really know what it is all about.
It is natural, also, that such people shou
all our thoughts and emotions are determ
ests. Certainly such interests do influenc
when we do not know that we are so bein
to rise above animal needs and difficu
called long ago the "bondage of the pass
is done because we want something, and
best of us rise to that distinctly human lev
ing have so detached themselves from the
have become pure contemplation. But
learned to understand literature knows t
a genuine detachment, and he loves lit
him to rise to that purely human height
Sometimes he achieves it also in the midst of his own life. Some-
times he gets a genuine aesthetic experience in the midst of the real
world and, by freeing himself from his own crude desires and crude
prejudices, sees the world through genuinely human eyes. But he
knows how rare and how difficult that experience is, and the world
of literature is the world which has been created in order that he
may there live freely, easily, and continuously upon the level which
he can only rarely achieve in the real world. Literature reveals to
him the possibility of just that freedom which the theory of economic
determinism would deny. Hence it may be said that literature does,
after all, teach one thing. It teaches that man can escape from the
bondage of his own material interests and take an interest, not per-
sonal but impersonal, in the phenomena of life.
IV
Of one thing one may, moreover, be comfortably sure, and that
thing is that literature will survive despite the Marxian insistence
that it does not and cannot exist. The impulse to art is too funda-
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LITERATURE .AND PROPAGANDA 80o
mental in man not to reassert itself irresistibly; if it could be killed
by stupid critics and philosophers it would have been killed long ago.
Even through the Dark Ages it was kept alive in cloisters where
monks had to invent strange excuses for the interest which their
dogma could not justify. Troubadours cultivated it at a time when
to be an artist was to be something of an outcast and then, during
the Renaissance, it was born again in the bosom of the church. The
important thing is not what men say about art or even what they
think about it, but the fact that the sternest societies cannot prevent
from breaking out here and there that impulse to the detached and
delighted contemplation of something for its own sake which is the
impulse to literature.
The chances are that "the Marxian approach to literature" is no
more than a passing fashion destined to disappear as completely and
almost as quickly as the "humanism" which preceded it. But even
if it should not-even if, perchance, it is destined to become the
official philosophy of a new state-it will still be as impotent to
change the real nature of literature or to prevent that nature from
asserting itself as the moral and critical dogmas of the past proved
themselves in their time. Who would ever guess that Hamlet was
written at a time when the official opinion of the learned was that
art was a sugar-coated pill of philosophy and that the really great
English play would have to be written on the model of the unread-
able Gorboduc? Who cares that so sensible a man as Addison believed
his own Cato a great play and was joined in that opinion by the
leading critics of his time, who proved that it must be a master-
piece because it taught so fine a lesson?
To say this is not to say that the novel of the next ten years may
not concern itself a good deal with "society." It is not to say that
the best novel of that period may not possibly be written by a
communist or even that, mixed up in it, there may not be a good
deal of propaganda. But it is to say that if the Marxians produce a
great novel it will not be great because it is Marxian. It is also to
say that this same not impossible work will be written-if it is writ-
ten at all-by someone who is not as good or thoughgoing or as ortho-
dox a communist as he may believe himself to be. It will, on the
contrary, be the work of someone who has something of the artist
left in him. He may believe that he believes that "art is a weapon"
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802 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL
and nothing else. He may think that his
tical one of promoting the "class struggle
make his book great is the thing which
great, namely, a delight in the thing itse
struggle for its own sake, a determination
aesthetic experience.
THE TEACHING OF CREATIVE WRITING
II. CRITICISM
ANNA F. HAIG
All the weaknesses of young writers, whether of organizat
style, or of form, can be traced back to some lack in clear thinki
in clear perception. Therefore, the importance of the first p
of thought organization-limiting a subject to one particular
or aspect and developing that aspect by details of sound,
color, feeling-cannot be too emphatically stressed for stude
is impossible to use sensory details without having very clos
served the subject at hand and without having very definitel
marized one's reaction to it. Therein lies the cure for insinc
incoherence, and insipidity.
In any consideration of the following illustrations of the r
work of students, the reader should constantly bear in mind t
criticism offered in each case must be adapted so far as pos
the ability, the stage of progress, and the personality of th
No honest effort of any student should ever be ruthlessly ca
as worthless. On the other hand, the critic must be just and
and reliable if he expects to do real teaching. When a child
little possibility of presenting a vivid image after continued a
definite guidance, he should be directed to other types of w
If his originality can be developed even to a small extent in th
ing of informal letters, or essays, or stories, he will gain the
and the profit that make creative work worth while.
Insincerity, one of the most unfortunate tendencies of begi
occurs in the form of ideas not clearly experienced by the wr
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