William Barrett is widely known as one of the first philosophers to introduce ‘America, Besides along and distinguished career 1s a professor of philosophy, he has been editar of Partisan Review and the literary critic for At antic Monthly, Barrett is the author of The Tllu- sion of Technique and The Truants, among other books. IRRATIONAL MAN A Study in Existential Philosophy WILLIAM BARRETT DOUBLEDAY ANCHOR BODES DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC,“ [MRATIONAL. MAN se Te fends extended ad graced bythe Ten ‘THE TESTIMONY OF MODERN AKT "7 ‘modern art that a new and radical conception of man was « at work in this period. (7 It would be a mistake to construe thie breaking out on° rnArIONAL MAN om r wooens axe . sble to avoid this painful conchision, and to dismiss this laters passed over into the solidity, Sve, and roup of att ate ‘rresponeibles, and skillful renegades tiree-dimensicnal style of early Renloseon eertag t on of ait es any ars of comparslo Wala mark at mam was tuning onward, nto Space, ater from the tradition if ete entimedernst could act over the lng period of lntrompecion of the Middle Ages. West seers Dut whats equally sue-and this negative Eman moved out Sato space in his peinting, inthe four SE et Sroven stanger on tho side of Ue mvod- teenth century, before ho set forth into actual physical space dene orcas act af ths period is a8 dead as 1a the age of exploration thet was to follow. Thus palating eae a aa a cae, depresses po one and does not Was prophet ofthe new tum of the human epi which ‘on really seothe anyone, It simply dees not live; it is out tras eveotunly to fod exprowion in the cougeet Gee fide the time ‘helo globe. Have wo tho right, then, ro seecet thet the if wo turn to the internal and formal characteristics of ing dnward of the maden art without reference to its external inspirations ia away from thet outer fil or at any rate a fining im Frmalting, out of the Impressionists and Cézanne glgnntic externalization of life within modem society. The fap ping utero Cen] Se ein of ea len my wierd i pes ac Be i) op ty he pote ae ee ao ing oily as paintertthat is, upon the visual fmage at} man fs « strunger Philosopher, ‘where mock, ‘Whon mankind no longer lives spontaneously turned to- ‘Yet a great formal style in patating bas never been God or the up = spatancously area to. ted that didnot draw upon the Gepts of the human spi ‘of Yeats, the ladder is gone by which we would fel that Gid not, in its newness, express a fresh mutati ove aghast an fae by which wo would Of the Eumaa spirit. Cubism achieved a radical fat with flat and inexplicable world, This shows itself ‘of space by insisting on the two-dimensional fat of the 4n the formal structures of modem art. Where the * Petit fattening out of space would seem not to bel ‘of tho spirit i no longer vertical but only hor negligible fact historically sf we 2 the climactic element in art arp in general leveled fore in history, euch a develop nt The ig fp Tee° ImRATIONAL, MAN THE TESTIMONY oF MoneRN ANT * painting, but {s paralleled by similar changes in Mterary ‘Structure must be an intelisble whole in which ench part techniques. There is general process of flattening, three develops logically out of what went before. If our existence Chief aspects of which may be noted: itself is never quito like this, no matter; art is a selection 1G) The fottoning out of all planes upon the plane of _£0m life, and the poet is required to be soletive. However, a James Joyce's Ulysses, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and ‘ble whole. ‘Bara Pound's Cantor are examples; and perbaps the most ‘What happens if we try to apply this powerful use of the device was made by Faulkner in his _felien anon to a tndor work lovers Ulps, ‘parts of the canvas, Formally speaking, the spirit of this ‘outcome of thoroughly rational preconceptions about real- tt is anticlinactie. if "When we fur to abserve this same defation or Satten- the things themselves,” to the fats, to existence inthe { jbtsubordinated to others end ultimately to the whole itself, . Jy ovuld demand of the artt tht his form imitate this ‘ogins at a certain point, rises toward a climax, and then\ reality, and give us coherence, logic, and the A tr of «word with no lowe ead. at too mkt this kind by means of a triangle whose apex represents: i climax with which everything in the play bas some mvesty upon the histereal being ofthe arts. and necessary connection. The author subordinates iven where the writer has more of a story, in the tradi- to the requirements of logic, necessity, probability. sense, to tell, he may prefer not to tell it in the tradi-Py IRRATIONAL MAN {THE TESTIMONY OF MODERHT ART 8 ‘tional way. In Tha Sound ond the Fury Faulkner bas much ~ In the course of the brute random flow of detail that is sore ofa novelistic narrative than Joyo in Ulyases—the de- ‘that Jast day of his life, Quentin Compson breaks the crystal cline of a family, « suicide, tho elopement of a git, and so “of his watch, Ho twists off tho two hands and thereafter, [Life] és 0 tale, sou His decision; and the watch has no hands to reasrure him of old bom i fo of eur fore, that normal, calculeble progression of minutes and hours ia fving nothing. which-our ordinary day-to-day life is passed. Time is no Shakespeare places these lines in the context of a fully longer a reckonable sequence, then, for him, but an ines- svellamnde tragedy in which evi is destroyed and good ti _baustible inescapatle presence, We are close hero—as we Tiaphs but Feullmer shows ws the world of which Shake- “shall sce later~to the thought of Heidegger. (Faulkner r= pene’ statement would be true: a world opaque, dent | teily nover rend Heidegger; he may never even bave Tea trations, chat could not have existed for Shakespears,| heard of him. So much the better, for the testimony of the Sie sa ho was etl to modioval Christianity. Even where att, the poet, i all the moro valid whon it ls not con- ‘purposeful human action is planned, in the novel, and tbs | tamisated by any Intellectual preconceptions.) Real time, atic is handling it wit : ‘wants to know the concrete feel of that world with which ‘new points of view, is evidence that the philosophers four age who have attempted « new understanding of4 {RMATIONAT, MANE (THR TESTIMONY OF MODERN ART 35. time are responding to the same hidden historical con their ears as casually and contingontly as life ite.) Fore ‘cems, and are not merely elaborating some new conceptual _—ster's description ofthe song rakes our point so beautifully novelty out of their heads. that it is worth quoting in its entirety: "These details about art, it should be apparent to the . reader, are not dragged in by the heels. Nor are they the ., At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the together, the belng of man io his tine, Jet tongue. The sounds continued and ceased after No bogiming, mbidle, end-soch fe the structueless 3: pomeats as easualy av they had bags severed all structure that some modem literary works struggle toward; through a bar, and upon the subdominant. ground, middleground, and background. To the tradition- ‘The song begins, goes on, suddenly stops; but there is not ‘alist, icamersed in the classical Western tradition, all this the least trace of an Aristotelian beginning, middle, or end. ‘wil appear negative, purely destructive, But if wo do not Compare Codbole's song with the structure of an era from ‘Keep our gazo nasrowly riveted on the tradition of the West» ‘alian opera. In the latter we have a beginning, a do- (and in any cazo this classical canon is only one of the tradi ffopmect Grough coin pedcaile share end the tions that have arisen fn the course of the whole history of ble climax of the high note, and then the falling tho West), we find that these requirements of logical and’ xy or denouement, tying up the whole thing in 2 nest rational form do not hold for otber traditions of art in othe : here is Aristotelian and rational form in music, cultures. Oriental art, for example, is much moro formless But the Oriental song ballles the ear of the Westerner; it organic, and sprawling than classical Western art. It hat unintelligible, The reason is that the Westerner do- form, bot a different form froxa that of the West. Why (or let us say, used to demand) an fnteligibilty ‘this? "The question fs not a triviel one; itis perhape as pros the Easterner does not. Ifthe Westemer finds the Ont found as any the West can ask these days, for thls diference music “meaningles,” the Oriental might very well re {n at is not more happenstance but the inevitable concomt that this is the meaninglesmese of nature itself which tant ofa different attitude toward the world. on endlessly without beginning, middle, or end. ‘One of the best indications of this peculiar (to us) sensf real reason for the difference between the senso of of artistic form among Oriectals is given by E. M. Fe form to the East and in the West is thus ultimately fn his novel A Passage to India, A mixed group, Eni aiference in philosophic outlook. Since the Greeks, West- and Indians, aro at tea, and Professor Godbele, n man has believed that Being, all Being, is iateltigila, has been asked to sig, but ha let the occasion go bys there is a reason for everything (at least, the as all are leaving, the Hindu says, “I may sing now,” ‘that runs from Aristotle through St. Thomas Aqu- ‘unexpectedly. (This unexpectedness is significant, for into the beginning of the moder period hes held this), ‘tong isnot to be given a forme] seting, but to drop36 LTWRATIONAL, MANE THE TESTIMONY OF MoDERY Ant 7 th 1 other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe 0 of equal importance fina given paintin that would appear to be meaningless, o the rational West- | same plastic role. Painting they play the enss IRAATIONAL, MAN ‘nut restart OF MODERN ART 50 + + +L would like people to look at my work as aa) o + mt rake peo ah woke 1 in opening our eyes to the rejected elements of fi any cute, make 00 mistake, a work of ardent bration. T am convinced that any table can be for each tus a landscape as inesheustible as tho whole Tam struck by the high value, for a man, of asi “dangor is the price that mast be paid for any sep forward {ndiference, to aocept the ugly dross of existence as he wu, ‘BY the homan spit, 2 the Western tradition; the philosopher must occupy him-| self wit this break if he i to recast the meaning of this! ‘madition. { ‘Tho deflation, or fattening out of valus in Westora at doesnot necessarily indlate an ethical niin, Quito the