The Explanatory Critic

Harry Levin figured centrally in the postwar “restart” of Comparative Literature, to borrow Gerald Gillespie's apt term for the field's mid-twentieth-century reinvention and expansion.1 Charged with reorganizing Harvard's Department of Comparative Literature after World War II, Levin went on to advise students for over four decades. Only the third president of the American Comparative Literature Association, Levin became a presence within the field in myriad ways. Yet even amid expanding professional obligations, he came to personally know many leading writers and critics from within and beyond the United States, maintaining a connection to the larger nonacademic world of letters. When Levin wrote about the literary and critical dimensions of modernism, he did so not as a detached spectator but as someone who helped set its trajectory. Indeed, his book from 1982, Memories of the Moderns, confirmed his close and long-standing association with modernist writers and critics he had helped to bring within the twentieth-century humanities curriculum. Although she did not study with him, Marjorie Perloff has written that Levin informed her scholarly and professional aspirations. Looking through a Harvard catalog that listed Levin's course, “Proust, Joyce, and Mann,” she experienced something of an epiphany: “That I decided was my kind of course.”2 From that point on, she resolved, “Comp Lit was what I wanted to study.”Levin was himself marked by developments within another field that gained traction in the middle of the twentieth century: American Studies. The collection notably brings to the fore the significant “Americanist” dimension of Levin's contribution. Indeed, the collection directs attention to Levin's relationship to American Studies, a mid-twentieth-century historicist project that drew much of its critical energies from the steadfast refusal of any single method, as Henry Nash Smith argued in his 1957 essay, “Can ‘American Studies’ Develop a Method?”3 If Levin's “Why Literary Criticism Is Not an Exact Science,” from 1967, is not quite a companion piece to Smith's essay, it nevertheless reveals a shared sense that the postwar fortunes of Comparative Literature and American Studies depended on distance from the demand for a set “method.” For both fields, “history” and its attendant terms do not secure a ready-made or once-and-for-all method, much less found a science. Yet there is documentary evidence around which “decipherers” can gather. Acquiring professional standing as a comparatist as the historicist American Studies project was coming into postwar institutional form, Levin could not fail to notice—and be caught up in—a portentous development: “American literature, theretofore neglected by English departments, a vast and fertile territory was opened for cultivation just two generations ago. The ensuing rush and energetic settlement—abetted by nationalistic exercise—have reaped harvests of artistic enrichment and cultural self-awareness” (88). Reading the essays in the collection and taking stock of the range of American writers Levin addresses, one is obliged to ask how his impact on comparative literary studies was already shaped by his complex status as a quasi–American Studies scholar, and the ways the historicist arrangement of the field may have been a resource for comparative literature's postwar reset. Levin endorsed the humanistic valuation of cultural memory, or what he once referred to as the “recallable past,” itself but a synonym for the “usable past” American Studies critics set out to recover and nurture (124).One can spend quite some time thinking about Levin and his American Studies mentors and colleagues, including F. O. Matthiessen and Perry Miller. Yet more interesting is the work he undertook, including one of his more important early books, The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville (Knopf, 1958). Dedicated to Miller, The Power of Blackness was by Levin's own estimation part of the ever-widening body of American Studies scholarship, a counterpart to R. W. B. Lewis's The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1955), a study of innocence in American literature. Yet what is at least as striking as the confluences are the efforts to render his own project an alternative to the “current reorganization of American Studies into a specialized academic discipline,” the product of a “forty-year conversation” dating from about World War I, the “self-critical” character of which had reached, by mid-century, a “self-congratulatory” impasse.4 In The Power of Blackness, Levin distances himself from “an up-and-coming sense of national importance” and concentrates on writers for whom the “distinctive attitude has been introspection, dissent, or irony.”5 Levin's attitude in turn allows for a study that explores writers who were “rather symbolists than realists,” whose meditations encompassed the “very worst of national problems, the peculiar institution of slavery.”6 Given such a recoding of American literary history, it is perhaps not altogether surprising that Levin closes with William Faulkner, for by the early twentieth century, the United States had acquired “her own store of ruins and ghosts,” including “that gloomy mansion that Colonel Sutpen built on slave labor in Absalom, Absalom!”7 The obligation to history in the case of The Power of Blackness involves an obligation to one's personal history. “One who is by profession a student of literature, and by birthright a citizen of the United States, would be doubly remiss if he were not keenly interested in the work of the major American writers,” Levin writes.8 Part of Levin's alternative American Studies involves reading American writing through his knowledge of European literature. Dante, Balzac, Baudelaire, Goethe, Mallarmé, among others, make their appearance alongside his American trio. In much the way that Saul Bellow Europeanized American literature, as Philip Rahv had it, Levin seemed to urge a nonromantic Europeanization of American Studies.Even when he is not analyzing American texts explicitly, Levin ever brings his impressive knowledge of U.S. literatures to bear on his chosen topics. In “The Title as Literary Genre,” he attributes the “varying terrains” registered in such titles as Henry James's Washington Square and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio to a “national commitment to self-discovery” (210). Elsewhere, Levin is far less interested in the “American-ness” of different texts than he is in reconstructing the nexus of historical, biographical, and psychological factors that together set the ground for imaginative works. The publication of the journals of Thornton Wilder in the 1980s provides the occasion for the reconstruction of just such a nexus. Levin, who attended Wilder's Norton lectures when Wilder was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1950–1951, credits the playwright with moving beyond naturalism in a quest to revive the “morality play: Everyman, Mankind” (414). Considering Wilder's biography, Levin is intrigued by a writer who “was a personality in the sense that Henry James was” but of “mellow and generous temperament,” especially when placed alongside the “egocentric personalities” of a Hemingway or Fitzgerald (415). Levin speculates that the “fact that he was haunted by the ghost of a stillborn twin brother might have had something to do with his psychic duality.” Although Wilder offers distinct angles on the American scene, Levin concludes that “his oceanic awe before the tragic realities that bound our daily existence” emerges as the truly distinguishing feature of his writing (420).The Implications of Literary Criticism, edited by Jonathan Hart, assembles previously published essays, review essays, and book reviews by Levin, primarily written during the 1970s and 1980s. Hart's preface isolates a key line from Levin, one that can be read back into the entire arc of his career: “If we have any professional obligation, it is to history: to the interpretation of recorded experience in its continuities, from whenever they started until now” (13). Levin's sense of obligation is everywhere on display in The Implications of Literary Criticism, which brings to the fore the historicist and contextualist practices that marked his work. Levin chose the contents of the collection, but it remained an unpublished manuscript at the time of his death, in 1994. Hart organized the material and chose the essays that would serve as the introduction and conclusion: “The Implications of Literary Criticism” (originally published as “The Implication of Explication”) and “What Is Literature If Not Comparative?” respectively. Hart has included a comprehensive bibliography and other information related to Levin's scholarship and teaching, including a list of undergraduate and graduate courses he offered throughout his years at Harvard. A valuable resource for considering Levin's theoretical perspectives on the field and guiding critical concerns, the collection is also a compact yet rich archive of material about twentieth-century comparative literary studies. The collection offers avenues of inquiry not only into Levin's interpretive work as such but also into the larger “obligation” to history he and others made integral to varieties of twentieth-century comparative literary studies.Among the chronologically earliest essays in the collection, “Thematics and Criticism,” from 1968, conveys Levin's commitment to historical analysis and, at the same time, demonstrates his affinities for structuralism. (Levin once described his approach as “having something in common with what is called structuralism, though it has a more historical orientation.”)9 “Theme” was important to Levin, even as he worked against its presumed timelessness in favor of the more appealing if also “pseudoscientific approximation of the German Stoffgeschichte, literally the history of stuff or fabric” that throughout the twentieth century became the province of novelists. Levin notes that Thomas Mann “described the style and structure of his own writing as ‘thematisch’” (164–65). The exploration of theme as historical development and “polysemous” invention is above all an “adventure in the history of ideas” (177). But, as Levin more or less divulges, it is also an attempt to conceive of an alternative to the stark options of the late 1960s, the “self-limiting criterion of the New Critics” and the primacy accorded “external conditions” by Marxist philosophy (162). If this contrast seems caricatured, perhaps even an epistemological Cold War default, Levin's tracking of theme nonetheless reveals an informed and critical compass. He expresses confidence in a viable criticism that will remain committed to thematism, which addresses a given writer's “powers of observation and his years of experience” (178). Critics must continually return to “what the imagination is, how it works, what it needs to work upon, how by selecting and arranging it modifies and transforms, how it enhances life by endowing it with meanings and with values.” Criticism attends to the transformative and historical effects of the imagination.The commitment to history was the impetus for Levin's wide-ranging scholarship, a body of work that continually reached out beyond its primary academic sphere. Yet if the commitment to history informed Levin's analysis, it was inevitably a specific iteration of that commitment that pervaded his thinking. “History” belonged to a cluster of words that also included “custodianship” and “culture.” Before turning to that we might which allows Levin to literatures as of documentary Although not included in the collection, “Why Literary Criticism Is Not an Exact Science,” from 1967, the that may against the of Levin the is by The of our study with its which is much and more than that of any other The specific of words in to be must be and the of are in the meanings are to the and of a among the the is not less when the out to be a In “Why Literary Criticism Is Not an Exact Science,” Levin a for the around the study of The in Levin's on for he a of in literary studies. A essays in the collection a of what one could Levin's approach to the study of literature. Literature, part of the larger of history for Although he as it that history, from a among the a that is both and of any of or relationship to involves both an obligation to history and a as a Levin that is our to if is with of who have already of their memory, we must do we can to their words The of though in literary as the of Levin's the that his many into the history of literary Levin's writing style a on and integral to the work of In a of Levin, that an of remained a of his In time, she he to his of it is not what it to a of or if Levin ever to do The imagination he endorsed from his to bring more and on the of his critical they can more be and He concludes his “The Title as Literary in this one of the in the has had a I have had time and and to more than about The relationship to literature, part and of Levin's obligation to history, presumed a and humanistic on the Harvard he Levin wrote that it in or a set of we a critical the of can be The provides as to Levin's as ever on a of critical The in of yet another related may have been the by which Levin Levin not once make of the in his of Literary Criticism,” which the collection its and as the there is more to about Levin's The of is from the for to the English the has to do with the of or the of The of the term from the for any given to and he not it in the ways I Levin on the of in his of literary A on the of literary the and for the term is a kind of the of literary criticism Literary criticism has and we it to have Levin The of is what it to the of literary if it is to have a the specific of that sense of from which Levin's work as the for the ground of of a who any ready-made Yet this approach it is its when and the of an in Levin not the collection of In a of Levin notes the of for the Harvard but it to the range of his and to his with the of the essay, which the of and Hart attributes the of to Levin's Yet Levin's to of different also from a much more than would his own Levin's critical was from early on by his of in many different a standing for of my way to with any or or set of A to this may have been a to bring any or Levin is not altogether chosen a with be to it Levin in one his do this and their own he critics must work the of experience” From this Levin's essays, with other of this collection, the status of literary criticism and the of the literary amid the from both a with the of the he and an of the cultural he with “The is the a for it is both a and but a of to our it is to “The Implication of the of the essay, for the of is that it will or altogether as Levin's has to do with his in the of the that who his texts by in their historical and In “The in he on the as that who a that is than and when in the comparative method, all as one by material from in to and to who up more than once in the collection, as from his about the cultural and brings to another feature of his comparative literary his commitment to history and is an on the of Indeed, Levin's work is bound up in the larger humanistic of the many critics of the twentieth century, among he to it with and In in Comparative Literature Levin “One of my larger is that itself is not but that it is not the of the or the or or but all in one Yet such by the time he is writing the essays in The Implications of Literary Criticism, and Levin the to his the of can in two the or the the or the the or the within the this part of literary criticism through a that Levin as one in which the of the have been ground over the of the to Levin not the of but his essays are interesting as they to the of the attention to that late twentieth-century that it can and also The of the of and when a return to writers with the Levin's are at once to be given his of but also at and an appearance from the he both and that are they are at through surprising is the to which into Levin's on the of cultural and efforts to the of the of the Levin to to not and on the work of the has must out of national In Levin's one of the to from is the of the of a single and the more that two were are made in the of and Levin would have that when of in the was an into the If is in Levin's to make sense of the work by the he to and was by as a which would make to the its they would be by one to on an Levin expresses confidence that a will the effects of cultural which is more less than the and our for and our relationship with our and he that is more than it ever was in and that have some of its Levin offers but a more of late know how many that the The Implications of Literary is that Levin's much of twentieth-century literary was with the of also to some of the that Levin's and about such as and Indeed, his late essays his of also the sense of a world in which is In the world of Levin's essays, the that and was that of in itself a term that seems Levin the close of a during which the of and information and has been the The book had in turn the Levin's of and in “What Is Not not back with on what he the can with for that the are not he Yet will he in part of its of in the sense of and as that which is once a and a of turn up in of the essays, and Levin the of the he also seems to from over as a historical one for which he may have than he is to He to we be by such a of the one he is to that as it into or and the of written He the “Why critics be to the of their in an of and Yet Levin is to a in literary criticism marked by to and the of Levin in the relationship of and and literary criticism to its is the of that Levin and related for all of his “The Implications of Literary Criticism” that literary studies it must on for some of that allows critics to work with the documentary evidence by writers and remain the of than on its writers as a critical may be as a on the Levin endorsed in “Why Literary Studies Is Not an Exact in the 1960s, for what about such work is to the of experience” and such is what can be made to a was for provides the of to the of he once on Henry James's The which Levin wrote for an of the published in the is among the more contextualist Indeed, it is something of a in the with James's unpublished and other Levin a F. R. for the of as a work with and Levin is on European much as he is on the the and in from which and for which he as way of his many Levin can the of James's to the character of and James's own of a Yet Levin's as his words and he to the ever or He notes a of marked by not so much for the as for the the the Levin's of brings within the of analysis it James's preface to his much part of the set of he Levin taking of to the in his approach to Levin The as the set of biographical, historical, and of a on the even as it as the that Levin's obligation to history, as a term not all that in The Implications of Literary In “What Is Literature If Not Comparative?” Levin a the of comparative literary analysis Levin seems to that in a of with historicist and the as to will not the of comparative literary criticism or its A term for an is the of and literatures to than to set up a term than an occasion for on comparative and the of a set of Levin “The of at the when we are with more than one If there were but two in the they would in the of history, and for as comparative criticism can it must do so as a and the of it must be that Levin and and that his for the is which he a in which the of to the is to a Levin's his of specific to and literary such that others, among Levin's work over time, as this not a less but feature of his Levin's of and a evidence of it on display throughout the in for an of to the of Levin as much as involves reading is a of and her is she was to read the the world of to which he his professional life for as when he that the or has an of by their Elsewhere, Levin “The of with an on U.S. at its has with some of our have by its such and up more than they for Not a will be Levin in such and if a larger for it might have given a range of critical to his the collection is an to Levin's work. offers ways into what Hart the and literary Levin

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