Saito Junichi

齋藤 純一

English

齋藤, 純一

Saito, Junichi

KANAGAWA University Repository

Seeking after the shadow of Auschwitz in Eliot's Notes towards the Definition of CultureSeeking after the shadow of Auschwitz.InEliot's Notes towards the Definition of CultureJunichi SaitoT. S. Eliot published Notes towards the Definition of Culture (Referred to inwhat follows as Notes) in 1948, 3 years after the end of World War II. In thiswork he deals with the issue of the unity of European culture from the viewpoint of a man of letters, and he reviews the common tradition of Christianitywhich has been a mainstay of European culture.Eliot, speaking as a Christian poet, goes so far as to say that "Only aChristian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche."! Therefore,from his point of view, it would not be too much to say that if Christianity goes,the whole of European culture goes." Many people take it for granted that theWestern world derives its significance from the combined heritage of theGreek and Roman classics and the Bible.The reader of Eliot's Notes, might get the impression that Eliot has a Euro-centric view of life; Eliot assumes that European culture, owing to Christian-ity, has a central role to play in human civilization. However, can Europeanculture, in which the highest form of humanism led the Nazi regime to thesystematic murder of 6 million Jews,:l play this important role?Another great commentator of the twentieth century, George Steiner,draws attention to the barbarism which has long indwelt the heart of Euro-pean culture under the name of high human ideals. l Steiner was born in Parisas an Austrian Jew and was educated in a lycee there until the beginning ofWorld War II. Thanks to his father's foresight, he escaped from the hands ofthe Nazis to the safety of America, but at the cost of losing his parents inAuschwitz. This tragic experience gives him a harsh view of European cul-ture.Indeed, Steiner's Language and Silence (967) contains many essays which(1) 178might stand as the antithesis of Eliot's view of European culture. The collec-tion opens with his description of the madness which has lain hidden in theabyss of European civilization. Steiner begins:.. ,My own consciousness is possessed by the eruption of barbarism inmodern Europe; by the mass murder of the Jews and by the destructionunder Nazism and Stalinism of what I try to define in some of these es-says as the particular genius of "Central European humanism." I do notclaim for this hideousness any singular privilege; but this is the crisisof rational, humane expectation which has shaped my own life andwith which I am most directly concerned.The blackness of it did not spring up in the Gobi Desert or the rainforests of the Amazon. It rose from within, and from the core of Euro-pean civilization. The cry of the murdered sounded in earshot of theuniversities; the sadism went on a street away from the theaters andmuseums.sAs the passage above shows, Steiner is denouncing a focal evil in Euro-pean civilization which has long been concealed from the public conscious-ness. Steiner goes on to discuss how the dedication to high human ideals trig-gered the Holocaust in the concentration camps.In the passage below he argues that intellectuals with the mask of humanliteracy were turning a blind eye to the murders committed by the Nazi re-gime in those years.We come after. We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilkein the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day'swork at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them with-out understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way doesthis knowledge bear on literature and society, on the hope, grown al-most axiomatic from the time of Plato to that of Matthew Arnold, thatculture is a humanizing force, that the energies of spirit are transfer-able to those of conduct? Moreover, it is not only the case that the es-177 (2)Seeking after the shadow of Auschwitz in Eliot's Notes towards the Definition of Culturetablished media of civilization-the universities, the arts, the bookworld-failed to offer adequate resistance to political bestiality; theyoften rose to welcome it and to give it ceremony and apologia. Why?What are the links, as yet scarcely understood, between the mental,psychological habits of high literacy and the temptations of the in hu-man? Does some great boredom and surfeit of abstraction grow up in-side literate civilization preparing it for the release of barbarism? (iThe reader might be shocked to hear that some officials of the Nazi regimeenjoyed reading Goethe or Rilke with the awareness of intellectuals who havebrilliant human literacy, even while perpetrating systematic murder in con-centration camps. Steiner urges us, then, to reconsider the idea that culturemakes mankind humane.The passage above illustrates how closely high literacy and barbarism arelinked together. One might say that Steiner is trying to denounce a Christiansociety in which so many people in the central part of Europe shut their eyesto such an act of barbarism as the Holoca ust.It is obvious that the force of Steiner's argument is aimed, among otherthings, at Eliot's idea of Christian culture. As a matter of fact, Eliot setsChristian culture at the core of European civilization:To our Christian heritage we owe many things beside religious faith.Through it we trace the evolution of our arts, through it we have ourconception of Roman Law which has done so much to shape the West-ern World, through it we have our conceptions of private and publicmorality. And through it we have our common standards of literature,in the literatures of Greece and Rome. The Western world has its unityin this heritage, in Christianity and in the ancient civilization of Greece,Rome and Israel, from which owing to two thousand years of Christian-ity, we trace our descent.'Steiner denounces Eliot's Notes in that Eliot does not show any sense ofself-reproach; he does not share a sense of grief with those who lost their fel(3) 176lows in the systematic murder. However, the reader has to be careful not tomisunderstand Eliot's true intention in this work.Eliot wrote his Notes to present to the public his standpoints as a Chris-tian poet. If the reader follows carefully through Eliot's Notes, he will clearlyrecognize that Eliot's simple concern is to make the public know how muchEuropean culture owes to Christianity in every sphere of intellectual life.Thus, the discerning reader will realize that Steiner's criticism is off thepoint, because it is clear that Eliot did not write his Notes to comment on thesystematic murders of the Nazi regime. The following passage will illustratewhat "culture" means to Eliot:The dominant force in creating a common culture between peopleseach of which has its distinct culture, is religion. Please do not, at thispoint, make a mistake in anticipating my meaning. This is not a reli-gious talk, and I am not setting out to convert anybody. I am simplystating a fact. I am not so much concerned with the communion ofChristian believers today; I am talking about the common tradition ofChristianity which has made Europe what it is. and about the commoncultural elements which this common Christianity has brought with it.If Asia were converted to Christianity tomorrow, it would not therebybecome a part of Europe. It is in Christianity that our arts have devel-oped; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe have-until recently-been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all ourthought has significance.HThe careful reader will gather here that Eliot is indicating the linkage be-tween culture and religion, which is vital in order to keep European civiliza-tion from splitting apart. The following remark in the Notes is important foranyone wishing to know Eliot's idea of culture.We may go further and ask whether what we call the culture, and whatwe call the religion, of a people are not different aspects of the samething: the culture being, essentially, the incarnation (so to speak) of the175 (4)Seeking after the shadow of Auschwitz in Eliot's Notes towards the Definition of Culturereligion of a people.9What Steiner argues is that Eliot does not significantly refer to the cuI·ture of non-Christian nations. However, the reader must be careful to remem-ber that Eliot was trying to discuss culture from the viewpoint of a Christianpoet in his Notes; he maintains his committed stance in which to consider thisbroad topic of culture. Eliot clarifies his stand as follows:... I discuss Christian matters, that is because I am particularly con-cerned with Christian culture, with the Western World, with Europe,and with England. lOThe reader should not conclude from this that Eliot wishes to exclude non-Christians and non-Europeans from the field of possible discussion. It can beseen from the passage below that Eliot does not intentionally refer to non-European culture in isolation:.. 'when I speak of the unity of European culture, I do not want to givethe impression that I regard European culture of as something cut offfrom every other. The frontiers of culture are not, and should not be,closed. But history makes a difference. Those countries which sharethe most history, are the most important to each other, with respect totheir future literature. We have our common classics, of Greece andRome; we have a common classics even in our several translations ofthe Bible. llThis passage clearly shows if discerningly read, why Steiner's view of Eliotas paying too little attention to non-Christian society is off the point. It canbe said that Eliot tries here to generalize his views of culture and religion, toapply them also to non-European society. This is clearly so in the followingpassage:.. 'all we can do is to try to keep in mind that whatever we do will af-(5J 174fect our own culture or that of some other people. We can also learn torespect every other culture as a whole, however inferior to our own itmay appear, or however justly we may disapprove of some features ofit: the deliberate destruction of another culture as a whole is an ir-reparable wrong, almost as evil as to treat human beings like animals. 12If the reader reads the passage carefully, he will realize that Eliot defendsthe rights of each and every other culture, which should be treated equallywith one's one. One might guess that "the deliberate destruction of anotherculture as a whole is an irreparable wrong" refers to the Holocaust; Eliotmight be expressing a sense of deep regret for what Europeans did in the veryrecent past. It might also be said that the phrase, "to treat human beings likeanimals" represents Eliot's harsh denunciation of the Nazi death camps.We are not sure how far Eliot as a poet was influenced by the idea that"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. "13 Poets, novelists and essayistshave been reluctant to attempt direct representations of the Holocaust; for towrite about the Holocaust means to reduce aesthetic pleasure to nothingthrough the all-too vivid memory of those who were murdered. 14As the Holocaust is an isolated case in human history in terms of its ori-gin and cause, one is led to consider whether it is necessary for writers to at-tempt direct representation of the Holocaust when they discuss European cul-ture in general. Common sense tells us that an isolated event in historycannot be treated as a common example like any other. If Eliot does not refermuch to the happenings in Auschwitz, this does not depreciate the value ofhis Notes, because what Eliot has to say broadly about culture can be appliedto all cultures in general.(Junichi Saito/School of Business Administration Associate Professor)173 (6)Seeking after the shadow of Auschwitz in Eliot's Notes towards the Definition of CultureNotes1. T. S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture (London: Faber and Fa-ber, 1948), p. 122.2. Ibid.3. Gerald Graff, Literature against itself (Chicago: The University of Chi-cago Press, 1979), p. 3l.4. Ibid.5. George Steiner, Language and Silence (N.Y. : Atheneum, 1967), pp. viii-ix.6. Ibid., pp. ix-x.7. Eliot, pp. 122-123.8. Ibid., p. 122.9. Ibid., p. 28.10. Ibid., pp. 68-69.11. Ibid., pp. 113-114.12. Ibid., p. 65.13. Edward Alexander, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas (New Brunswick,New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994), p. 4.14. Ibid.(7) 172

<研究ノート>Seeking after the shadow of Auschwitz in Eliot's Notes towards the Definition of Culture

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<研究ノート>Seeking after the shadow of Auschwitz in Eliot\u27s Notes towards the Definition of Culture

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